Friday, November 10, 2006
Saturday 4 November 2006
On Tuesday morning we set off south for Orly Airport to catch our plane for Barcelona, taking two RER trains through Paris and then a little electric driverless train into the airport itself. When I lived in France in 1970 I had visited Orly often as it was so near, and hoped to recognise it, but too much had changed. The flight was smooth and straightforward (apart from some nasty popping in my ears) and as we came out of the cloud covering most of France we were able to see the Pyrenees in bright sunlight. Once out of the airport we were in a wide avenue with palm trees and blue sky and 26 degrees, and on the airport bus I realised we were the only people clutching raincoats. The journey into the city took us past an industrial area with lots of construction going on and then slowly into shops and apartments and the Plaza de Cataluña in the centre of the old city. It was a short and entertaining walk along Las Ramblas to our hotel, past flower and bird markets and street entertainers in the form of "living statues".
The hotel dated from around 1890, as did most of the surrounding buildings, and our room looked out onto an internal courtyard with narrow balconies round the edge. It was by then about 2 pm – just right for a Spanish lunchtime, we thought – and we set off down Las Ramblas again this time towards the sea, hoping to find the aquarium. We didn't find it till much later, after having walked a very long way and having found an interesting restaurant overlooking the harbour where N managed to order food and drink including a new (to us!) and exciting dish called Patatas Bravas – pieces of potato fried crisp like chips, covered with a thin spicy mayonnaise. There was also a tall column with a statue of Christopher Columbus at the top; like Nelson he had lions guarding him at the base, but far more, about ten I think.
The last time we had seen a harbour full of sailing boats was at Deauville, but this was on a much larger scale. The aquarium was very impressive; apart from many tanks full of smaller fish, all very well documented in Spanish, Catalan and English (we got used to this) there were tanks stretching right up overhead, which we observed while going along slowly on a moving walkway, so that it was almost like being in the sea along with the fish. The biggest ones were sharks about four foot long, their teeth clearly visible from underneath.
By the time we left the aquarium it was about 6.30 and dark, which was strange as it was so warm and so many people were still sitting around outside in cafés. That first day it was between 21 and 26 degrees; by Friday it had dropped to 17, and most of the time I walked round in a long-sleeved T shirt and jeans and was neither too hot nor too cold. An ideal time of the year for sight-seeing. We walked up to the old streets around the cathedral and looked at shops and markets and restaurants, eventually eating strawberry tart at somewhere called Café Moka, which I was surprised to find mentioned in "Homage to Catalonia" once we were back at the hotel and I opened the book again. Apparently it was the scene of some fierce fighting in the war in 1936.
Barcelona was full of foreigners; I heard voices speaking English, American, Scottish, French, German and Italian, not to mention a young Portuguese couple we met and several Scandinavian and Eastern European languages I couldn't identify. And then of course there was the Spanish and Catalan. Part of the difficulty we had with Spanish – of which N had studied far more in recent weeks than I, and apart from the fact that we kept sliding into Italian – was the fact that everything was written in the two languages and that they looked so similar, and both were understandable. N said it was no good coming to Barcelona to learn Spanish; it was like trying to learn English in Wales. My favourite Catalan word was Dilluns (= lundi = Monday.) I was also interested to learn that the Spanish word for croque-monsieur was bikini; must lead to some confusion.
On Wednesday morning we visited the Cathedral, (memorable for the geese in ponds in the cloisters) around which there were several guitarists playing in the streets, then looked at a covered arcade of shops, wondering why they were all closed until N remembered it was 1 November, a national holiday as in France. We found a lovely little "artisanal" food market N knew from a previous visit where we bought honey and local chocolate; memorable as the stallholder automatically addressed N in English, and then asked me "Catalan?" which I considered quite a victory, I don't know why.
At 12.30 N's Spanish colleague Marie Carmen came to meet us at our hotel. We spoke in French; she said hers was very rusty, but she was easy to understand and a mine of information on her native city. N did most of the talking as they caught up on mutual acquaintances; whenever I spoke to her I was surprised how French and un-Spanish I sounded. It was wonderful to have so many buildings identified and pointed out to us as we walked along – she took us on an interesting route to pick up the metro, our first experience of it. It was shabbier and more modern than the Paris metro, but easy to follow and the trains were pleasantly air-conditioned. The strangest thing was the way the metro map included the sea; I have never seen a metro at the seaside before!
