Two days later we actually made it to Barcelona. On our first attempt at getting there the train was full for two days. So we went back to Geraldine's, reserved two tickets on the phone, and hung around for two more nights. We had a few vino tintos in the bar next door and got to see my other aunt and uncle who flew in for a holiday from England.
On the Wednesday we headed back to the train station to use our reservation number for the train. However, what the lady on the phone hadn't informed Geraldine was that we had to pay 24 hours previous. The train was full again. Then the ticket man offered us first class before cruelly taking the offer away. Eventually, we caught one train to Alicante and another to Barcelona. For 37 Euros extra we made it.
The train journey lasted over seven hours and we saw some big mountains, the ocean, high-rises everywhere, resort hotels, farm land, lots of graffiti and the outskirts of Valencia. We arrived and successfully traversed the foreign-language metro system, walked down the city's main street, and up three alleyways reaching our hostel at 10pm, knackered.
Our hostel, New York Hostel, is in the Barri Gotic area, right in the centre of the city. The area looks a bit rough with lots of grafitti, urine-soaked streets and homeless people but its full of tourists looking in the arty/alternative shops and bars.
The hostel was also 5 minutes from the sea and 5 minutes from La Rambla, the main Barcelona street. The newspaper here informs me that La Rambla won 4th place in Europe's most disappointing sights competition. I thought La Rambla quite good though with street performers, including many human statues - an Indian, a fruit stand, Edward Scissorhands etc, clowns, breakdancers, smelly, homeless men etc. It also contains lots of tourist shops, every fast food chain and, apparently, many pick-pocketers.
On our first morning we headed out to see Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. The Sagrada Familia is a massive church currently being constructed, and has been since 1882, right in the centre of Barcelona. The façade has largely been completed and contains many huge, detailed relief sculptures from the life of Christ. It also has 4 massive towers which look like candles sticking up with a melted wax-like effect carved into the stone below. Inside you can take a lift up one of the towers and get an impressive view of the city, and feel very dizzy coming down the steeply, spiral staircase. We also visited Gaudi's Casa Batllo and La Pedrera but just to look at their fronts and the Casa Batllo's roof-top dragon. On our last day we visited his Park Guell, a public park with sculptured walk ways and tiled fountains and buildings. Barcelona is full of Gaudi and it all looked great.
We visited the Montjuic Park, the base of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. The park now centres around an art gallery that looks down upon the Font Montjuic. We waited there until dark and the fountain starts up and gets lit up in reds, yellows, oranges, pinks and greens. (we have lots of photos for you Christopher when I can get them to send). The water is shot out in jets and mists to make patterns all to the sound of Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. The show looked impressive, especially with the odd-3000 people watching as well.
We also visited the Picasso Museum, an old city mansion where Picasso donated many of his works before he died. It is located in an area with all these horribly expensive but delicious looking chocolate shops that we couldn't afford to buy from. We went to the packed city beach 5 minutes walk from the city centre, went looking in the tourist shops, had some Spanish tortilla and got to see a fair bit of Barcelona in 4 days.
We had pre-bought train tickets for Barcelona to Nice the second day we were in Barcelona. When we got back to our hostel we noticed that it went from Cebere (right inside the French border) to Nice but no mention of Barcelona to Cebere. So the next day we returned to the train station and checked with two people that it did indeed include getting from Barcelona to Cebere. One of the helpers also informed me that half the people at the train station were thieves and I needed to watch my handbag better.
When we left the next day to catch the train from Barcelona to Cebere and a night train onto Nice the ticket guy informed us our ticket did not include the trip from Barcelona to Cebere. He did suggest we wave our ticket at the guy at the gate and not let him read it, which we did and it worked. Once at the platforms, however, we could not find a train to Cebere as on Sunday 16/09 the train stopped at the station before, Portbou, still in Spain. Anyway, long story short we, about 15 other backpackers and some Spanish speaking women from Chile who yelled at the poor train station attendant managed to get a sleeper train headed for Zurich to stop for us and drop us over the French border in Cebere so that we could all get to Nice.
We arrived in Nice exhausted having not slept much in our seats on the freezing overnight train, next to an open can of sardines someone had decided to leave behind. We had decided not to book accommodation beforehand so we went searching. Luckily Nice is quite compact with the train station 2 minutes from the hotels, which sit 7 minutes from the beach. We found a lovely one star hotel, with a broken shower, rotting ceiling and a construction site outside the window for a cheap 42 Euros a night. Actually the room was pretty good, with a big window and bed and we slept well.
Ol and I had colds in Nice so we slept most of the first day going out only for a quick swim. The sea is obviously the Mediterranean and is bright blue, clear and great to swim in but the pebbles a bit sore to sunbathe on. Also obviously Mediterranean were the topless grannys, frying in the sun, with their designer labels and platinum blonde hair.
Both nights in Nice we went out to dinner with a Canadian backpacker we met while hitching the ride to Cebere. We went down to the waterfront and saw some impressive in-line skating around some cups and looked at the lights lining the Nice strip and its hotels and casinos.
On our second day we both woke up feeling unwell from our colds so lay in a bit then went for another very nice swim.
Nice the town though is not very nice. Everyone there looks miserable, the streets again STINK like wee and are smeared with dog poo and the restaurants, including Le Moari with tiki designs which doesn't sell hungi, are very pricey. The beach, however, makes up for all that.
We also sorted out a rail ticket to Venice, and accommodation at a campsite just outside the city. As I write this I am hoping nothing more goes wrong with the trains...
from
Sophie and Ollie.
