… and this morning Bernie worked out how the exterior roller shutters at our apartment worked! It would have been good to know that on Thursday and then we could have had the shutters down to keep the bedroom dark for the last three mornings when first light was at 6.00am??! We have fancy electrically operated roller shutters at our house and at the house before that we had a manual crank handle that wound the shutters up and down. The shutters here are operated with a webbing strap that is the same colour as the window frame so they’re practically invisible. Especially if you don’t know what to look for, ha, ha.
We caught a taxi back to Estacion València Joaquin Sorolla for our final train journey in Spain for this holiday. This morning, we were off to Barcelona which will be our final destination before flying back Down Under. After arriving at the station, we managed to find somewhere to sit while waiting for the platform to be announced for our train. Since we would be travelling over lunchtime Bernie scouted the cafés and purchased a bocadilla to take with us on the journey.
When the departures board entered Platform 9 against our train, we hauled our bags to the luggage screening point so we could make our way to the platform. We wandered around to the platform with the staff indicating that Carriage 11 would be further down the platform. We walked all the way to the end of the train and the carriages only went to Carriage 9. The attendant standing there again indicated that we should move further down the platform … where there was no train. Hmmn, we decided they must be going to couple another train onto this one? Sure enough, another train pulled in and was coupled onto the other one. We now had a Carriage 11 to climb aboard.
All of our trips except two on this holiday have been from originating stations to terminating stations so that has made it so much less stressful to take the trains. Although even our stop in Cordoba wasn’t very stressful as we had enough time to disembark and embark despite the train only being in the station for two minutes. When we caught trains through Germany and Scandinavia in 2012, we recall it being much more stressful. Maybe we were just younger, less experienced travellers back then?
Today’s fast train was slow compared with the Madrid-València service on Thursday. Between València and Tarragona we didn’t travel faster than 200/kph and at times quite a bit slower than that. After Tarragona the driver cranked it up and we were flying along at around 250/kph most of the final third of the journey. Views from the train today included the profile of Montserrat on the left and glimpses of the Mediterranean Sea on the right. When we weren’t both examining the insides of our eyelids of course!
We pulled into Estación Barcelona-Sants on time along with all the people that had been on the double length train from València. It was so busy at the station! Bernie wanted to buy us travel cards to use the Metro in Barcelona so took the escalator down to the Metro platform. He was soon back to report that the queue to buy Metro tickets was ridiculously long. We decided to pay to pee (more queuing!) then re-checked the queue to purchase Metro tickets. Still crazy, lets get to our accommodation and buy our tickets at our local station.
Aargh, the queue for taxis was also ridiculously long here too. We haven’t had to queue for a taxi in any other city, but we had a half hour wait this afternoon before we reached the head of the queue. Fortunately, we had nowhere that we urgently needed to be, so the wait was not a problem. Another unhappy taxi driver drove us to our apartment on Carrer del Comte Burrell.
We headed out to buy supplies to make our breakfasts for the next three mornings. We spied a fruit shop straight across the street from the apartment’s front door so purchased our fruit there rather than at the supermarket. With that stowed in the fridge we went back out to the Dio Supermarket just around the corner for water, juice, yoghurt and beer.
Food sorted we headed to our local Metro station, Urgell, where we purchased two 48-hour travel cards. From there we continued into the city past the university and onto La Rambla, Barcelona’s iconic, tree-lined, pedestrianised street running for 1.2 kilometres between Plaça de Catalunya and Port Vell. The plaza was still barricaded off because it has been a ‘fan space’ selling merchandise for the Spanish Grand Prix … which started this afternoon about the same time that we arrived.
We strolled the length of La Rambla at the pace being set by all the other pedestrians enjoying a slow Sunday afternoon walk. We reached the southern end at the port and cruise ship terminal where we were astonished at the size of Virgin Voyages’ Scarlet Lady who had deposited 2,770 passengers in Barcelona today. We imagine at least some of them had tickets to the Grand Prix? The ship was HUGE, but Google tells me she is far from the largest cruise ship cruising in the Mediterranean this season.
On a more historical note, the port is home to the Columbus Monument. The 60-metre-high column was built for the Barcelona World Fair in 1888 and commemorates Columbus’ return to Spain after his first voyage to the Americas. It was in Barcelona that Christopher Columbus reported to Queen Isabel and Ferdinand after his famous voyage. The seven-metre-high statue was sculpted by Rafael Atché and is said to represent Columbus pointing towards the New World with his right hand, while holding a scroll in his left hand. Chris does indeed point out to the Mediterranean Sea however, because of the orientation of Port Vell he is actually pointing east towards his hometown of Genoa rather than west, towards the New World! Admittedly it would look pretty odd if he was pointing towards the land rather than the sea.
As we were wandering back to the apartment there were lots of bangs and explosions. No-one seemed bothered so we decided not to panic. In fact, these have not been the first fireworks that we have heard in the last few days. There were fireworks or at least crackers on Thursday evening and again on Saturday during the day in València. The fireworks seem to have escalated today in Barcelona. Before going out to dinner I asked Google about it. The fire works are to celebrate St John’s Night AND the shortest night. That timing seems a bit weird because I’m pretty sure they celebrated the Summer Solstice on the 21st of June in the UK. I guess because of St John’s Birthday being so close to the solstice that they just hold it over by a couple of days here in Spain?
For dinner tonight we went to La Condesa a Mexican restaurant close to the apartment. We ordered drinks and our waiter brought my sparkling water out and told Bernie we’ve made a Michaelada by mistake would you like to try it? What is it? Well, it’s beer with tomato juice, spices and hot sauce in it. Um, no thanks, I’ll pass on that. When he brought Bernie’s beer, Bernie mentioned that a Mexican Restaurant in Melbourne does a Lagerita, a beer combined with a margarita. This place brought our food out super fast. Bernie enjoyed some enchiladas and I had a couple of tostadas. Bernie was still feeling peckish so followed up with some pork tacos.
Walking back to the apartment was crazy with crackers being let off in the streets EVERYWHERE! When we reached the apartment we stood and watched for a while as a father and his children let of fireworks just across the street. There were more being launched along the road in both directions, and we could hear lots more being let off further afield. The whole city is just bang, bang, bang. Writing this now at 11.00pm the fireworks are ongoing. From what I read on the internet earlier, tonight is a big party throughout Spain followed by a public holiday tomorrow. What would St John think?
Steps: 15,218 (9.41kms)