Thu, 16 Oct 2003

author Liz	location Barcelona, España
posted 10:13 CEST 25/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Espana ( all photos )

Into Barcelona ( No photos )
On Thursday, we had a bit of a lie-in before going downstairs and having breakfast at the hostel. It was quite good - breads, cheese and sliced meat, hot and cold drinks, and delicious lemon cupcakes.
Back upstairs, we packed our bags and then checked out and made our way to the train station. Along the way we got a few photos of the medieval streets of Girona and the residental areas along the river-bank.
At the station, we were on-time for our intended train, and even better, the train itself turned up - only five minutes late!
So we went from Girona down to Barcelona, and at midday we were standing in the central train station - Barcelona Sants.
We put all our bags in a locker, and gave up trying to get a city map from the very slow and busy tourist information.
Our next twenty minutes were spent trying to locate the Metro station near Marty's (Tim's uni mate) house on the station maps. For some reason, we just could not see the station we were looking for. Afterwards we found out that the station we were looking for was quite new, so it obviously hadn't made it to the maps we were looking at. In the end, we asked an assistant where the station was, and he pointed it out on yet another map.
Marty was at work, so Tim and I bought a T-10 (a public transport ticket that gives you ten trips on all transport) and caught the Metro to a station that was close to the first things we wanted to see.
Unfortunately, the weather was very overcast and later on in the day it rained heavily. Walking around Barcelona in bad weather didn't really do the city justice.
We found a large square that had thousands of pidgeons, all keen to get food from all the humans to the point where they kept jumping onto our feet, or even onto the bench next to us. We at some of our bread and peanut butter, and shooed the pidgeons away, and then decided to keep walking as we were getting quite cold sitting there.
Our first adventure was La Rambla. La Rambla is Spain's most famous street and stretches all the way from Catalunya Square to Colom, a huge Colombus monument. Down the middle of La Rambla is a wide pedestrian boulevard and two single road lanes either side, then more footpaths and shops, cafés and old buildings at the sides. The middle is lined with huge trees all along the length, and looks very pretty. But, it is most famous for the bird stalls, flower stalls and vibrant buskers and beggars.
The first section we walked along had the bird stalls - little stalls packed with cage after cage filled with parrots, pidgeons, chickens, ducks, even rabbis and baby turtles. It was interesting, but a bit sad seeing many birds squashed into small cages, and quite a few of them showing signs of distress. Tim and I also wondered if some of the exotic parrots we saw had maybe been smuggled from their native countries.
Next were the flower stalls with a huge array of brightly coloured flowers and plants. Along the sides were buskers or human statues, people on stilts and even a "Michael Jackson" dancing to music. And of course, lots of other tourists.
We went off to one side and had a look through a few souvaner shops, walked more along the pedestrian bit in the middle, and then crossed to the other side to go into Mercat de la Boqueria, a large and busy food market. We walked all around the market, smelling olives, fruit and seafood, seeing lots of fresh meat - so fresh that poultry was dead and plucked but otherwise whole, and suckling pigs and so on. A bit gross, but I guess that's what we eat most of the time.
We went back out onto La Rambla, and walked all the way down to the Colombus monument looking around us as we went.
The Colombus monument was quite tall, with a statue standing on top, and we had a good look before heading onwards down to the waterfront. We crossed a footbridge going past hundereds of yachts moored at the marina and looked up to the hill on our right, which was the main sight of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. On the other side of the bridge was Moll d'Espanya, a former wharf which is now a big shopping centre complete with restaurants on the harbourside.
We walked through the shopping centre, then went back across the footbridge and back up La Rambla a little way.
We turned right and headed into Barri Gòtic, the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. It is full of lots of little grubby streets, tapas bars, coffee shops and above all the shops and bars are lots of flats. It is full of rubbish and there are lots of beggars, but it still has a certain charm and was quite fun to explore around the many streets, often getting quite lost!
This was what Tim and I did now, wandering randomly through the streets, occasionaly coming to a small square.
We saw Catedral (not Cathedral), a big church but it was covered in scaffolding and green mesh, which obscured nearly the whole building. In the square outside was a junk market, which we looked through for a bit and then we came to a wide pedestrian street which was lined with expensive shops and department stores.
By now, it was quite cold and windy, so we caught the Metro back to Barcelona Sants, got our bags out of the luggage locker and caught the Metro to the station near Marty's house.
Outside, it was even colder and raining too - not the sort of weather we had expected to have in Spain!
Marty came and met us outside the station, and we went up to his flat where we stayed inside for a few hours and watched the miserable weather through the windows.
Tim and I hadn't had anything to eat for ages, so Marty cooked us some pasta and fried eggs. It was delicious - we hadn't had eggs for ages, and as a bonus Marty was cooking for us!
Later on in the evening, we did go out even though it was still raining heavily. First we checked our email, then we ran through the rain to a huge shopping centre where we got some food for later and where Tim had a look at digital cameras.
We then caught the Metro into the middle of the city and our first stop for the night was the Wax Museum Bar. Incredible - the whole bar was full of waxwork trees, with hidden faces that were really expressive when we finally managed to pick a few out. It was like being in the Enchanted Forest and I loved it. We had a few drinks there, and when it closed at 1am, we did more running through the rain to a wine bar for a few drinks.
We got back to Marty's place about three or four am after catching the night bus and getting soaking wet and freezing cold!

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