Saturday in Barcelona

We didn’t have a set agenda for the day on Saturday, so we enjoyed a bit of a sleep-in before heading back to Elsa y Fred for brunch.  Grant enjoyed bacon and scrambled eggs while I went for French toast (Spanish style) with fruit.  I must say the meal was both delicious and incredibly stylish, although I think Jared would have wondered where the rest of his breakfast was.  

After brunch, it was time to tackle the Spanish metro system to travel up to Parc Güell, another Antonio Gaudi masterpiece.  We think we handled it all pretty well.  We managed to get the machine to display most things in English, and only had to ask an attendant what a single zone covered before successfully buying our day passes.  The trip was quite quick at first, and we were wondering whether it might not have been better just to walk, but then the distances between stops got longer and the train got faster.  It would have been a very long walk! 

One thing that we found amusing (and would create riots in other cultures) was the countdown timers as to when the next metro train would arrive. Instead of like the Tube just having a random 3 or 4 minutes until the next train, Barcelona displays a countdown timer that counts down the minutes and seconds until the next train. Which might make you think that the trains run to a very tight schedule.  Actually what happened was that when the time got to less than one minute, you’d find that it would jump back up to a minute and 30 seconds. And when it got to less than 20 seconds, it would frequently jump back up to 30 seconds. Sometimes it would do this three or four times in a row. London commuters would tear the sign down in frustration I’m sure.

We got out at our planned station and found signs to Parc Güell very easily and heaved a sigh of relief.  And then we saw the hills we needed to climb.  Now, you would think that as Wellingtonians a few hills would just be pleasantly familiar.  We are worried that instead we will find Wellington very hard work after our lazy life on the flat!  We were simultaneously relieved and amazed to find outdoor escalators for the last stages of the “walk”.

Parc Güell is huge, and we saw only a fraction of it.  We started right at the top and had wonderful views out over Barcelona, and then made our way down towards the plaza area where there are two Gaudi buildings and his fabulous tile work and sculptured landscaping.  Of course, like La Sagrada Familia, it was very crowded with tourists like us, all jostling for the best photo opportunities.  Despite this we still got some lovely pictures to remember the place by.  

At the café here, we had really our only experience of poor service in Spain.  The woman behind the counter made a great show of understanding us, and then spoke to us only in Spanish.  Now, we are fine with that – we were in Spain and had not taken the time to learn any of their language; we did not expect lots of English speaking service staff.  What really annoyed us was that she gave a strong impression of knowing a lot of English, but making a point of not speaking it.  Not great form in a popular tourist destination, we felt.

From here, we made our way further up into the park to the Gaudi Museum.  This is the house he designed and lived in until late in his life when he moved into one of the outbuildings at La Sagrada Familia in order to better supervise the work there.  It is a lovely building in and of itself, but what I really loved was the furniture he had designed for other clients that had now made its way back to the museum – and his own work desk which was such an elegant and beautiful piece of furniture while still being totally functional.

A little more wandering around the park took the rest of the morning so we headed back down all the hills to the metro and back into town for lunch.  We had a special evening planned going to a flamenco show so after lunch we headed back to the hotel to put our feet up for a little while.

The flamenco was a dinner and show event over in Spanish Village, a former Exhibition site in the Montjuic area where the main Olympic Stadium is, so we headed over very early, again on the metro.  The station bought us out right below the art gallery, which is a magnificent and very imposing building right up on the hill.  

The approach to this is flanked by gorgeous box hedges and fountains, and in front at street level is a huge fountain called “The Magic Fountain”.  This is lit up at night and on Thursdays and Saturdays (more often in the summer) they have a show where the fountain is played to music.  What a coincidence – it was still Saturday.  We checked the times and found we could get back to the last show to music after the flamenco show.  Grant was trying to work out the sign and was most impressed by how quickly I had adjusted to the Spanish in working out the show times.  Reluctantly I pointed out that it was all in English at the bottom.  I do wonder if he would have noticed if I hadn’t said anything.

We detoured right around the art gallery (we didn’t feel up to admiring paintings this time) to the Olympic stadium.  I was really impressed to note that the original stadium had been built not for the 1992 Olympics, but for an Expo in 1929. The stadium was also meant to host the People's Olympiad in 1936, a protest event against losing the 1936 Summer Olympics to Berlin, but the event was cancelled because of the Spanish Civil War.  Not for them the massive expense of a fancy new stadium in 1992 – they used the one they already had.  And very beautiful it is too.  We had another moment of high amusement here – we came to the barrier at the entry closest to it and put the camera through the bars to get a good photo of the track and stands, only to wander further along and find we could go in and look around for free.

Another thing that the Fed and me have in common - the same shoe size

The plaza out in front of the stadium is equally impressive – lots of gorgeous fountains and sculptures.  It helped that the weather was so nice too.  

