Barcelona blues
Lija and I spent the weekend in Barcelona, which had it’s good times, but quite a few shitty things happened too. Well, I’ll start at the beginning shall I?! Hold your breath fellas, cos it’s going to be a bumpy ride! (Did you know that Bette Davis said that in All About Eve?!)
I left Lady Roskill in good hands on Thursday afternoon and met Lija down at Sloane Square. She forgot something at home, so came and dropped her case off at my place, so I dragged them both to the station. We went the lighter option this time with small suitcases to carry on rather than packs so that Ryanair couldn’t slug us the ₤10 baggage charge. We found a cheaper and nicer way to get to the airport with easyBuses, an offshoot of easyJet. If you book like weeks ahead you can get the seats for ₤2 one way, we got ours for ₤13 which is still cheaper than the ₤20 round trip with the national express buses.
We had dinner at Stansted, actually sat down and shared a pizza and pasta, and then went and got our 6 o’clock flight, which is over an hour in the next time zone, then we had to get an hour and a half bus from Girona airport to Barcelona. That was pretty easy, the hard part was finding our hostel from the bad directions they gave us from the bus station. It’s just a small one so there was no big signage. We pretty much went straight to bed to be fresh for the next day.
Friday
It felt like Saturday today, but we were sort of having our holiday a day earlier so the flights were cheaper. But we managed to stagger out of the hostel by 10am, our whole room were extremely lazy and never got up early. We wandered down to Las Rambla, the main tourist street of Barcelona, which had a large pedestrian space in between the up and down roads for the cars. All the way down was filled with souvenir shops, flower shops, and lots of buskers who dress up as various characters and try and scare little kids. There were a few good ones there; alien from alien V predator, a man covered white so he looked like a statue sitting on the toilet reading the newspaper, a man in bronze who looked like a drover, it was endless and as we walked up and down over the next few days some of them were there every day rain hail and shine, and some just popped up once.
Of course it was pretty easy for us to sniff out the market, and seeing as we hadn’t had breakfast we got our hands on tubs of fresh fruit, already cut up and sold with little forks. There were juices, fruit salads and single mixes, and that was just the fruit stalls. There were different sections with vegetables, bakery, deli and the fish market in the middle. Most of the crabs and crays and squidgy tube things were still alive and blowing bubbles as people looked at them hungrily. London’s Borough market had a few stalls, and we talked to the pork pie man, who said they are hoping to make it a regular feature and are coming back in three weeks time. I said we’d be back for dinner!
At the bottom of Las Rambla is Columbus’ column looking out to the ocean, just in front of the world trade centre which sits on the ocean and the façade facing the ocean looks like a boat. We walked along the pedestrian bridge to this big indoor shopping centre (we’re not used to those) which also housed cinemas, an imax screen and the aquarium. From there we didn’t really know what to do, so we went back to Colombus’ column and hopped on the tourist bus, we got a two day pass, because there’s actually quite a lot to see, and the two routes take two hours each. By this time it was already late afternoon and the traffic was quite bad. So we took the blue route today, which took us along past the beach (like, real beach, that we haven’t seen for aggeeees – okay, so I swam at Cornwall in the Atlantic, but still that was almost two months ago!)
A lot of Barcelona’s tourist legacy comes from the 1992 Olympics, and our first port of call was the Olympics marina, including the housing that athletes stayed in, now used as public housing, and two large towers, one that is the casino and the other a business building. We went past the zoo, very slowly because we were stuck in traffic, and then through the gothic area of the city, which was built on the old Roman town. We went back up through Catalunya, which is the top of Las Rambla, and joins the new and old towns. We headed west up onto Montjuic, the mountain that houses the Olympic stadium, a fernicula that takes you down to town or over to the port, and a myriad of other museums and places to see. We loved the view you got over the city though, that was great.
It was about half seven when we got off the bus back at Mr Colombus, so we decided to walk down to the beach and have a look around there. My Lonelyplanet said there was a good restaurant down there, but I didn’t really get the name or anything so we just wandered around. We ended up stopping for tapas with badly made Caprihana cocktails at this little bar on the beach, which just seemed so chic at the time! Haha. Then we walked back and decided to stop for paella for dinner, accompanied by a jugful of Sangria, although on retrospect a glass would’ve been more sensible. Sangria is a horrible drink made with red wine and lemonade, and by the third glass my arm missed the table when I went to lean on it. Oops.