Once outside again there was more fast walking until we reached the restaurant, an authentic one where MC seemed to be well known. N and I agreed afterwards that we – or for that matter any tourists – could never have had such a meal without a native to help. We were first of all given a plate with tomatoes, slices of bread, and cloves of garlic; MC showed us how to peel the garlic and rub it on the bread, cut the tomato and rub the bread with the cut side, and sprinkle with olive oil and salt before eating, rather like a do-it-yourself Italian bruschetta. She then ordered an excellent Rioja and asked for several small Tapas, of which my favourite was tiny green peppers fried in oil and tossed in coarse salt. The others were thin slices of Iberian ham and small smooth-breaded sandwiches filled with cooked vegetables. Then came small pieces of octopus on a layer of potato (N wasn't very keen on these) before two kinds of cake; one of which came with tiny glasses of what looked like communion wine to throw all over it. Just as we were thinking we couldn't possibly manage anything else she suggested coffee and a local liqueur, yellow like Chartreuse, and we somehow found room for these as well. During the course of the meal we were introduced to several members of the restaurant staff, and were given cards.
We got up from the table at about half past four in true Spanish style, and after many thanks and hugs goodbye we parted and N and I set off up hundreds of steps up to the museum of art; MC said she thought it would be open even though it was a holiday, as there were lights on at the top. It wasn't. There was an excellent view however, and we then went down the long way round by road, which reminded me of getting lost walking back from the Vatican into Rome. In fact Barcelona made me think of several other cities; the palm trees were like Nice and San Remo, the large impressive buildings and the umbrella pine trees like Rome, and the little narrow old streets like Florence and Lucca. Back at the hotel we watched TV; MC had taken us to see a polling station as there was an election in Catalonia that day; Professor J had told us about it last week. It was strange to look up from reading "Homage to Catalonia" full of political parties called by different acronyms to see a whole lot of other parties called by other acronyms still arguing it out today!
After a long rest we set out late for more Tapas, a very small amount (although a little too much meat for me) in a nice modern little restaurant not far from the other side of the Ramblas. In spite of our long acquaintance with French and Italian cuisine, we were both surprised to find many Spanish dishes swimming in olive oil and large slices of garlic, which must come as a shock to the average British stomach. Breakfast in the hotel was fairly international – both the clientele and the food & drink – and took place in a wonderful room where the bottom of the walls were decorated with criss-crossed wood panelling filled in with dome-shaped blue and white tiles, and the top with a mural rather like the aquarium except that with the fish it included some unusual mermaids, with fins from the knees downwards.
On Thursday our main aim was to visit the temple of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family); the guide book said that if you saw only one thing while in Barcelona, this should be it, and its distinctive shape seems to have become the emblem of Barcelona. It is a strange and unusual cathedral, begun in 1896 and still in the process of being built; at this rate it should be finished in 2040. As N says, it is a rare chance to see how a large cathedral is constructed, still full of scaffolding and workmen and hammering, and windows yet to be filled with glass. The main architect was Gaudi, until his death in 1926; and one cannot be long in Barcelona before becoming acquainted with his work. There were wavy curved emblems of trees and fruit everywhere in the cathedral; two main façades full of statues (The Nativity and The Passion) and several tall thin towers – George Orwell who visited it in 1937, when it was even more unfinished, said they are exactly the shape of bottles of Hock, and I see what he means. Carved into the stone are Biblical references to the scenes depicted. We queued to take a lift up one of the (very thin) towers, and after some frightening views which I photographed very quickly, went down again on foot; spiral stone staircases just like in a Gothic cathedral. (Apparently when Gaudi was asked why he put such ornate decoration so high up out of sight, he said "The angels will see it".)
After spending some time in the shop and the museum, and resting our feet while watching a little film about the history of the construction, we set off for the other main Gaudi work, the Parc Güell. This is on a hill towards the north of the city, and reaching it was rather like walking up to Sacré Coeur in Paris. (With no funicular railway…) The first thing we did on arrival was to stop and have a couple of excellent ham & cheese sandwiches in an outdoor café in the sunshine. At the gate were two little houses covered in coloured mosaic; the guide book likened them to something from Grimm's Fairy Tales. We walked up yet more steps and along paths still filled with green lawns and beautiful flowers in bloom - I thought of the garden at La Neuve-Lyre covered in leaves where the last flowers had finished weeks ago. There was a large sanded area bordered with mosaic-covered benches where lots of people were admiring the view over the city or just sitting in the sun; N said we should enjoy it as it was probably the last warm sun we should see this year; it was difficult to imagine that it was already the 2nd of November.
