Yet more of Barcelona

We’ve spent another couple of days in Barcelona this week. On Wednesday we took the bus again and went on another walking tour – this one run by Sandemans, who had been the sponsor of our first tour in Lisbon.

Our guide was Andreas Jennngs, our first non native guide on any city tour. He’s from New Mexico in the USA (cue lots of references to Breaking Bad which seems to be their biggest claim to fame!) and prior to being a guide he was an international trainer of air traffic controllers, and is a closet England football fan. He proved this by showing me that underneath his corporate colours he was wearing a replica England football shirt, and had followed them at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil where he was living at the time. Strange choice, but as we were the only English people on the tour it seemed he needed to confess to someone who might understand!

He’s a natural entertainer, and we had a very informative tour of the Gothic Barcelona, which took in the cathedral (not to be confused with Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia) and the square containing Gaudi’s first work – a street lamp and the headquarters of the Catalan local government. He also give us a history lesson including lots of references to William the Herry who was subsequently referred to as Hairy Willie to make him easier to remember (see, it worked Andreas!) and the two Fascist dictators Miguel Primo de Rivera and Franco who ruled for much of the 20th century, and who both attempted to outlaw the speaking of the Catalan language. Even Gaudi himself was arrested on the steps of the Esglesia de Saint Felip Neri in 1924 after being overheard speaking the language. This church was used as an execution centre by Franco for his firing squads, and the bullet holes are still evident today. A bit gruesome for a church methinks!

Andreas had advised us to visit the cathedral after 5pm as it was free then, so we turned up to find a long queue – it must be a well known piece of tourist info! We waited for about 15 minutes but the queue, which included a school trip of about 40 noisy Spanish teenagers, didn’t move so we moved on to walk through the surrounding streets when we came across a side entrance and nipped in to the Cathedral courtyard.

The cathedral is named after Santa Eulalia, a thirteen year old girl who was tortured in various ways in the 4th century by the Romans, in particular by being rolled 13 times down a hillside in a barrel which was pierced with sharp knives. Despite all these attempts with the barrel Eulalia wasn’t even scratched so they chopped her head off – that did it. The courtyard is the home of 13 white geese who live there in memory of Santa Eulalia, one for each year of her short life.

Grant had decided he wanted to buy a leather jacket while we were in Spain, and as Barcelona is our last planned stop before we moved on to Italy, we spent most of the afternoon (or so it seemed) checking out different leather goods shops Grant had found online!

Probably luckily some didn’t exist, or we couldn’t find them, but eventually we found one which had a really good selection and who promised to have the jacket he chose altered and ready for us to collect at 6.45pm so we could catch the bus back to Sitges at 7pm.

As we hadn’t been in Barcelona when they had a home match, Grant was going to console himself with watching Real Madrid v Athletico Madrid in a bar in Sitges. Of course we arrived to collect the jacket at 6.45 and it wasn’t ready, I doubt if they had even started the alterations, and they tried to charm us by offering us a glass of water and the chance to sit down. Tempting as it was they’d picked the wrong people to mess with – we’d left the campsite at 9am and Barcelona is a big city to walk round in hot weather, so we were tired and not in the mood to be fobbed off! We left them in no doubt that we were unhappy and not waiting around until they could be bothered to do the alterations, so we said we’d return the next day or the day after. To be honest we weren’t surprised, this is the typical Spanish ‘mañana’ behaviour, but it meant we had another hour bus journey each way on the Friday. Or so we thought………

We hadn’t realised that this weekend was the Barcelona Grand Prix and the Barcelona Motor Show. Consequently the roads into the city were packed, and it took us 90 minutes instead of the advertised 50 minutes. Undeterred we caught the metro and then a funicular part way up Montjuic with the intention of catching a bus to the castle at the top and then walk back down. I’d researched this the day before and discovered that on the Barcelona transport system this was all classed as a single journey costing less than 1 euro as long as you purchased a multi journey travel card. However we couldn’t find the funicular at first so exited the station and the had to go back in again – two journeys. After that things seemed to go a little smoother as we found the bus stop showing the correct bus and destination and when it arrived checked with the driver that it was going to the castle. He confirmed it was so everything appeared fine. However the bus didn’t continue up the mountain but back down instead and into the traffic jam that was central Barcelona and the Placa Espanya where the motor show was! To add insult to injury the driver then insisted we got off the bus and paid for yet another journey to go back where we had started from.

By the time we got back on there were no seats so we had to stand all the way and, yes you guessed, we passed the point where we’d boarded the bus, but on the other side of the road. So, we eventually arrived at the Castle over 3 hours after we’d set off on a one hour journey!

It was worth the wait though as the views of the city and the harbour were spectacular! You can see for miles from up there and we took loads of pictures before setting off to walk back down, via the Olympic Park. We were able to walk around inside the stadium which was the centrepiece of the 1992 Olympics.

It’s a pretty spectacular sight modelled on old Athens, but interestingly it had originally been built to host the 1936 Olympic Games but due to the political situation in Spain at the time the games were given to the Nazi’s instead! So, for 1992 it was a facelift, albeit a significant one, and it’s generally acknowledged that it was this single event that rejuvenated Barcelona’s fortunes, such that they now get 34m visitors a year. Not bad for the Spanish equivalent of Manchester eh?

We continued down the hill past the National Art Museum and back towards the Placa Espanya. They’ve created a wonderful fountain-filled set of steps back to the plaza which itself is framed beyond some huge Corinthian columns. It really is a beautiful sight, and worthy of yet more photos.

On the way we got caught up in.a demonstration – I say caught up, by in fact there were only about 30 people demonstrating (not sure about what but it was car or petrol related) flanked by one photographer and around 50 police. Needless to say things passed off smoothly if a little noisily as they let off some bangers which nearly gave Karol a heart attack!

After the gentle walk it was back on the metro to take some pictures of Gaudi’s Casa Batllo (House of Bones) and then back to the shop to see if my jacket was ready. There was only the young lady assistant there to greet us but it was ready so we tiredly made our way to the bus stop. We’d just missed one but they run every half hour so we waited in the hot afternoon sun. And we waited. And we waited!

Finally, 45 minutes later a bus arrived, but the driver got off, disappeared for 5 minutes and then came back and had a smoke before letting us all on. Fortunately the journey back to Sitges was uneventful, although we both napped part of the way, but still slept well that night!

We haven’t mentioned much about Sitges, the camp site and the surrounding area. The site has been great – really clean, friendly, and brilliantly situated between Sitges and the neighbouring Vilanova i la Geltru, or Vilanova for short. Sitges has a fantastic sea front, great for cycling (and walking, rollerblading, scooting, skateboarding etc) and the old part of the town is beautiful but as a resort it is busy especially at the weekends. Villanova however Is a real Spanish town, with the added bonus of a great market, marina and beautiful beach.

We spent a lovely day there on Saturday exploring and people watching. We’ve visited a few markets and I’m managing to maintain my ‘no more than 3 euros for any item of clothing’ rule. I managed to get another two T shirts yesterday within my limit, and even Karol got into the spirit as whilst hers was 6 euros, there were two parts to it!

Sunday has been spent in Sitges and at the site as we leave in the evening to take the ferry to Genoa in Northern Italy. I’ll be sad to leave Spain, as we’ve had a wonderful time here, but we’re both excited at the prospect of visiting another country and continuing our adventure!