Barcelona, Spain

Our overnight ride to Barçelona went smoothly, including our cursory clearance by French customs; after all, one must pass through France to get from Switzerland to Spain. Our arrival at the station, however, was chaotic. We decided that our first priority upon arrival was to figure out how to leave again, Alas, Ferrocarril España is not terribly forthcoming with such things as train schedules. We were eventually given an outdated chart that confirmed that our departure options were limited. We made reservations for a departure two days hence, even though we were told they weren't necessary.


There was one thing we overlooked when we decided to stop in Barçelona when we did: the Formula One racing schedule. Every F1 fan in Europe (or so it seemed) was in town for the Grand Prix de Catalunya, and they had all gotten there before us and were occupying all the hotel rooms. The line outside the tourist office at the train station was short, but it hardly moved at all. Two hours after entering it, we were told by the clerk that the only room available in the city was a 25,000 Pta (about $200.00 US) luxury suite. This was a little beyond our budget, so we decided to try again later in the day. After storing our bags, we decided to try calling a few places in our guidebook. We figured that they would be already booked, but the first place we tried, the Pension Macarena (no, I'm not making it up), had a room for us, at only 4500 Pta ($36 US). Hurrah! In my less-than-exemplary Spanish, I made the reservation, then we grabbed our bags out of storage and hurried off to the hotel.


In our excitement over finding a place, we left our brand new, barely used 1000 Pta ($8 US) phone card in the pay phone. It was only there for a minute or so before we remembered and ran back for it, but it was already gone. They work fast! Fortunately, we no longer needed it and it would prove to be the only item lost or stolen from us on our whole trip.

The pension turned out to be our least desirable lodging of the trip, but given the circumstances we were glad to have it. The room itself was on the large side, but the sheets were well worn and the furniture was probably third- or fourth-hand, at least. The lock on the front door was questionable, and we had French doors that opened onto a sort of patio (really the building's light well), but they didn't lock at all. We felt the need to secure those doors with a belt when leaving the room. The real highlight of the room was the bath. The shower was just an area of the room surrounded in tiles with a drain on the floor. The only way to wash without spraying down the whole room was to sit on the floor, as illustrated. The hot-water-on-demand system was entertaining as well; whenever one of us was about to use the shower, the other would go to the "patio" and watch the butane water heater on the wall. Once it kicked in, flames would shoot out two to three feet! Very exciting! We are glad to be able to report that the room was (apparently) 100% cockroach free.


After checking in and washing up, we headed back out for lunch. (Tapas, of course.) Our first sightseeing stop was the Picasso museum, where we learned quite a bit about the "local boy made good." The museum is on three floors of a building and ordered chronologically from the ground up. We found that we liked his earliest stuff the best and the later work the least. (We should also add that the museum's signs were bilingual: Spanish and Catalan.)


Our next day in Barçelona began with a walk through the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter) and a visit to a dramatic Gothic cathedral, where we sat in on a mass to enjoy the music and singing. This church was in complete contrast to the next one we saw, Antoni Gaudí's Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia. It's still under construction, albeit slowly, as it has been since before the architect's death in 1926, but it's already massive. It is expected to take another hundred years to finish due to both the scale of the building and the scarcity of funds.

The whole building looks a though it was designed by Dr. Seuss, with a flowing and dripping concrete façade and ornamental animals and shells (and even fruit) rendered in concrete affixed to the exterior. The inside of the church is mostly incomplete, but there is a small museum of both the history of the church and of the architect and his techniques. Gaudí has many other fanciful buildings throughout Barçelona, but this is the most massive. Visitors are allowed to climb the spiral staircases in the four completed towers for a view of the city, but the stairs are so narrow and crowded with other tourists that it became a difficult trudge to a less-than-inspiring view on this gray day. I also managed to hit my head several times on the way down, as I was more occupied with watching where my feet were going to pay attention to what my head was about to hit. I had quite a headache once we got to the ground.

From there, we were off to Parc Montjuïc and the Olympic Stadium via the funicular railroad. The Parc is an expanse of green on a hill to the southwest of the city with a commanding view of the city and its harbor. There is a fortress, the Castell de Montjuïc, and a military museum, as well as some art museums, but we skipped all of that to watch the harbor and some rock climbers scaling the walls of the fort. We also ran into more Bayern München soccer fans who, in the middle of the day, were already quite rowdy, singing their team's songs and shouting "Ich liebe dich" from the gondola over the park.

Back down the hill, we visited a maritime museum which celebrated the local seafaring history. The museum was well done, its centerpiece being a set of walk through dioramas, some animated, telling the story of Catalan nautical achievement from the 16th Century onward, and using radio receiver headsets to do so in your choice of language. The exhibit was called "La Gran Aventura del Mar" and some of the displays were fantastic, such as the one that involved standing on the foredeck of a galleon in high seas, salt spraying in our faces. The display turned out to be more interesting than we had expected and we stayed until we were politely shooed out at closing time.

We finished our evening on La Rambla, Barçelona's pedestrian street, sipping beers and listening to the revelry of Mikka Hakkinen's fans as they celebrated his Grand Prix victory earlier that day. After stopping at La Boqueria, the local market, for food for the trip, we went back to the train station and boarded our train to France. As we were getting settled, a very distraught looking young woman came in and sat across from us and said "You look like you speak English. How do I get to Marseilles?" Just as we were about to tell her that this was the wrong train for Marseilles, the doors closed and we were on our way. This gave us lots of time to help her, and eventually we did help her transfer at Montpellier to another train heading for Marseilles. We'll never know if she got there, but she was last seen heading in the right direction.

Before we parted company, she told us that due to the lack of available lodging, she and her friends had slept on a median strip in the road, each taking turns guarding the others. That made us appreciate the Pension Macarena a bit more.

After a short stop in Nimes, France, where we called and made our next set of hotel reservations, we were back on a train, this time to Aigues-Mortes, France.