Cathedral, Disaster, Bus, Bus, Cathedral, Bus

The day began with a sublime hour, descended brusquely into everyday confusion and recovered enough to end with renewed confidence and pizza.

TripAdvisor said go early to Sagrada Familia so I booked the earliest entrance at 9.00. We walked about 200 metres from our apartment to the basilica. We watched as huge cranes lowered a work platform and entered with the other early risers. 

The audio guide, as at Casa Batllo yesterday, was excellent. 

We began at Gaudi’s only completed entrance, the Nativity facade. I can’t explain why but looking at the soaring towers and the intricate carvings I was overcome. The only other time this has happened to me was when I saw Michelangelo’s Pieta in 2013. Epiphanies are not my thing. My beliefs have probably more in common with the republicans of the Spanish civil war who damaged this place than Gaudi. Nevertheless, I cried, so there you go.

Gaudi and friends seemed to be as obsessed by little things as the grand scheme. From the sculptures out front to the lizards in the sculpted foliage of the portal, everything was captivating. 

Inside was, if possible, more sublime. 

The Passion Facade was equally powerful, though in a completely different style.

I decided I’d like to take the lift up one of the towers. I went for the views but the real joy was seeing the ongoing construction. Then I walked down the 10 stories or so. Even the stairs were fascinating.

The next project was to walk for 10 minutes to a bus stop which would take us to Parc Guell. We paused for a final look back.

Lyn spotted a great cafe/bakery and we sat and refuelled. The walk passed the usual Barcelona apartment buildings. Barcelona is a city of mostly beautiful apartment blocks which are usually festooned with various Catalan flags and slogans.

We just missed a bus and the wait for the next was about 35 minutes. We walked instead, a bad decision because the walk was all uphill, though the neighbourhood was very high end and Lyn developed birdbath envy.

Parc Guell was a huge letdown. It was no doubt a beautiful place in its way but Mondays are when museums are closed and this was a beautiful day. Barcelona’s tourists and locals had booked out the ticketed area for the entire day, while the rest of the park was crammed with the unlucky multitudes. There was dust and crowds and an enormous queue for the loos. We took a couple of photos and gave up.

We both came to the reluctant conclusion that Gaudi and friends had a reverence for nature that elevated projects like Casa Batllo or Sagrada Familia but at Parc Guell it was all a bit twee. I’m sure many will disagree. Our bus ride back was a tragicomedy of missed stops. We usually do this sort of thing well, though not always. 

We had a late lunch and a siesta. Our afternoon excursion was less ambitious. We caught a bus back to the Barri Gotic, bought some tickets for a tour tomorrow, and visited Barcelona’s 14th Century gothic cathedral. There were innumerable chapels and a cloister with live geese. I later discovered why. The cathedral is sacred to the local St Eulalia, a 13 year old girl who was martyred by the Romans very imaginatively. (Look it up. Why should I do all the work?) There is one goose for each year of her (probably apocryphal) life.

The little bonus was the museum in the cloisters. Lyn was so taken aback by the jewelled holy stuff that she had to ask the attendant if it was real. “Si!” The rampant anticlericalism of the Spanish Civil War Republicans began to drift into perspective. Serendipitously, the museum was temporarily housing an exhibition of Durer’s series of engravings of the life of the Virgin Mary.

We went outside to find the cathedral square transformed. A temporary stage, sound system, portaloos and a market had appeared. Immediately, a Roma concert began complete with some flamenco. The first singers, dancers and guitarists were great. Then a woman ‘of a certain age’ began to sing very badly and loudly. We fled to the bus at Placa Catalunya. 

Walking and Sunday Mass

We arrived at Barcelona’s airport yesterday, bought our SIM cards and caught a taxi to our apartment. You can see the towers of La Sagrada Familia from our balcony. We thought an excursion to the Magic Fountain would be a good idea because it runs from 21.00 to 22.00 this time of year. We shopped at the supermarket, drank some Rioja and grazed on some nibbles and then a siesta before our excursion. Well ... we crashed. I woke at 22.00 and Lyn slept through to the next morning at 5.00.

To today. We walked to that part of Barcelona made famous by the Modernisme architects. The facades were remarkable but we only had time and money for one thorough tour. 

We chose Casa Batllo. It was designed and built by Antonio Gaudi in 1906 and is now is a UNESCO world heritage site. At present the amazing facade is hidden behind restoration scaffolding but inside is an Art Nouveau wonderland. The audio guide was great and even the shop was a joy.

Leaving Casa Batllo behind, the architectural wonders kept coming. However, we were on a schedule; coffee and cake and mass at midday.

Mass was in the old part of town, the Barri Gotic, at the bare and beautiful Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar. It was a lovely sung mass and the priest (bishop?) impressed us mightily by shaking hands with everybody in the church - we are talking hundreds of people here. 

After mass we had a brief wander through the narrow streets of the Barri Gotic. Lyn bought us hot chips in a paper cup. I found Roman walls and the statue of Christopher Columbus, who appears to be pointing resolutely toward Sardinia. Or perhaps his actual hometown - Genoa.

The final stage of our adventure was a walk up Barcelona’s very own tourist trap, the broad tree-lined boulevard called La Rambla. We were amazed at the different zones. We passed through North African junk zone, paint your portrait zone, weird alien performance artist zone, tourist souvenirs zone, kerbside restaurants zone and finally, very oddly, plant stalls specialising in succulents.

The adventure finished at Placa de Catalunya where we caught a local bus back to the apartment for siesta and another night in I suspect.

The Special Queue

This trip had begun without incident. The lines for passport checks at Bangkok were as enormous as usual. The immigration officers were as cheerful as a 3.00 am shift allowed. The airport Novotel didn’t mess up our booking. We swam. Got room service. Checked in our bags for the rest of our flight early. Watched, absolutely fascinated, as families with 60 kilo suitcases and huge unwieldy packages, failed to bypass Emirates flight stewards and ended up frantically redistributing their luggage on the terminal floor and still ending up at the excess baggage counter. Lyn ended a lifetime of turning up her nose at prawns when she discovered the Japanese tempura variety, and ordered a second helping. We slept a lot. Had a room service dinner. And, after midnight, walked back to the airport to continue our journey.

We’d reached the point where we were waiting in a long line for passport control. An immaculately uniformed official directed me to a shorter line and Lyn followed. I looked up to see a sign saying the line was for the disabled, children, pregnant women and, ... the elderly. The symbol for the latter was a stooped figure with a walking stick. I suppose my hair is whiteish but I was a little miffed.

My shoulder bag was disintegrating so I bought a new one. I write this waiting at Dubai for our last leg to Barcelona. Come to think of it, I am feeling my age ...