Barcelona
loomed upon us earlier than we expected, which was a huge bonus as we
had discovered by then that our intended campsite was closing for the
winter, giving us only one full day to explore the city instead of
two. So we made the most of the extra few hours by driving straight
into the centre. I swapped an empty dashboard for a steering wheel,
Mike swapped foot pedals for a dashboard footrest, and I gave him a
driving tour of Barcelona. At peak hour.
After
that we still had some daylight to kill, so we took off to
find Parc Güell
in the north of the city. This was the first casualty of the reduced
time frame, so I was stoked to fit it in. I had been here before, but
not by car...which provided ME with a genius moment. You would have
thought by now I was re-acquainted with a right-hand drive vehicle.
Ruby found out the hard way that I was not, quite, when I nearly took
off her left wing mirror. Ooops. Mike noticeably hasn't been so quick
to suggest I drive again. I blame the truck, he should have tucked
his mirror in. It's what they DO in Europe...normally.
So
after a few circles we actually managed to find parking close to our
destination. Parc Güell
is an estate park begun in the early 20th century for
elite residents. What makes it special was that it was designed by
Barcelona's (and possibly Spain's) most famous architect, Antoni
Gaudí. And the going was
good until the park's owner decided it wasn't commercially viable and
canned the project. Finally the city took it over and turned what was
there into a funky outdoor museum.
A
few more circles and we drove our way out of the city to find our
campground. This involved driving up and down the coast south of the
city until we finally stopped to ask for directions. A nice young man
was going past it anyway and we followed him out of the fancy
beachside suburb we were cruising around right up to the entrance.
The owner (clearly tired out from a season of hosting those Contiki
hoodlums) took our registration and told us to just park anywhere. So
we did, right in front of the beach. It was dark, so dinner was a
sloppy pizza from the campsite bar and a hot shower was definitely in
order. (I made Mike use my thongs/jandals – you Kiwis get
your minds out of the gutter! – for the public showers, because he
forgot his. Who forgets them when you go on a holiday
to the coast????)
Something
which was helping make the trip a whole lot easier was a refrigerated
esky/chilly-bin lent to us by Mike's friends. It's small
enough to fit between the back seats and runs off the back-seat
cigarette lighter (yes, there is one, awesome, huh?). On this night
we decided to leave it running, as it doesn't keep things cold well
when it's off. So of course, we woke up the next morning to silence,
and a flat battery.
But that couldn't dampen the excitement of being
up early enough to catch the sun rising over the ocean, right out of
our back door. It did mean trying to find jumper cables in the midst
of a bustling Barcelona metropolis that day. Which we did. We also
found my friend Tanja, who we only discovered that morning is now
living there, and we had a lovely lunch with her.
We
did some tourist stuff, too. We had breakfast from Barcelona's biggest
Mercado (markets), hot tapas
that we ate sitting on a flattened cardboard box in a shady square.
We visited Casa
Batlló,
another mighty flight of fancy from Gaudí.
An amazingly beautiful
family home-turned-museum with no straight surfaces and lots
of mosaic. There was an audio guide included with the ticket, which
we found really informative, until Mike did something to
his handset, and it started speaking a language we didn't even
recognise. A very nice staff lady helped him out, after we had
listened to several stops, twice each time, on mine.
I guess this was
almost a Gaudí tour of Barcelona, because after visiting the central
Catedral
and wandering some alleys in the Gothic Quarter, we set off to see
his very famous La
Sagrada Família.
By
this time, two ragged and tired antipodeans made their way back to
their beachside 'home', cooked their butcher-bought sausages and
tinned potato bake, and went to bed, leaving Ruby's flat battery
until morning.