We also visited Gaudi's house in the park; everything designed in his own unmistakable style from doors, lamps and garden chairs right down to his toilet seat! The walk down into the city again was easier, although just as noisy, and I stopped at a souvenir shop I had seen on the way up and bought myself a wonderful red and black apron designed like a flamenco dancer's dress, which should brighten up the kitchen chores at LNL. We called in at a very modern café and had tall ice creams while sitting on tall stools at the bar, and then had a brief look at El Corte Inglés; an enormous department store which MC had told us was the Galeries Lafayette of Barcelona. N bought a brown leather belt to replace an old one he had got in Spain years before.
Once again we needed a rest back at the hotel; I wrote postcards while N spent a lot of time with the map and guide book trying to locate the Post Office, as we had been unable to find stamps anywhere, including the hotel. According to the book it seemed to be open until 9 pm, it must take everybody a long time to find it. We walked through several streets and eventually discovered it, an extremely large imposing square building, with Correos and Telegrafes in large letters on the front. Inside it was just as grand, with murals of naked nymphs on the walls and ceiling, and N duly took a numbered ticket from a button labelled in English "All kinds of sendings" and waited until it was his turn to ask for stamps. At last he got them, stuck them on the cards and posted them, and we felt a great sense of victory, and went off in search of dinner.
Dinner was in what we thought was probably a Basque restaurant, near the hotel, at a tiny table squeezed in beside two English women catching up on gossip. We had Patatas Bravas again; N had chicken and I had a huge vegetable paella, mostly carrot.
On Friday morning we just had time to visit a colourful covered market in Las Ramblas, one we had seen the first evening still open and trading at 8 pm, with all kinds of fish, hams, fruits, vegetables, flowers, piglets and skinned sheep heads. There was not room for much in the suitcase; so we bought a very flat packet of ham and some nuts, Brazil nuts and an aperitif mixture. We walked slowly to catch our bus for the airport, looking at the markets and "statues" along Las Ramblas and large buildings including another Gaudi-designed house on the way.
We enjoyed our time at Barcelona airport, where we had a quick lunch and N bought Rioja to take home. The flight was a little delayed, but as before the journey seemed to pass very quickly and smoothly and we were in Saint-Denis by about 6 o'clock, having bought our baguette on the way home just as if we'd never been away!
On Tuesday morning we set off south for Orly Airport to catch our plane for Barcelona, taking two RER trains through Paris and then a little electric driverless train into the airport itself. When I lived in France in 1970 I had visited Orly often as it was so near, and hoped to recognise it, but too much had changed. The flight was smooth and straightforward (apart from some nasty popping in my ears) and as we came out of the cloud covering most of France we were able to see the Pyrenees in bright sunlight. Once out of the airport we were in a wide avenue with palm trees and blue sky and 26 degrees, and on the airport bus I realised we were the only people clutching raincoats. The journey into the city took us past an industrial area with lots of construction going on and then slowly into shops and apartments and the Plaza de Cataluña in the centre of the old city. It was a short and entertaining walk along Las Ramblas to our hotel, past flower and bird markets and street entertainers in the form of "living statues".
The hotel dated from around 1890, as did most of the surrounding buildings, and our room looked out onto an internal courtyard with narrow balconies round the edge. It was by then about 2 pm – just right for a Spanish lunchtime, we thought – and we set off down Las Ramblas again this time towards the sea, hoping to find the aquarium. We didn't find it till much later, after having walked a very long way and having found an interesting restaurant overlooking the harbour where N managed to order food and drink including a new (to us!) and exciting dish called Patatas Bravas – pieces of potato fried crisp like chips, covered with a thin spicy mayonnaise. There was also a tall column with a statue of Christopher Columbus at the top; like Nelson he had lions guarding him at the base, but far more, about ten I think.
The last time we had seen a harbour full of sailing boats was at Deauville, but this was on a much larger scale. The aquarium was very impressive; apart from many tanks full of smaller fish, all very well documented in Spanish, Catalan and English (we got used to this) there were tanks stretching right up overhead, which we observed while going along slowly on a moving walkway, so that it was almost like being in the sea along with the fish. The biggest ones were sharks about four foot long, their teeth clearly visible from underneath.
By the time we left the aquarium it was about 6.30 and dark, which was strange as it was so warm and so many people were still sitting around outside in cafés. That first day it was between 21 and 26 degrees; by Friday it had dropped to 17, and most of the time I walked round in a long-sleeved T shirt and jeans and was neither too hot nor too cold. An ideal time of the year for sight-seeing. We walked up to the old streets around the cathedral and looked at shops and markets and restaurants, eventually eating strawberry tart at somewhere called Café Moka, which I was surprised to find mentioned in "Homage to Catalonia" once we were back at the hotel and I opened the book again. Apparently it was the scene of some fierce fighting in the war in 1936.
