I landed in Barcelona on Saturday around 1:30pm, so after some significant hours of flying or in transit in Dubai….. my head took some time to catch up with me on the ground. I stumbled out of the airport and somehow Lesley and I managed to find each other relatively quickly and we were away (both of us were amazed at how smooth the airport pick up was!). Lesley’s comment when she saw me waving madly at her van across a few lanes of traffic was “oh yes that’s Paula she’s walking and waving like an Aussie”…… I didn’t know we have a distinct walk/wave, so many apologies Australians, you’ve all been labled with my airport stumble and wave!
Given my atrocious jet lag, we found our hotel and immediately changed into bathers to lounge about at the roof top pool with a few beer for a catch up. It’s been two years since we last caught up, so I’m sure we will have loads to catch up on over the next three weeks.
After a few beers and a few hours, dinner began to call so we showered and headed out. I didn’t last long at this point and we were back in the room by 10:30pm, I was asleep at 10:32pm.
Sunday was all about getting out and about in Barcelona, but not too early, cause the Catalans are not awake yet! We found a “hop on hop off” bus and set off to discover Barcelona.
Our first point of call was Parc Guell, which was designed by Antoni Gaudi and built between 1901 and 1914. Gaudi’s style is very distinct and of course is probably where the term gaudy came from. In situ, Gaudi is not gaudy, it’s gorgeous!
Parc Guell was madly busy with travellers, so we felt it was time to jump back on the double decker open top bus and find our next spot to be.
We stopped at the Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Gaudi with construction beginning in 1882 and construction is still underway (and now, restoration is also underway at the same time).
The Sagrada Familia has amazing homages to the harvest with giant sheafs of wheat, grapes, oranges and other fruits on its spires. It is however MANICALLY busy and expensive. It was over $100EU for the two of us to go and and given the crowds I wasn’t super keen. We calculated on basic daily crowds, the church should be pulling in $750K per day…. So hopefully that should go some way to its completion and restoration. Completion is due in 2036…….maybe!
From the Familia, we headed into the Gothic quarter, which is always a place that I enjoy getting lost, finding interesting things and generally seeing life how it was a few hundred years ago! We visited a Pablo Picasso Museum (of which Lesley says there are many all around Spain, so not that unique!), found tiny art galleries with some questionable chair art.
So after just over 20,000 steps, it was time for dinner and bed. Dinner was some stunning tapas in the Gothic Quarter, followed by the subway ride home, appreciating the bed for the night……
We did not experience the anger that Catalans have towards their over-tourism issue. And it certainly feels like the city is wringing every penny out of tourists as they cycle through, so perhaps there needs to be some incentive back to locals for the nearly $1mEU per day that sites like the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell are making out of travellers? Or certainly this should be put back into affordable housing projects and “liveability” projects for local residents?
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