It was getting close to the time that we could go in to the Spanish Village and sightsee before our show, so we wandered back down the hill. The Spanish Village, Poble Espagnole, is really lovely.  It was built to exhibit all the different regional architectures of Spanish villages and is a wonderful conglomeration of these.  It has sections representing all of the different regions or provinces in Spain, with each section having goods associated with that region. The buildings house restaurants, bars, and shops, most of which are geared towards tourists.  The merchandise was mostly very good quality although unsurprisingly expensive.

The real reason for heading over this way was to go to Tablao de Carmen for the tapas and flamenco dancing. We had checked it out on Tripadvisor, and the reviews had recommended getting the tapas rather than their full menu. The only thing that Tripadvisor should also have added was that despite the website stressing that you had to be there by 6.30pm, they don’t open the doors until 6.45pm. And as you have a reservation (and need one), there’s not a whole lot of point in standing around outside for 15 minutes. Annoyingly, we’d seen most of Poble Espagnole by this stage, and most of the shops had shut anyway.

When 6.45 rolled around, we were shown to our table which was really close to the stage. Then they started bringing out the tapas. The Tripadvisor advice was right on the mark with this as the tapas were amazing. We got some bread and cheese and a jumbo plate of parma ham and chorizo. We thought that this was ok – it was a bit simple but there was plenty of food. And then they brought out mushrooms, potatoes in a spicy sauce, and finished off with calamari. Amusingly some of the cheese was goat’s cheese too – but it was well hidden and Siobhan had reached the point where she had sampled sufficient of it to let her guard down about any of the cheese being of caprine origin. The amount of food was more than we really should have finished, but it was so yummy. We hoovered it all up and when I suggested to Siobhan that we should throw our hands in the air to show we were first finished as if it was a university eating or drinking challenge, she thought that people probably wouldn’t get the different cultural reference. I know that Pauly would have been highly amused if he had been there though.

The flamenco was amazing too. When the performers first came out, it looked like it was a family business, where everyone was given a role no matter how talented. However, first impressions were quickly dispelled as the guy playing the guitar was incredible. And while the singing that accompanies flamenco guitar / dancing is unusual, the singers were certainly experts at that too. Having never seen real flamenco dancing before, we can’t say that we are expert judges of it.  But this was a masterful display. The first woman up was an older woman, but gee could she move. It was a case of seeing still made it difficult to believe. Very driven and passionate. The guy that danced the next set was even better. He was the music.

While all of this was going on they brought us crème brulee – as if we needed more food. But it was nice too. The third set was danced by a younger woman and see was even more energetic than the others – if that was possible. The finale involved them all having a brief dance – but flamenco is very much a solo affair so they only went on for their turn after the last person had left the stage. It was amazing and we’d highly recommend it. The food was great and the entertainment superb.

You’d think that would be enough excitement and entertainment for one evening, but there was more to come. We might have looked slightly ungracious as we bolted for the door when the show was finished, but the show finished at 8.30 and the Magic Fountain was scheduled to finish at 9pm. So we hurried down the hill to the fountain and it was stunning.

Sitting outside at Mon Ami Gabi watching the fountain outside the Bellagio in Las Vegas is still one of the highlights of our trip. But this fountain really rivalled that one. The fountain is comprised of a number of fountain heading back up the hill towards the Art Museum, so the scale of it is difficult to capture in a photo. And set to music as well – Freddy Mercury and Queen singing “Barcelona”. An amazing end to a full-on day.

But it wasn’t over yet! At the place that we got gelatos last night, Siobhan saw that they did hot chocolate like Scopa does in Wellington. A small serving, but a lot like liquid chocolate. So we had to go back there. We successfully navigated the Metro (basically like locals, and we weren’t disappointed – it did the funny countdown thing for us) and got to the hot chocolate shop. With hindsight I’m not sure how we managed it after all the food we had eaten, but we had hot chocolate with xuros (churros) for second pudding. That essentially brought our Spanish excursion to an end. We had such a great time.

Sunday morning we had to go straight to the airport. And after telling the taxi driver and the hotel concierge which airline we were flying with, they took us to the wrong terminal. Strangely enough, the taxi took us to the one that was furthest away and so the biggest fare. We then had to get the free transit bus back to the terminal that we passed – only to see our taxi driver queued up back there. I’m sure that there is a Spanish word for that.

Anyway, we got there in plenty of time and weirdly the plane boarded 40 mins before departure. The reason for this became obvious when everyone was on-board. When you fly on a cheap airline, they pay the lowest landing fees and so get parked around the back of everywhere. It was a 15-20 min taxi out to the runway. While we weren’t landing at Heathrow, Gatwick gave us a typical English welcome by making us stand in queues for the best part of an hour before we could escape to get our car and come home. After wandering around in jeans and t-shirts for three days, getting back to about 4°C certainly brought us back to reality. Still, we were still excited about what a great trip we’d had later that evening.