Barcelona was full of foreigners; I heard voices speaking English, American, Scottish, French, German and Italian, not to mention a young Portuguese couple we met and several Scandinavian and Eastern European languages I couldn't identify. And then of course there was the Spanish and Catalan. Part of the difficulty we had with Spanish – of which N had studied far more in recent weeks than I, and apart from the fact that we kept sliding into Italian – was the fact that everything was written in the two languages and that they looked so similar, and both were understandable. N said it was no good coming to Barcelona to learn Spanish; it was like trying to learn English in Wales. My favourite Catalan word was Dilluns (= lundi = Monday.) I was also interested to learn that the Spanish word for croque-monsieur was bikini; must lead to some confusion.
On Wednesday morning we visited the Cathedral, (memorable for the geese in ponds in the cloisters) around which there were several guitarists playing in the streets, then looked at a covered arcade of shops, wondering why they were all closed until N remembered it was 1 November, a national holiday as in France. We found a lovely little "artisanal" food market N knew from a previous visit where we bought honey and local chocolate; memorable as the stallholder automatically addressed N in English, and then asked me "Catalan?" which I considered quite a victory, I don't know why.
At 12.30 N's Spanish colleague Marie Carmen came to meet us at our hotel. We spoke in French; she said hers was very rusty, but she was easy to understand and a mine of information on her native city. N did most of the talking as they caught up on mutual acquaintances; whenever I spoke to her I was surprised how French and un-Spanish I sounded. It was wonderful to have so many buildings identified and pointed out to us as we walked along – she took us on an interesting route to pick up the metro, our first experience of it. It was shabbier and more modern than the Paris metro, but easy to follow and the trains were pleasantly air-conditioned. The strangest thing was the way the metro map included the sea; I have never seen a metro at the seaside before!
Once outside again there was more fast walking until we reached the restaurant, an authentic one where MC seemed to be well known. N and I agreed afterwards that we – or for that matter any tourists – could never have had such a meal without a native to help. We were first of all given a plate with tomatoes, slices of bread, and cloves of garlic; MC showed us how to peel the garlic and rub it on the bread, cut the tomato and rub the bread with the cut side, and sprinkle with olive oil and salt before eating, rather like a do-it-yourself Italian bruschetta. She then ordered an excellent Rioja and asked for several small Tapas, of which my favourite was tiny green peppers fried in oil and tossed in coarse salt. The others were thin slices of Iberian ham and small smooth-breaded sandwiches filled with cooked vegetables. Then came small pieces of octopus on a layer of potato (N wasn't very keen on these) before two kinds of cake; one of which came with tiny glasses of what looked like communion wine to throw all over it. Just as we were thinking we couldn't possibly manage anything else she suggested coffee and a local liqueur, yellow like Chartreuse, and we somehow found room for these as well. During the course of the meal we were introduced to several members of the restaurant staff, and were given cards.
We got up from the table at about half past four in true Spanish style, and after many thanks and hugs goodbye we parted and N and I set off up hundreds of steps up to the museum of art; MC said she thought it would be open even though it was a holiday, as there were lights on at the top. It wasn't. There was an excellent view however, and we then went down the long way round by road, which reminded me of getting lost walking back from the Vatican into Rome. In fact Barcelona made me think of several other cities; the palm trees were like Nice and San Remo, the large impressive buildings and the umbrella pine trees like Rome, and the little narrow old streets like Florence and Lucca. Back at the hotel we watched TV; MC had taken us to see a polling station as there was an election in Catalonia that day; Professor J had told us about it last week. It was strange to look up from reading "Homage to Catalonia" full of political parties called by different acronyms to see a whole lot of other parties called by other acronyms still arguing it out today!
After a long rest we set out late for more Tapas, a very small amount (although a little too much meat for me) in a nice modern little restaurant not far from the other side of the Ramblas. In spite of our long acquaintance with French and Italian cuisine, we were both surprised to find many Spanish dishes swimming in olive oil and large slices of garlic, which must come as a shock to the average British stomach. Breakfast in the hotel was fairly international – both the clientele and the food & drink – and took place in a wonderful room where the bottom of the walls were decorated with criss-crossed wood panelling filled in with dome-shaped blue and white tiles, and the top with a mural rather like the aquarium except that with the fish it included some unusual mermaids, with fins from the knees downwards.
