Barcelona
October 13th-17th, 2008
The nearest airport to Gupole (apart from Arezzo' International' - a short strip that only services private planes) is at Perugia. It's only an hour away down the E45 superstrada and is so small that they still have free parking.
Ryan developed the place, which took a while since the runway extension pushed into a different comune from the original bit of the runway. This led to endless official wrangling that took a couple of years to sort out. However, that's all now history and the airport has been up and running for a couple of years. Ryan have extended their services this year to include a trip to Gerona, the Ryan airport that serves Barcelona. At only €74 for the two of us for the return trip, we thought it too good to miss (although Ryan have rudely put their credit card fee up to €20), so immediately after David's return from Vienna, we set of for a four night jolly in sunny Spain.
With only a handful of flights a day, the officials at Perugia don't have a lot to do. However, they make the most of it and act as importantly as they can. If the flights are to other Schengen countries, there's not even Customs to clear so the Dogana man looks a bit lost most of the time. I'm not sure how they'd manage if they had two flights leaving within an hour of each other.
Since Gerona airport is about 100km from Barcelona, a bit of research was necessary to find the way in. Fortunately one or two travellers have made the trip before and there is a wealth of factoids on the internet sufficient to satisfy the most ardent surfer. There is also an excellent coach service for which tickets are on sale in the arrivals hall and which amazingly links in with the arriving flights. The cost is only €21 return and the coach drops you at a bus station in central Barcelona next to a metro stop.
We had booked a place to stay on the internet - those words are carefully chosen to avoid the word hotel since the place to stay could in no way be so described. Admittedly it did call itself a hostel (actually it called itself a Hostal) and it filled the basic criterion - it was cheap, about €50 a night.
The Hostal Satram had one other positive feature; it was located just two blocks from the Sagrada Familia, the incomplete Gaudi cathedral that is a must-see in Barcelona. It was also near a metro stop, the Sagrada Familia no less, and to be fair it did not compete in awfulness with the Heathrow Lodge, for which razing to the ground by marauding hordes would be too pleasant a fate - see the notes on both on the Places to Stay and Places Not to Stay page.
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| We spent the first morning soaking up the amazing architecture of the Sagrada Familia and reading all the stuff on Gaudi. While there must be untold millions of photos of the place, there's always room for at least seven more like the ones on the above and below. |
| After soaking up all that Gaudi architecture, we were on a Gaudi roll so we made our way via the Metro and a series of street escalators up to the Parc Guell where Gaudi's famous mosaic bench and various other bits of Gaudi stuff, mainly covered in mosaics as well. |
| The park was not lacking in various entertainers including an accordionist with deep lines almost carved in his face and an interesting couple performing flamenco dance. He would play a few bars while she would dance and then they would freeze and wait until someone threw some money in the hat. It was interesting to speculate on how long they would have remained frozen if no one obliged, but there was always some idiot spoiling the fun. |
Pretty much Gaudied out, we decided on a change of scene and headed off to the Olympic site from the 1992 Games. The stadium was, well, a stadium, but nearby there was a fascinating Olympic museum, full of great Olympic paraphernalia and well worth a visit. Attached to it was a photographic exhibition of shots by Spanish photographers covering many Games, including Beijing from this year. The image quality from the most recent, using the latest digital equipment, was incredible. However some of the shots from the Barcelona games were also brilliant - shots taken of the high diving with the athlete or athletes in mid-air against a backdrop of the Barcelona skyline - pretty stunning.
A couple of hours of enjoying the Olympic spirit and the air-conditioning that went with it meant it was time for sundowners and what better place to take them than a tapas bar next to the water in the marina. Great place to spend sunset time and it became our haunt for the next couple of evenings. |
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Not having really planned in advance, we pretty much wandered for the rest of our time in Barcelona, a good way to get to know a city. In our wanderings, we took in the Picasso museum, the Mirò museum, the cable car over to the beach and an afternoon on the beach where we doggedly ignored the hordes of wandering Asian girls offering massages. When you're asked on average every 30 seconds if you want a massage, it becomes a bit like a surrealistic joke, and I always reckoned surrealistic jokers should be taken out and shot.
The Picasso museum was good, but it did leave me wondering why he bothered with a lot of the stuff - so many lino cuts and so much time spent reducing the brilliant Las Meninas by Velàzquez to bare essentials. OK, it was a tribute, and Dalí did it too, but over 50 tributes that look a bit like Mr Men paintings! Same with Mirò, some great stuff, but when a famous artist produces three massive white canvases each with one wiggly line on and they become worth a fortune, you wonder if he was having a laugh. Maybe I'm just a philistine.
We couldn't leave without a bit more Gaudi and so on our wanderings, we took a tour around the Casa Mila, known by the Spanish as La Pedrera 'the quarry'. The building is very Gaudi - lots of lumps and bumps, squiggles, curls and curves as he took natural forms and turned them into architecture. The roof area had some quirky forms and also a good view of the Sagrada Familia. |
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Three full days touring Barcelona was enough to get a good feel for the place. Our choice of season was probably a good one in that you can imagine it getting pretty hot in the summer. When the place you've chosen to stay precludes the possibility of returning for a couple of hours with the feet up reading a book, then three days is enough.
We weren't sorry to leave the purple palace behind and hit the Ryan trail back to Perugia. Another great advantage of the little airport and only hand luggage was that wheels onto the tarmac to key in the car door was all of ten minutes, and then a quick one hour run back to Gupole and start seriously thinking about what Daniel would call The Big One', our next epic trip - five and a half months away in South Africa, Dubai, Thailand and Hong Kong. |
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