Barcelona!

September 9-12th
I had 3 nights in Barcelona – it was great. I loved it. I arrived into Girona which is about 90 km from Barcelona and caught a bus from there. The queue for the bus tickets was huge but it moved pretty quickly and I caught the bus I was aiming for. There was some quite scary driving by the bus driver as we got into the city where we narrowly missed hitting a few cars! I wans’t dressed for the heat in my jeans and I baked in the metro from the bus station to the city centre! I found my ‘hostal’ in the ‘Barri Gotic’ (medieval Quarter) without much trouble – it had an unobstrusive entrance so I walked past it initially!

I rang the buzzer and could hear the door release buzzing but could I open the bloody door? I tried 3 times until eventually the exasperated care taker – an old woman – came down and let me in. The hostal was up several flights of steep stairs (with no lift) within a larger apartment building which had once been a single house belonging to the countess of Sobradiel. As I strode up them easily with my suitcase, the old woman hobbled and panted behind me – I can see why she hadn’t wanted to come down and let me in! http://www.pensioalamar.com/presentacion_i.htm

Placa Reial in the Barri Gotic

My teeny-weeny hostel room

The hostal was a single apartment split into lots of small bedrooms along a corridor with a communal kitchen and loos and bathrooms off the reception area. My bedroom was the only one off the reception area. It was very small (as expected) but everywhere was clean and well-maintained. There was a large new fridge-freezer for us to use in the kitchen, and we got towels and bedding. There was no air-con but a fan. I didn’t sleep very well- it was hot, around 29c, even at night and the bed was a bit hard so my shoulder went numb!

On my first night I had dinner in a veggie restaurant off a small square near my hostal then headed to the Harlem Jazz café where a cover band were playing mostly English songs including the Beatles, Elvis and Stevie Wonder. Blue Suede Shoes became Blue Suede Shoe! But the singer was good and the place was busy- unfortunately it was very, very smokey inside and my eyes began to water badly so I stayed till the end of the show but then had to go.

Me with my Spanish friend Rosalia at the Boqueria food market

Amazing display of fruit at La Boqueria- yum!

It took around 24 hours for my nose to adjust to the pungent odours of the city (bags of rubbish in the streets combined with the heat made for a smelly experience). I heard different languages everywhere. There were funky clothes in the boutiques. Barca young people’s fashion style is dreads, black clothes, piercings and floor-length ‘maxi dresses’. The mullet hair-do (short on top, long at the back) is surprisingly popular here.

I felt comfortable as a lone woman tourist as I didn’t stand out too much in the hoards of tourists. On Thursday night dinner was a let down- the venus deli downstairs from my hostal had been recommended in the guide book – perhaps they’d become victims of their own success but micro-waved couscous and very stingy salad didn’t impress- there wasn’t even ¼ of an avocado and ¼ of a nectarine in it – there was however half a bottle of olive oil over it. I then went to a flamenco ‘taster’ show at the Tarantos in Placa Reial- it was a full house and impressive.

Gaudi's whimsical Parc Guell with Barcelona and sea in background

The staircase in Parc Guell- heaving with people

Over the course of my short stay I went to the beach twice and even swam in the sea, I wandered round the city, visited the Miro gallery, Gaudi’s fantastical Parc Guell and the Sagrada Familia church, and the medieval Catedral Seu.


Of course the exchange rate is crap for us just now- roughly 1 euro to the pound where you used to get 2 euros for a pound! Makes everything much more expensive. I wish I’d spent a year out studying there while I was at uni! It’s really funky and fun. Not like other places in Spain I’ve been to.

Gaudi's fantastic Sagrada Familia- still being built


Me on the beach at Barceloneta

The waterfront at the harbour

I met up with a Spanish girlfriend Rosalia on the Saturday morning before I had to leave – she spent 3 months in Stirling last summer working at the uni and that’s when we met. She also studied psychology and does Iyengar yoga like me. She lives 1.5 hours away from Barca on the train but made the effort to come and meet me despite being really busy at work. I had managed to lock myself out of my room that morning- the only morning when the caretaker was not around owing to the Catalan festival the night before I couldn’t find the spare keys until a very helpful Polish guy also staying at the hostel found them in a cupboard in the kitchen – I identified mine and got into my room! Phew!

Rosalia and I had a wander round the Boqueria food market off the Ramblas and had a light lunch in a very nice restaurant before I had to get a bus to Girona to get my Ryanair flight. She’s invited me to go and stay with her in the coastal town where she lives with her husband which is not far from the other budget airport at Reus - tempting…