We sort of walked back up to the gothic part of town, slowly wandering, because we were meeting up with a Prussia Cover. Hattie is a friend of Rosie’s, and she usually goes to Cornwall every year, but missed this one, so Rosie introduced us via email and we met up with her later that night. She actually had two Danish girls staying at her place and a bunch of other people following also. We told her she should seriously think about doing pub crawls for Barcelona because she’d get so many people on them and get paid for taking everyone out. The first place we went to was just a small bar and I was finding out what Hattie was doing here, working for a teaching English school for one of her cousin, I think.
The Danish girls were also lovely, like many Europeans they had been taught English by Americans so their accent was very Americanized, and I had to keep reminding myself they were actually Danish. They were also just travelling around. The next place Hattie took us to was a famous Absinthe bar that artists like Antoni Gaudi drank at, which sent him a little insane. Getting into the Gaudi spirit, we had about three glasses between five of us, which doesn’t sound so bad but it turns out a little goes a long way.
As we were leaving we had to wait outside for one of the girls who was still in the loo, and it was quite busy, there were a lot of people jostling around and those annoying guys selling roses and things. Next minute I feel my bag and realise my camera is gone. All I can think is that the cord had been hanging out and someone’s just come along and pulled it and kept walking. Well, as Aunty Inga said, thieving Spanish bastard. And Vecmamma told me she cast a spell on the thief for his bits to drop off. Well, I couldn’t laugh at the time because it was a present from papa and with the absinthe I kind of went into hysterics standing in the middle of Barcelona crying my eyes out. As Hattie said, it’s Barcelona. It happens. That’s what it’s like.
Even though I had gone to the trouble to buy a whole new bag from the airport that would stay close to my body, I suppose if they want it they’re going to have it. Even Yasmin from work told me when she was there these guys tried to swipe a camera from around a Japanese man’s neck, and he refused to give it to them and they dragged him half way down the street until they could get it and run off. At least I wasn’t hurt. Hattie texted us the next day saying she got home without her phone, and had gone out to buy a new one, as if it’s a regular occurrence. Well, my dear old cousin, who had been through the drunk stuff at a younger age than me, had to get me home which wasn’t going to happen easily. She told me some cute Spanish guy was holding my hair back as I threw up in the bushes. I suppose if it happens it might as well be where people don’t know you. Wish I’d got a look at the guy though!
Well, we did get home and Saturday morning meant dragging ourselves out of bed and down to the police station to make a report, they didn’t seem too interested though. On the way down we ran into some flag ceremony – people were carrying huge flags around Place Catalunia in a long line. We always manage to run into celebrations of some kind. We jumped on the red bus in the afternoon, I passed on food, and we went around the top of the city. We even had a bit of sun on the bus for a while – shock horror. The Sagrada Familia is Antoni Gaudi’s dream building begun in the late 19th century which is still under construction relying on the contributions of churchies, devotees and ticket buyers. When Gaudi died there was only one tower complete. We went around Barcelona Football Club’s stadium, which was packed as there was a game on against Catalonia. And then we came back down the Diagonal that houses elegant shopping stores.
We walked down to the market to get together some bits and pieces for dinner, but our beloved pork pie man was all out – they had sold out at lunch time! So I promised I’d go see him at Borough Market to get one. Instead, we got 8 prawns, and when we figured out how cheap it was we went to one of the other seafood places and got a biiiig handful mmm and some salami, a bread roll, a capsicum, lemon, cucumber, and some pate. And for dessert we got a tub of strawberries. On the way back to the hostel we ran into more celebrations with dancers and acrobats and people dressed in huge stilt people – the people inside walked on the ground and lifted the huge dolls and then every so often they would stop, put down the stilts, come out from underneath and swap with someone else. They had these acrobats who climbed on top of each other – s small boy on top of an older girl on the shoulders of an older man, surrounded by three people who each had a younger person balancing on their shoulders. That middle girl was so good because she not only had to concentrate on balancing but also lifting someone and having someone on top of her shoulders.
We got our stash back to the hostel and prepared the lemon and hand wipes and opened up our little feast. Who needs a three course meal when you can have an impromptu picnic? We went across the road to the Spar for ice creams afterwards and wandered around the block devouring them. We were going to go out with Hattie and the others again, and had a rest waiting for them to text Lija back – my phone had died at this stage and I forgot my adapter from UK to European so I couldn’t even use Lija’s cos she had the Aussie to Euro plug. Turned out I was so tired I fell asleep and Lija even tried to prod me but I didn’t move! I was looking forward on going out again but spose I was just stuffed. Lija never woke me so I fell asleep in my denim shorts and shirt, let me tell you it’s not comfortable waking up at five in the morning with denim stuck tightly around your butt!
