Sunday, May 6, 2012

Barcelona


Day 1: We land at the Barcelona Airport in the early afternoon. The airport is nice, quite large. Terminals are rather far apart. A bus runs between the terminals as well as to the Renfe train that connects to the Metro. We take the Renfe train first and then use the Metro to go to the Sants station, and from there to the Rocafort station. The Metro is very easy to use, trains are frequent, and it is clean. Sometimes there is too much walking between stations at connection points. Our hotel, Evenia Rocafort, is 3 blocks away from the Rocafort station. The hotel is clean, nothing fancy but good.

It is Friday. The weather is perfect for a vacation. It is sunny, yet you can walk around all day and not sweat one bit. We walk to the Catalonia Square, passing by University of Barcelona. An interesting thing we notice along the way is the octagonal blocks. The streets widen at intersections where each corner is cut to create extra space. The sidewalk part of this space is often used by the corner cafes for outside tables, whereas the street part is used for short-term parking lots. It makes the intersections look very spacious and creates nice views for outside dining.

La Boqueria market
From the Catalonia Square, we walk down La Rambla. It is simply amazing. Wherever you turn, there is something interesting to see, such as street performers, interesting shops and cafes, historic buildings, etc. Take any one of the many side streets and you'll come across countless interesting views. We visit the La Boqueria market. Very nice and clean. Fruits, nuts, sweets, meat, fish, etc. Extremely colorful. We then visit Plaza Real. It is a square in Barri Gotic, full of restaurants and people. All restaurants have outside seating and a nice view of the square. We pick one restaurant and order some 'tapas'. Tapas are a wide variety of appetizers. Rather than ordering one dish, you order many small ones and share. It is a nice concept. We also order one seafood paella. The food is not that good in the restaurant we pick. We like the olive oil but nothing else :). As we will later find out, there are better places in Plaza Real to eat. We go back to La Rambla and walk all the way down to Columbus monument and from there go to the marina. There is the Maramagnum mall there, with a nice view of the sea. We return back by walking up on La Rambla. We eat some ice cream on the way back. We take one of the side streets from La Rambla towards Raval and reach our hotel.

Day 2: We start Saturday by walking to the Espanya Square. We find a patisserie for breakfast. As we will experience the next day, it is difficult to find a good breakfast place in Barcelona. It seems people usually have coffee and croissant for breakfast and lunch is the most important meal in Spain. This patisserie is excellent though. It has great sandwiches and nice sweets. Great variety. Interestingly, very little English is spoken :).

National Art Museum of Catalonia
From there, we go to National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) on the Montjuic hill. There are open space walking stairs on the way, which is nice :), as we have plenty of walking to do in the rest of the day. The MNAC building is very impressive, especially from the outside. From MNAC we can see a mountain towards north with a church at the top. We don't know what it is but decide to find a way to go there the next day (it turns out it is Sagrat Cor church on top of mount Tibidabo). We buy a combined ticket that gives us the right to visit 6 different museums. MNAC has many paintings from Catalan painters. It is a little sparse in terms of the collection it contains, but quite nice. Not crowded at all. From there we walk to Poble Espanyol - an open-air architectural museum in the form of a small Spanish village. Very nice. It has various small shops, even a glass making exhibition. From there, we walk back to Espanya Square.

Sagrada Familia
We take the Metro to the Passeig de Gracia station. From there we walk a few blocks to see Casa Batllo, one of Antoni Gaudi designed buildings. We don't visit the inside as there is a long line. We walk another few blocks to see Casa Mila/La Pedrera, another one of Gaudi's apartment buildings. This one is much bigger and has a rather remarkable rooftop. We do not enter due to long lines at this time. We will come back to La Pedrera later to see the roof. We search for a restaurant for lunch. We walk towards east, passing by many restaurants, but not picking any, in the hopes of finding a better one. By the time we find a restaurant, we realize that we are almost at Sagrada Familia. The restaurant is called Brasila, and has nice outside seating area. We get one large pizza and various tapas. From there we visit Sagrada Familia and are amazed by its size, even though it is not even finished. The Nativity facade is particularly amazing. I personally feel that this is the most impressive building I have ever seen. From there we walk to Hospital of the Holy Cross and Saint Paul through Gaudi Avenue. It is a nice walk with an impressive historic building at the end. 

Barcelona Cathedral
We take the Metro to Jaume I station and visit the Barcelona Cathedral. There is a long line at the entrance, but it is moving fast. It is very crowded inside, but quite amazing. Very impressive from the outside as well. We walk back to La Rambla and get a ticket to a Flamenco show. Never seen one before. The dance is amazing. We are not too impressed by the guitar. But the 'cante' is the part that ties them all together. Full of intense emotions. From there we walk back to the marina, and have dinner with sea view at TapaTapa in the Maremagnum mall. The food is decent, view is good. We go upstairs to Starbucks. It has a great view as well. It is already late and it starts raining. We take a taxi to the hotel.

La Pedrera
Day 3: We start the day by searching for breakfast. Yesterday's breakfast is still in our minds, and we fail to find a place that looks equally good. We walk up to La Pedrera still hungry. We end up picking up a boring (and unexpectedly expensive) sandwich. We then visit the rooftop at La Pedrera. Nice architectural elements and good view of the city, including a view of Sagrada Familia. From there we take the Metro to Valcarca station near Park Guell. The park is on a hill and again there are open space walking stairs that help you climb there. The park is nice both in terms of the nature and the Gaudi-designed buildings. It is extremely crowded though.

