Many people put together their own bucket list of things that they would like to do in their lifetime.
In our case, travel has always been one of our goals and so far we have
achieved a reasonable level of travel. However, it has always been one of our
major goals to see the city of Barcelona in North-east Spain. Well now we can scratch that goal off our
list. One of the many advantages of living in South West France is that we
can get to other parts of Europe quite easily and we certainly aim to take
advantage of this in coming years.
We were fortunate enough in the last couple of weeks to have
our daughter Flyn stay with us for a number of days at Sainte Foy. At the end
of her stay in France we planned to then drive down to Barcelona to spend
another few days with her. The drive was around 610 kms, but with Auto-routes
most of the way the journey only took 6 hours and that included driving into
the centre of the city where we parked our car for the duration of our visit.
Thank God for GPS!!
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| Typical Barcelona |
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| Barcelona style |
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A typical Square or placa in Barcelona
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We had pre-booked a 2 bedroom apartment in the Eixample district, near the Rambla de
Catalunya and the Passeig de Gracia, which is home to two of Gaudi’s famed
architectural buildings Casa Batllo and La Pedrera. The apartment was more than fine for our
needs, although being on the 5th floor and the elevator really only
taking 3 people, it was sometimes a bit of a squeeze.
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| Sculptures on rooftop of La Pedrera in late evening |
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| La Pedrera - an apartment block |
Barcelona is one of those cities that are well spread out and
there are many things of interest to see in a widespread area. For this reason,
the open top tourist buses that simply keep going around in a non-stop loop
proved to be valuable as you could get off and on anywhere along the route and
you could even change the route if you wanted to (there are in fact 3 different
routes that cross various parts of the city).
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| Rooftop sculptures Casa Batllo in the late evening |
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| Casa Batllo at night |
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Internal courtyard in Casa Batllo
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Gaudi is always one of the key talking points when you visit
this wonderful city and his architectural style is like nothing else that we
have seen. Odd shapes and flows and designs make each of his buildings even
different from each other let alone the normal building style. Parc
Guell and the Sagrada Familia are two very
interesting projects at which you can spend many hours. We just hope that some
of our photos might give you some idea of the intrigue of these sites. The
Sagrada Familia is the yet to be finished cathedral in Barcelona and having
seen many wonderful churches and cathedrals in France, this was just so
different and amazing. Certainly one of the two most impressive cathedrals we
have seen, the other being the Cathedral at Albi in France (also very much well
worth a visit).
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| Stain glass in the Sagrada Familia - brilliant light |
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| The front facade of the Sagrada....work in progress |
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| Sculptures on the facade of the Sagrada |
Leaving Gaudi aside, there were still a myriad of things and
places to see in the city including Camp Nou the impressive home of
Barcelona FC, the site of the Barcelona Olympics (including the diving pool
with a wonderful view over the city and out to the Mediterranean Sea) and the
wonderful Parc Montjuic which slopes down from the heights right down to
the coast and harbour. In addition the waterfront area (used to house the Olympic
teams) is well worth a visit with a veritable mass of boats and Cruise liners.
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| Gaudi's work in Parc Guell |
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| More of Parc Guell |
The beach area of Barceloneta is home to many cafes
and casual restaurants including many on the sand themselves. This is a great
place to enjoy a modest tapas and glass of Sangria.
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| A small version of the sangria....but it was only brunch |
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| Beachside cafe |
The list goes on and we still have not even mentioned the Gothic
old town or the walk down the very touristy main La Rambla. Overall
Barcelona is very much a walking town and in combination with the tourist buses
and metro, there really are no problems in getting around the city. Perhaps one
of the keys to this wonderful city is the relaxed feel and the friendliness of
its inhabitants as they make you feel most welcome. One warning however that it
is not cheap to see some of the interesting sites (particularly Gaudi sites) with
the Sagrada Familia costing 16 Euro entry. Having said this of course it was
always well worth the cost to see these wonderful buildings and concepts.
Of course you cannot go to Barcelona (or the rest of Spain)
without eating out and trying the local cuisine. Tapas was very prominent
as were the veritable paella, but even breakfast pastries
and bread were very good. Of course everything needs to be washed down by a
modest (500 ml) glass of Sangria or a bottle of Rioja
and amazingly the cost was not too bad as long as you stay away from
the main tourist spots. Much like all big tourist cities, venture off the main
streets and find some little bistro/café in the side streets.
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| Chocolates in the markets |
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| Anyone for tapas |
Now our only problem was the fact that we
have only just gotten used to speaking readily in french, but now had to
remember to try to speak Spanish. Wow, it was not easy let me tell you. Si
instead of Oui, per favor instead of s’il vous plaît and the list goes on.
It is also worth noting that the city is obviously a tourist
attraction and even though we were there in late autumn, there were still a lot
of tourists around. We would recommend avoiding the city in peak tourist times
as the crowds at the attractions would be very annoying. In addition, in summer
it would also be extremely humid. Our visit seemed to be pretty much at the
right time of year.
With only that as a minor irritant we were indeed very lucky
to have seen this wonderful city and rightfully can now mark it off our Bucket List.
And many thanks to our daughter Flyn who invited us and was the inspiration and the main photographer.
Adios and Gracias Barcelona .........we will return !!!
And À bientôt to all of our friends
