Barcelona

Spain is a place that I didn't really have any interest in visiting. I didn't really see the point of it, sitting there on the Iberian peninsula along with Portugal.

Anna managed to squeeze it in though, and so we found ourselves trundling along to Barcelona from Lyon (Note: when booking trains to and from Spain, Leon does not equal Lyon).

We hit Barcelona in the afternoon, and then Barcelona hit back. It must have been around 30, which after France was a nice change to warmer temperatures. Also happening at the same time was (you guessed it) another festival! This time it was La Mercè, a religious holiday commemorating Our Lady of Mercy. That evening we walked around a local park which had some of the festival events happening. There were puppets, kids' rides, fairground games, buskers, dance routines, comic shows and acrobats who, as far as we saw, were only ever perpetually warming up - fun for the whole family.

Here's a video of a musical fountain in action. It's quite long though.

Some things to be aware of about Barcelona (and I suppose Spain in general):

Siesta is a thing; most shops will be shut from around 2pm till at least 4. With the temperatures we've been experiencing, even in autumn, I can see why.

Catalunya (the part of Spain that Barcelona is in) has its own language, and a very organised secession movement. There are Catalan independence flags everywhere. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they're going to be voting on it soon. Since we're not sure about how people feel about the Spanish language, whether or not it's analogous to the Russian language in Lithuania, I thought I'd save my tiny smidgen of Spanish until we're in a place where they speak it, although it sounded to me like a cross between Spanish and French.

One thing we normally do in a city is wander around the old town. This one had opera buskers, old churches, and plenty of tourist shops with overly attentive (read pushy) salespersons. After a few of those encounters we decided to avoid those shops.

One of the important things to see in Barcelona is the Magic Fountain. Normally this involves standing in front of the fountain with a group of other tourists watching as the fountain twists the water into different shapes, morphing as the coloured lights and the directional nozzles change the fountain from looking like a frothing blue mouthwash golem, to a seething mass of blood red sea serpents, or a geyser of orange juice. All of this while accompanied by the sounds of whatever series of pop songs are popular at the time.

Apparently there's a tradition in Barcelona of a big fireworks spectacular accompanying the fountain on the final evening of the festival. We were sold.

9:30pm rolls around and we're sitting in the middle of the road along with thousands of other people waiting for the show. There is one road that gives the best view, and we managed to get a spot about halfway down the road, and about in the middle.

Waiting for the show.

The show started with the face of an old man, presumably telling the story of Catalunya.

It felt a little like 1984.

Of course with a story of any place there is always talk of war.

You can see everyone's cameras and phones.

Big Brother is watching you. Or is shouting at you or something.

At the end of the show there was a point where everyone pulled out sparklers and lit them. I think this might have been during a national or regional song.

All in all I feel that it was a better fireworks show than the one in Disneyland.

Oh, all the while this was happening the fountain would do various things adding to the show.

Another thing about Barcelona is the Art Nouveau movement that has contributed many buildings to the city. We visited two of these, and while they're amazing, and you should definitely check them out if you get a chance, I don't really dig the aesthetic.

Casa Batllo is one such building. It's amazing to think that such a thing was designed in the late 1800s but not only designed, actually built too, and it was lived in.

No straight lines. The audio guide kept telling us that it was a jewel of Barcelona.

The Lightwell - basically a skylight that goes all the way to the bottom floor. The tiles are lighter at the bottom than the top to make it look bright all the way down.

The other building is the Sagrada Familia. If you're going to visit the Sagrada Familia, make sure that you book ahead of time, or it might be difficult to get access.

The Sagrada Familia is a church building designed by Gaudi in the late 1800s. Its construction has been a bit stop and go, due to funding difficulties, so you can see the parts that are recent and the parts that are over a century old. It's still under construction, and seen from a distance it looms over the city. It'll be much taller once it is complete. I hope to visit it once it is finally finished, although at the historical rate of construction it might be for my 100th birthday.

As for the building itself, it's something you'll have to see pictures of to appreciate. Here are some I prepared earlier:

Under construction.

the Nativity facade

inside, with pillars designed to look like graceful trees

the ceiling, in the distance

stained glass windows

The details were amazing. Here's a door.

So far on this trip we've tried to keep costs down by doing free things. The problem with this is when things cease to be free. I'm assuming it's to do with economic reasons (“Well duh,” I hear you say. “Macro economic reasons,” I reply, “Global Financial Crisis et.al”) but out of the three free things we'd decided to do that afternoon, all of them have recently started charging an entry fee. Since we were still on the whole Gaudi kick, we visited a hospital that he designed (and found out that they now charge for entry) and Guell park (another Gaudi design, they charge for entry for some of it). We're not such huge fans of Gaudi that we'd pay the entrance fees (these things add up), so we walked around in the park and managed to see the main sights in the paying section by peering over the fence, then decided to go to the Castle Montjuic, and got hit with the prospect of another entrance fee. Lame. We got to see the Mediterranean though, so that was nice.

One more place that we went to: Poble Español. It's a collection of buildings which replicate some of the different regional styles of buildings in Spain, with restaurants, clubs, and souvenir shops populating the inside of the buildings. We paid the night rate to get in, and wandered around the streets looking at all the buildings.

That evening we saw the regular version of the magical fountain, and while it was magical, it didn't really come close to the one we'd seen the night before.

That about wraps it up for Barcelona. We really enjoyed it, and would recommend that you come some time that's not during the heat of summer, like we did.