On Thursday our main aim was to visit the temple of the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family); the guide book said that if you saw only one thing while in Barcelona, this should be it, and its distinctive shape seems to have become the emblem of Barcelona. It is a strange and unusual cathedral, begun in 1896 and still in the process of being built; at this rate it should be finished in 2040. As N says, it is a rare chance to see how a large cathedral is constructed, still full of scaffolding and workmen and hammering, and windows yet to be filled with glass. The main architect was Gaudi, until his death in 1926; and one cannot be long in Barcelona before becoming acquainted with his work. There were wavy curved emblems of trees and fruit everywhere in the cathedral; two main façades full of statues (The Nativity and The Passion) and several tall thin towers – George Orwell who visited it in 1937, when it was even more unfinished, said they are exactly the shape of bottles of Hock, and I see what he means. Carved into the stone are Biblical references to the scenes depicted. We queued to take a lift up one of the (very thin) towers, and after some frightening views which I photographed very quickly, went down again on foot; spiral stone staircases just like in a Gothic cathedral. (Apparently when Gaudi was asked why he put such ornate decoration so high up out of sight, he said "The angels will see it".)
After spending some time in the shop and the museum, and resting our feet while watching a little film about the history of the construction, we set off for the other main Gaudi work, the Parc Güell. This is on a hill towards the north of the city, and reaching it was rather like walking up to Sacré Coeur in Paris. (With no funicular railway…) The first thing we did on arrival was to stop and have a couple of excellent ham & cheese sandwiches in an outdoor café in the sunshine. At the gate were two little houses covered in coloured mosaic; the guide book likened them to something from Grimm's Fairy Tales. We walked up yet more steps and along paths still filled with green lawns and beautiful flowers in bloom - I thought of the garden at La Neuve-Lyre covered in leaves where the last flowers had finished weeks ago. There was a large sanded area bordered with mosaic-covered benches where lots of people were admiring the view over the city or just sitting in the sun; N said we should enjoy it as it was probably the last warm sun we should see this year; it was difficult to imagine that it was already the 2nd of November.
We also visited Gaudi's house in the park; everything designed in his own unmistakable style from doors, lamps and garden chairs right down to his toilet seat! The walk down into the city again was easier, although just as noisy, and I stopped at a souvenir shop I had seen on the way up and bought myself a wonderful red and black apron designed like a flamenco dancer's dress, which should brighten up the kitchen chores at LNL. We called in at a very modern café and had tall ice creams while sitting on tall stools at the bar, and then had a brief look at El Corte Inglés; an enormous department store which MC had told us was the Galeries Lafayette of Barcelona. N bought a brown leather belt to replace an old one he had got in Spain years before.
Once again we needed a rest back at the hotel; I wrote postcards while N spent a lot of time with the map and guide book trying to locate the Post Office, as we had been unable to find stamps anywhere, including the hotel. According to the book it seemed to be open until 9 pm, it must take everybody a long time to find it. We walked through several streets and eventually discovered it, an extremely large imposing square building, with Correos and Telegrafes in large letters on the front. Inside it was just as grand, with murals of naked nymphs on the walls and ceiling, and N duly took a numbered ticket from a button labelled in English "All kinds of sendings" and waited until it was his turn to ask for stamps. At last he got them, stuck them on the cards and posted them, and we felt a great sense of victory, and went off in search of dinner.
Dinner was in what we thought was probably a Basque restaurant, near the hotel, at a tiny table squeezed in beside two English women catching up on gossip. We had Patatas Bravas again; N had chicken and I had a huge vegetable paella, mostly carrot.
On Friday morning we just had time to visit a colourful covered market in Las Ramblas, one we had seen the first evening still open and trading at 8 pm, with all kinds of fish, hams, fruits, vegetables, flowers, piglets and skinned sheep heads. There was not room for much in the suitcase; so we bought a very flat packet of ham and some nuts, Brazil nuts and an aperitif mixture. We walked slowly to catch our bus for the airport, looking at the markets and "statues" along Las Ramblas and large buildings including another Gaudi-designed house on the way.
We enjoyed our time at Barcelona airport, where we had a quick lunch and N bought Rioja to take home. The flight was a little delayed, but as before the journey seemed to pass very quickly and smoothly and we were in Saint-Denis by about 6 o'clock, having bought our baguette on the way home just as if we'd never been away!
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 8:29 AM 
