Thursday's unsatisfaction

Thursday, May 9^th 2013: continued

Barcelona is probably not a city that slow tourists such as Matt and myself should ever contemplate visiting in just one day. It is just too big with too much to see and do. I think that because of this we both felt somewhat dissatisfied after our day ashore. That said however it was an enjoyable day. (Thus enjoyable but unsatisfactory.) I had visited Barcelona about 10 years ago with my mum, so left it up to Matt to choose what he wanted to see.

We spent a significant number of our touristical Euros on the touristical bus. This seemed like a reasonable way of getting around the main sights. Lo and behold while we were on the bus it started to drizzle a little and I was exceedingly disappointed not to be able to deploy my anorak. The rain didn’t last long and we were able to enjoy the spectacle of retractable bus roof being applied. AS the day wore on we had hot sunshine so my packing failed on all accounts.

Here are some facts that I learnt about Barcelona from the touristical commentary:

• The statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona is the biggest of the 64 in the world – his index finger is 50cm long
• There are more mopeds per capita in Barcelona than in any other European city (but I think that they make less noise than those in Rome)
• There are over 100km of cycle lanes in Barcelona
• Barcelona has 8 universities
• The first stretch of railway in Spain was located in Barcelona (that is a fact especially for my dad)
• On wedding days it is traditional to take 12 eggs to a convent

It worries me that 50% of the facts that I can remember are transport based.

Unfortunately we spent quite a lot of our limited time in Barcelona in queues. We had hoped (one of Matt’s choices to visit the Sagrada Familia and had got off the bus a stop early so that we could wander a few streets to get there. It was a longer wander than we had expected – again the touristical map was scaleless (can it even therefore technically be called a map?) – but pleasant enough. The area around the cathedral-in-construction was packed. Matt went off to use one of those toilet booths (I am informed that he got his 50 cent’s worth) while I investigated the queues. The queue to visit the cathedral was reaching round the back of it, and moving very slowly.

The queue to hop back on the bus was slightly shorter and also slow moving. I chose to join the second of these and chatted to the people in front and behind me while Matt had an explore around the outside of the cathedral. Then we swapped over – he kept our place in the bus queue (I think he had the same conversations with our queue neighbours) while I mooched around.

Once back on, we stayed on the bus and completed the loop of the ruta azul. Time was not on our side and we were conscious of avoiding being the Felicity and Terence of Barcelona: the traffic had already seemed pretty awful and the situation wasn’t improved by a demonstration that was going on (about the economy I think).

Matt had to make a choice: transfer to the ruta roja and tour around the olympic stadium area or head back to the ship via the famous La Rambla. He went for the latter.

There are several High Things To Go Up in Barcelona – unfortunately most of them were outside of our temporal grasp. But Matt had done his High Things To Go Up research and had read that there was a cafeteria with a good view at the top of a department store in Placa de Catalunya. There was indeed a good view, with the added bonus of refuelling ourselves with some good value drinks and snacks. We also made use of the complimentary facilities and I helped an American by demonstrating how to use a push tap. As time wasn’t on our side I resisted spending any in the haberdashery on the way back out of the store.

 

Suitably refreshed, we started our traverse down La Rambla. It was busy. Really busy. I particularly enjoyed our trip into the colourful Bodega. A notable experience of our walk here is that we successfully avoided pick-pockets (or if we didn’t we haven’t found out about it yet). Based on a browse of the bars we also made a good call in getting our refreshments earlier as it looked like our touristical Euros wouldn’t even stretch to a glass of water here.