I haven’t been too lucky with illness over the past month. It was only about 2 weeks ago I had a stinking cold, and after getting back from Spain on Friday, I spent all of Saturday night throwing up and having diarrhoea all night. Sure it’s not nice, but it was 9am Sunday morning before I got to bed and that’s what’s really kicked my head in. I’ve had a thumping headache since then, and been right off my food. Oh well, I should be right in a couple of days I suspect.
Anyway, we’re back from Spain and that’s the interesting bit. We had a great week there. We flew out on Sunday at 4:40pm from Bournemouth with RyanAir who drop you off at Girona Airport, which is about 1 hour coach trip from Barcelona. The coaches were easy to get though (€22 return), and we were checked in to our swish hotel (Hotel Lléo about €70 a night) by 10pm. It’s wonderfully central, just off Placa de Catalunya. It has beds with motors in them that you can raise and lower your feet or head, and our bath had a built in jacuzzi system; all very flash. It was late, so that night we ate in the reasonably priced hotel restaurant. We decided early on not to re-visit La Sagrada Familiar because we had been there on our honeymoon when our cruise stopped off in Barcelona.
On Monday we went out sightseeing. We ate breakfast in the hotel (which was ok, but as usual way overpriced). First we rambled down the famous Barcelona street called Las Ramblas. It’s a very wide pedestrianised street with cafés and restaurants (and tacky souvenir shops) down the outside, but it’s famous for the street sellers that use it to sell caged birds and flowers. A market half-way down Las Ramblas, called La Boqueria, sells an enormous range of produce from fruit to goat’s heads, and was quite an interesting place to wander around. It was pretty clear alot of the produce wasn’t organic though – there were cauliflowers there twice the size of my head (and I don’t have a particularly small head or anything). Las Ramblas ends at Columbus’ statue near Port Vell. Columbus arrived back into Barcelona after discovering America, and the statue shows Columbus pointing towards the new world; however a monumental (literally) error of design means he points at Mallorca. We crossed to Port Vell – a kind of modern restaurant/cinema complex – where we went for lunch, before walking around to the beach to watch the surfers make the most of the waves. We walked back towards the zoo, underneath an enormous piece of art representing a fish, back through town, past the scaffolded Church of St.Lucia, to our hotel where we both flaked out on the clever beds.
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Las Ramblas early on a winter’s morning.
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The bird sellers on Las Ramblas.
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The fruit market, La Boqueria, off Las Ramblas.
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Complete goats heads being sold in La Boqueria
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Christopher Columbus statue
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The promenade on Barcelona Beach
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“Us and our Pigeon” – People enjoying Barcelona Beach
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The big fish sculpture on Barcelona front
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One of the Quaker Parrots that are taking over Barcelona
On Tuesday, I was destined for the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) where I had a day-long meeting about boring computer stuff. In fact, it was a very useful meeting for me, however, Daisy was able to take a nice bus-tour of the city and see all the sights!! When I got back we had a brief drink with one of my collegues and then went out for dinner at a small café on Las Ramblas called Nuria. It has apparantly been there since the 1920s and we had a nice, if somewhat touristy, meal there.
Instead of spending a fortune in the boring hotel breakfast, we went out to find somewhere nice to have breakfast – unfortunately the place we chose (Zurich bar) only did orange juice. Oh well, it was still better than boring hotel breakfast, imo. We were hoping to have gotten a bus trip to the Pyrenees. Unfortunately we’d been rather slack in getting it booked so it didn’t happen. Instead we decided to head up to Montjuïc, which is the hill to the west of Barcelona where the Olympics were held. You can get up there by furnicular railway, and then walk around the Olympic stadium and the nice gardens that are around there. We saw the fountains that were made famous by the Barcelona Olympics, although they weren’t dancing to the music because we weren’t there at the right time. They are also situated just in front of another magnificent view of the city, just in front of the Palace. We ended up right on top of the hill where there’s a castle (now containing the military museum) where there was an amazing view of the city. All that climbing took it out of our feet again, so after getting off the metro at Placa de Catalunya we went back to our hotel where flaking out was in order. That evening we ate at a buffet place called Fres Co. Basic but cheap – hey, this bit is holiday and can’t be claimed back on expenses! 
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Fountain in the gardens on Montjuïc
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The Palace
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The Olympic Stadium in Barcelona
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Chimneys in the Olympic Stadium’s grounds
Panoramic view of the inside of the Olympic Stadium (click for large view)
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The telecoms tower built for the Olympics represents an athlete – if only all telecoms towers were this pretty!
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Chair-throwing Clown – A statue in the children’s play area in Mirimar gardens on Montjuïc
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Protecting the city – Cannons in the castle grounds rights at the very top of Montjuïc
The panoramic view from the top of Montjuïc (click for large view)
On Thursday we went out and ate breakfast at Nuria, quickly becoming our favourite. We had some of the lovely hot chocolate they serve there. It’s not the same sort of hot chocolate we get over here – it’s more of a dip that you can drink too. You order horse-shoe shaped donuts, effectively, called Churros, that you dip in the cups. Ooh, yummy. Making me salivate thinking about it. We then headed over to Parc Güell. This is a main tourist attraction in Barcelona, and I’m not really into mixing it up with the hoards, but I’m glad I did go there. The building was as expected – very interesting and wobbly – but just a building. It was very nice when we climbed the hill behind and left main of the Japanese tourists taking each other’s photos down below. Another wonderful view was provided. There seems ample oppurtunity for wonderful views in Barcelona with all the surrounding hills. We ate in a small café adjoining Lesseps Library, another piece of interesting architecture. We got off the metro at Port Vell and had a sarnie in Pans & Co. before heading back to our hotel where, guess what?, we flaked out.
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Hot chocolate, churros, and croissant for breakfast.
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Parc Güell – this is just inside the entrance, tourists everywhere.
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Gaudi’s strange but attractive wobble architecture created this very effective tunnel
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Me and Herself enjoying our day
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More incredible views of Barcelona from the top of Parc Güell.
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The lizard in the entrance to Parc Güell
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Lesseps Library where we ate lunch, designed by Josep Llinás
Friday we ate our chocolate breakfast at Nuria again, before we had to head off to pack, check out, and head the hour’s trip out to Girona again to catch our plane home.
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Girona Airport, our flight home, and the Pyrenees in the background
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Flying over the Pyrenees
It was a really nice short holiday, and Barcelona is a great town. Food is cheap and the weather is superb! As I’m on this project and another project that both have partners in Barcelona I shall surely be coming back (and Daisy won’t miss out either!). Next time we might try various nearby parts of Catalunya and Spain. I’d certainly love to go and see the Pyrenees; they certainly looked spectacular from a distant peek at them in Girona.
