The Spanish inquisition: part dos
Tuesday was spent perusing the old town and traversing La Rambla in an attempt to find a pair of reasonably priced sunglasses for my friend (who had managed to leave the pair he purchased on our epic bike ride (see earlier entry) on his kitchen table). Barcelona cathedral was looking somewhat less than impressive due to renovations which had the entirety of the west front encased in scaffolding. The guide book I had been clutching to my chest since we touched down at the airport reported a beautiful interior and so we thought we'd take a look around. However, I'd forgotten in dressing that morning (for 29 degree Celsius blue-sky weather) that this was a very catholic country and therefore my camisole was deemed inappropriate attire and so that idea went out of the window. We did, however, find sunglasses.
I should have mentioned earlier that our hotel was round the corner from Hospital de Sant Pau. When I first set eyes on this beautiful building I instantly decided that hospital must translate as something else in Catalan, town hall perhaps. However, on my way to the metro I passed an alternative entrance to the building which was clearly marked up as the emergency entrance. But it's stunning. Just look at it. If the hospitals I worked in resembled this then maybe I wouldn't be hating medicine so much... maybe...
That evening we went up to Montjuic which affords fantastic views over the city. It's the site of the old Olympic stadiums and has a beautiful museum of art to boot.
Later we dined in a Chinese restaurant (whose menu was printed in both Catalan, and happily, English). We ate two courses of lovely food and shared a bottle of wine for around the cost of one course in England. Afterward we retired to the beach to drink sangria and whilst there we happened upon a bunch of kittens who were living it up under the boardwalk.
We finished up the evening with a few cans of beer in the hotel room where my friend managed to soak himself (and the bed) in Spain's finest lager.
Our flight home was scheduled for early evening on Wednesday so we decided to have one last outing to the beach before catching the metro. So here I enclose some wonderful harbour pictures and an arty shot of me on the beach.
I desperately need a haircut... still.
After dipping our toes in the sea one final time we set off to the airport which turned into a bit of a mission. The map we had implied that if we took the metro to Place de Catalunya we'd be able to hop on board the RENFE (Spain's SNFE or old British Rail equivalent) straight to the airport. Simple. Except of course, nothing ever is. The train station signs implied that trains were running to the airport but none of them seemed to actually be doing so. We'd left plenty of time for travel but still I was beginning to get twitchy about our rapidly approaching flight. We abandoned the platform we were waiting at and set off to find an official and upon doing so fixed him with our best “please help me smile” and asked “parla ingles?”. To which the answer was “no”. Crap. At this point the pointing and waving technique was re-employed and the kind chap managed to get across that we needed to travel to Sants-Estacio (which is helpfully called Barcelona-Sants when you get there...) and change onto another train. We thanked him and pottered back down to the platform. But the thing is that this wasn't really a language barrier. I wouldn't have understood that if it had been in English because the map clearly indicated one single unbroken route. Bizarre.
We finally arrived at the airport with just enough time to check-in and clear security. At this point two things happened. Firstly, my (brand new) rucksack broke threatening to spew my dirty laundry all over my fellow passengers and the airline's computer system crashed just as we were checking my friend's luggage. The man behind the desk attempted to reboot his computer but it was to no avail. This is what happens when companies rely upon Microsoft. We walked off to grab a drink and returned later (to a long line of customers) and eventually managed to check the bag (which was full of lethal Vaseline and lip glosses) onto the flight.
Remarkably, we arrived into Gatwick only twenty minutes behind schedule and caught the bus back to Oxford where between us we carried my (by now) very broken rucksack down the hill. I fell through the door fatigued, waded through a deluge of (predominantly junk) email and finally collapsed into bed.
I'm sitting on a train finishing this as I crawl towards the north (bloody Virgin trains) and it has just occurred to me how very English this blog is. I've managed to say very little of my time in Barcelona and grumbled at length about the journey and petty things which niggled me. What can I say? The weather was far too good to gripe at so I had to find something for the inner grumpy old man to complain about.