It had started pouring sometime throughout the night, so it was probably safer that we didn’t go out, but the rain didn’t stop all through Sunday. We decided we’d be better off in shorts in the rain so the bottom of our pants didn’t get wet, as we were bound to need those when we got to London (correct as always). Most of the shops were shut because it was Sunday, so we took the metro (always a fun thing to try and do in a different city) down to the port to check out this cinema/shopping complex that we never actually (luckily) went into the other day. We were walking fast to not get as wet, and then we got stopped because yachts were going out and the pedestrian footbridge was lifted for them to get through, so we spent ten minutes standing in the rain waiting to get across. It seems everyone had the same idea, because the place was packed. We scouted out some of the shops and made the awful choice to have McDonalds for lunch because we were able to get seats. Reminder: McDonalds tastes fine when you’re soaking up alcohol and not feeling well, when you’re feeling fine it makes you feel like crap. But, I finally have had a McRoyal, which I was told I was supposed to have in Paris, something to do with Pulp Fiction, but hey, Barcelona’s not that far away okay!
We were even tempted to go to the aquarium but again, everyone had the same idea and the line snaked out the door and around in several swirls we just forgot it. By now the rain wasn’t too bad and we walked back up Las Rambla and looked at some markets we hadn’t seen, back up through the cages of animals and weird buskers dressed up. We got a bread stick from the Spar, as well as some mussels, which was a great idea because when we got back to the hostel we found someone had nicked our salami from the fridge. We had it in a plastic bag with the other food, labelled and doubled knotted. Scungy bastards. Excuse the language but I can’t stand people like that in hostels. Well, we made dead strawberries and sat and read for a while till it seemed like time to walk back to the bus station. We just missed one bus because it was packed, but within minutes they brought another and we piled on with everyone else getting out of Barcelona. It was a quiet ride back to Girona airport, where we sat and had dinner at about 6, sitting in a corner of the airport with our breadstick, mussels, cheese, capsicum and cucumber. I’d cut it all up before we left and luckily had a fork from the fruit for the mussels and those handy ole’ wipes again. Just because I managed to get mussel juice run down my leg. Oh well. We changed into jeans later on.
We went straight through security and into the terminal because we were under the impression we had checked in online. However, several hours later when our plane finally turned up and they began boarding, they refused me on because supposedly only British nationals can use online check in and I have to go back down to check in and get a proper boarding pass. I said, yeah, look at my Right of Abode, I am a British national, I go through the British passport line when I go in and out of the country, and besides, Ryanair let me through from the UK with no problems. Well the stubborn prick wouldn’t back down, so I told him in front of all the other passengers that was a load of bullsh*t, which he didn’t appreciate but then I didn’t appreciate his attitude which wasn’t at all helpful. So I grabbed my papers back off him, snapped my suitcase around and went back through security downstairs to shove 5 euros, that’s right, they even had the gall to charge me for them to write the boarding pass, shoved it in her face, dragged my bag upstairs, back through security where, because I now had my jeans on, my belt went off and then my bra strap was beeping, walked back up and shoved my 5 euro pass into his smug little face (not that he was a Spanish national because he looked Indian to me) and had to wait in next area. The funny thing is that they were trying to keep priority boarding people and all other separate, but as soon as they told the priority people to go, everyone broke through the ranks and ran! Haha Got their own back there losing control.
So there’s the whole story. I’m sure you can see why I spent most of the flight sitting there wishing I was back home in Australia. Although I did have my older and sometimes wiser (or more experienced tee hee) cousin with me, who as she said went into “mum mode” when I went into hysterics, and if I didn’t thank her before I say it in front of all of you now.
The captain told us London was 10 degrees, foggy and raining. No surprise there. We did have bad turbulence though, and all these little kids were squealing in fear and you could tell people were holding their breath in anticipation as we were descending. We did of course make it down alive, those who were thankful of that fact all cheered as we slowed to go into the terminal. Our easyBus ride back was great thanks to one of the drivers, who got us on the earlier bus. I booked the later one because Ryanair is usually always late, but we actually came in on time, so we were back at Lija’s by 2am. Ugh. I had to roll out of bed at 7 to get back to Chelsea, which luckily is just across the bridge. I caught the first bus across the bridge but it was still raining so I hailed the next taxi and it was only a couple of pounds to get there. Phew.
Tags: Travel
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