Back to Barcelona with the girls!

So my first visit to Barcelona with my Simon was to spend time with Simon Mason, this time I'm back with the girls!

We are staying in a brilliant little hostel in the 'shiny' (as Simon mason puts it!) area of town, there's a tiffany and co around the corner!

Surprisingly, the food places are better price and quality than what Simon and I had staying down near Montjuic. We had paella for 9euro each one night, thats almost half of what you would normally pay and it's a restaurant that people come across town to go to - sweet recommendation from our flamboyant but extremely helpful hostel receptionist!

Our first afternoon on arrival was spent meeting up with one of Sibel's friends who lives here, Camilla. She's an awesome girl, can speak four languages fluently, delivered babies in Ghana for a year and is now studying genetics - she had us in stitches laughing the whole time we had with her!

The next day we walked through some lovely local areas up to Parc Guell, Gaudi's park. We tried to get there early but still only managed after 10am by the time we got there! When I was there with Simon it was closer to lunchtime and the place was overrun with people, I just wanted to get out after shoving through such crowds. This time wasn't as bad, so I wanted to explore more of the outer areas of the park. The views were nice, but as far as 'my idea' (and my western stereotypes of parks go), the Gaudi architecture was the major focus with no care at all to the other aesthetic factors such as gardens, landscaping, etc. This means there is dust everywhere (and people sweeping it to different places at night), people aren't encouraged to walk on specific paths so any smaller indigenous plants are trampled before they get started and the atmosphere of the park is different. If they charged foreigners entry (keeping the park free for the community - another tension apparent on graffitied walls on the walk up 'parc guell is for the community, NOT for tourists'), even 3-5 euros, would provide enough funds to maintain the park without draining city budgets. Especially when the other Gaudi attractions are priced between 7 and 17 euro a piece! Anyhow.....

Main entrance to Parc Guell

the famous lizard

Gaudi and his structures

Part of the view of Barcelona, pity it was a big smoggy

Yesterday afternoon we met up with Camilla and wandered through the Gothic area of town and went to a cool food market, you will not believe how bright orange the main colorant in paella is, my best analogy is fanta coloured!

We met up with Simon Mason and went to dinner at a fabulous seafood restaurant on the docks of the port, it was a busy place, with fifteen or more waiters running around like crazy! I had black paella with Simon and Camilla, it is paella coloured with squid ink and the serving size was huge! I left very very full and had to buy water on our walk home, I wonder about the msg content of paella sometimes, though it is probably just the amount of fish stock they use.

I'm currently on a train to Tarragona, an hour away from Barcelona. We are clacking along between the ocean and small hills, the sky is a bright blue (even without the enriched Polaroid effect!) and the temperature is high twenties. The hostel receptionist helped me out this morning with where I could go with my Eurail, Spanish trains are very confusing. Hopping on the train I was hoping the conductor wouldnt kick me off for having the wrong ticket, but all is well!

These Spanish trains though, have strange pressure changes, my ears are pretty uncomfortable as I try to equalize them frequently enough to keep up with the pressure changes!

Tarragona was absolutely beautiful, situated along the coast with ruins dating back to BC, an old roman section that was well signposted with multilingual explanations, with the biggest cathedral in catalunya, the oldest roman walls outside of Italy, remains of a palace and amazingly cute little streets.

I think this was an old Tabacco factory - think!

Park in Tarragona

cute little street in the Roman ruins area

Detail on the outside of the cathedral

Ruins of the old roman wall surrounded by cafes!

As usual I headed out of the train station in the wrong direction, but in doing so have circumnavigated the entire town and saw the necropolis section (remains and a museum) which I would have completely missed otherwise. I wandered through a nice park, grabbed a cheap pasta salad for lunch from a cute little bakery and then made it up to the roman section.

I popped out back on the coast, with the Tarragonian amphitheater and park below and a beautiful coastline following it. Up the coast were a series of old forts but it would have been a fair walk to attempt those in the time I had, so I had lunch in the park on a sunny bench and wandered back down la nova, Tarragon's pedestrian street.

Amphitheatre on the coast

The next day I went with Selen to visit the inside of one of the Gaudi houses, La Pereda (I think, but I'll check that!), it was interesting, Gaudi is all about his shapes and non-flat surfaces, even the stairwells were wonky! The roof of this house is incredible, with monster like abstract statues, steps up and down different levels and various mosaics. It was pretty cool, Selen (being a designer), was in her element.

After that, Sibel and Selen hired bikes and cycled around while Colleen and I walked along the beach and through parts of the gothic quarter, it was a great day for a wander. We packed up all our stuff and met up with the lovely Camilla for a last tapas experience before hurrying off for the overnight train.

Our next stop is Paris and we're going on the trenhotel (trenhotel), an expensive overnight train from Barcelona to Paris, 9pm to 9am, we have booked a sleeper so it should be quite an experience!


It turned out to be quite amusing, with much laughter, junk food and a lovely conductor. Our little cabin was quite small but when the beds folded out of the walls(!) it was comfy enough, with the gentle rocking putting us to sleep quite easily (except when you go round a tight, long bend and feel like you're going to fall out of the bunk!).