Sagrat Cor
We walk to the El Puxtet station and decide to take the Metro to the Tibidabo mountain. It turns out one needs to first take the metro to the Avenue Tibidabo station, then take the 'Blue Tram', and then take the Finicular to the top of the mountain (some ~550 meters). Before we start our journey, we first enter a patisserie next to the El Puxtet station. We eat an interesting desert that has ice cream inside (much to our surprise). Almost no English is spoken in this place. We then take the Metro to Avenue Tibidabo station. The weather is beautiful and the Blue Tram has a long line, so we decide to walk up to the Funicular. It is a long uphill walk, but the sights are great. Nice buildings in every corner. The Funicular takes us up to the mountain. We are surprised to see that there is an amusement park at the top of the mountain. There is even a roller coaster :) But we are more interested in Sagrat Cor church. It has a very commanding location at the top of the mountain and sees the entire city. We take an elevator to the top of the church, then take the side stairs to the top balcony, and another set of stairs to the very top. Simply breathtaking. For me, this was the best part of the trip.

Arc de Triomf
We take the Metro back to the top of La Rambla and from there walk to Arc de Triomf and visit the Ciutadella Park. The park is lively. We walk from the park to the beach. There is a walking way along the beach that has trees on both sides. It runs all the way to the marina. We take it. There is a small market place at the end that has a line of tents along the road, selling olive oil, sweets, sausages, etc. There is a street performer playing the didgeridoo. We pass through the Columbus monument and go up La Rambla back to Plaza Real to eat. This time we pick a nice restaurant called Kabul. We order a variety of tapas. Small fried fish tastes much like the Black Sea anchovy. We walk back to the hotel.

Fortress of Montjuic
Day 4: We decide to go to the same patisserie we went in Day 2 and avoid the painful breakfast place search. It is as good as the last time, if not better. From there we climb up to Montjuic again, but this time to visit the Joan Miro museum. The giant carpet is impressive. The paintings are 'interesting'. We are convinced that Miro has succeeded in  "assassinating painting" (in his own words). We take the teleferique to the fortress of Montjuic. It has an impressive view of the sea as well as the city.

We walk down the hill to El Raval. We walk through Rambla del Raval and see the big cat. We pass through Old Hospital de la Santa Creu. We then go to Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA). It has a nice building. The second floor is closed and the museum does not contain that many pieces in its collection. There are too many videos for my taste. Not impressed, especially compared to MoMA in New York.

Palau de la Musica Catalana
We wander around in Barri Gotic. We walk through Via Laietana. We go to Picasso museum only to find out that it is closed on Mondays. We find a restaurant named Bilbao-Berria for dinner. It has outside seating facing the Barcelona Cathedral! It has Basque style tapas. It is open buffet. The tapas look somewhat like sushis with the rice replaced with bread :) They are spiked with toothpicks and you pay at the end by the number of toothpicks you accumulate in your table. A lot of seafood varieties. Salmon, tuna, cod. Simply delicious. The best tapas we had so far. There is a street show taking place in the small square in front of the church. We visit Palau de la Musica Catalana and buy a ticket for a concert at night. We do some shopping until the concert. We listen to Carmen and Rodrigo's guitar concerto. We are able recognize only 3 pieces as familiar (not bad for us). The concert hall is amazing, a UNESCO world heritage site. We walk back to the hotel.

Day 5: It turns out that our last day in Barcelona is May 1st, which is Workers Day. Our plans in terms of visiting the Dali museum, which is an hour and a half away by Renfe train, go down the drain, as the museum is closed. We use the internet connection in the hotel to find a good breakfast place. It is named Federal Cafe and serves Australian style breakfast. It has a modern design. The food is good. We finally have some eggs for breakfast.

Labyrinth Park of Horta
We take the metro to the Mundet station to visit Labyrinth Park of Horta. It is a historical garden. Not a big tourist place so most people seem to be locals. Popular among families with kids. There is a long line though. The garden is very calm. Good for getting fresh air and clearing up your mind. The main attraction though, is the big labyrinth made out of cypress trees. We rest in the park for some time, and take the metro back to Jaume I station. We visit the Picasso museum again, and again find it closed, this time due to May 1st. We contend ourselves with the Picasso paintings we saw in MNAC two days ago. We visit the Santa Maria del Mar church. Cannot see the inside as it is closed. We find a pizza place called Bubo, which has outside seating with a nice view of the church.

Santa Maria del Mar
We then visit Neu Camp (no games this weekend), by taking the Metro to the Les Corts station. Again May 1st is at work. The stadium closes early that day. We visit the Barcelona store. Nice items, but extremely expensive (I am a Real Madrid fan, anyway). We view the stadium from the outside and travel back to La Rambla, Liceu station. We walk down to the beach area and rest. We walk back to Barri Gotic and pass through Santa Maria del Mar again. This time it is open! The inside is very impressive. Looks bigger inside than outside. The colons are nicely laid out. We find a place to have some deserts. Nice almond cake! We do some more shopping. We walk back to the top of La Rambla and decide to take a look at Sagrada Familia again to see it at night, hoping that it is illuminated. We take the Metro, and after a few stations find out that Sagrada Familia is dark, no lighting. We take the Metro back to Gran Via avenue and walk to the hotel, ending the day and ending the trip.




4 comments:

  1. 1. How did you manage to go around the town without getting lost?
    2. Did you consider renting a car?
    3. I wish there were a web service offering 'open source' travel plans for different tastes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1. Maps + iPhone Barcelona app
      2. No. If we had 2 more days, we would have rented a car to go to Dali museum and may be to France
      3. Let's build one.

      Delete
  2. A minor correction:
    On day 4, we had dinner before the concert :).

    ReplyDelete