Barcelona Blog

So, I am recently back from a most refreshing and delightful holiday in Barcelona with Julie and Junior. NB: I don’t always refer to him as “Junior” (I am not Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, much as I would like to age into becoming him!) but I thought I should withhold his name in case the poor wee lad gets embarrassed by his old dad’s bizarrely meandering blogposts in years to come and decides to take the wise step of distancing himself from them! Technically, given that he is a dual national and therefore the trip we took to the US for Thanksgiving back in November could be regarded as going to his “other home”, this was Junior’s first foreign trip (still not bad for a 10 month old), but we had confidence in his ability to put up with all the travelling required (after a seven hour flight to Boston, which he put up with almost no tantrums at all, two hours to Barcelona was a doddle).

Monday

We flew out via Southend Airport (there was barely room in this miniscule airport for all of our luggage but all in all it was pretty efficient – Julie left her scarf in the security area but fortunately discovered its absence before we flew off and all she had to do was go back up a single escalator to retrieve it – in Heathrow it would have involved a walk of at least twenty minutes), and arrived in Barcelona around lunchtime.

The meter in the taxi that drove us to the airport we had rented for the week had a small, elderly, extremely grubby Cookie Monster cuddly toy sitting on top of it. Junior is a big Cookie Monster fan, so at first I took this for a good omen. However, as the journey went on, given that the meter went up 0.05 Euro at a time, meaning that the total fee for the ride was moving inexorably upwards at a more or less constant rate, while Mr C Monster sat on top of it looking increasingly smug, I swiftly grew to resent the blue furred, googly eyed glutton. When I was a child I had always thought that Oscar the Grouch was the most reprehensible of Sesame Street’s denizens, but now with the wisdom of adulthood it has become clear to me is that he is just a harmless introvert with a few personal hygiene issues, while Cookie Monster’s rapaciousness and greed has led me to conclude that he is second only to housemate from hell “ASBO Ernie” in the Sesame Street league of infamy.

In spite of this, the final cost of the ride did not turn out to be too excessive (perhaps there was a discount for making us listen to a Spanish pop cover of “I never promised you a Rose Garden”) and the owner of the apartment was there to greet us. He was a very charming and helpful fellow (we booked via WaytoStay.com, btw, which we would highly recommend), who looked suspiciously like a stand up comedian who appeared in various posters all over town. I did not take the opportunity to question him over this resemblance as I am not “up” on the Barcelona comedy scene (surprisingly enough) so was not sure whether I would be mortally offending him, or indeed raking up a long term feud with a man who could well have been his ne’er do well twin brother. It is not the first time this has happened – the owner of the B&B we went to in Venice bore an eerie resemblance to the subject of one of the more sinister paintings in the Doge’s Palace (either it was an ancestor, or we were doing business with a very mild mannered vampire - I am still not sure which).

We definitely made the right call renting the apartment rather than going to a hotel – you get more space and it’s nice to be left to one’s own devices (especially with a baby). I enjoy a B&B stay as much as the next man but we also like finding interesting places for breakfast and we have an unfortunate record of running up against passive aggressive B&B owners who always feel the need to dwell on the fact that we chose not to avail ourselves of the second “B”!

After depositing our clutter in the apartment and letting Junior out for a bit of a crawl and a wiggle (he loved exploring the apartment but absolutely hated the bathroom – in fact he tried to get out of the bath on one occasion, which is not the best circumstance to discover that one’s child has developed the ability to pull himself up into a standing position!), we strapped him back into his sling (a fantastic contraption called a Manduca, which meant that we were able to roam around Barcelona “pramless”) and started off on a fairly aimless but pleasant “getting our bearings” ramble which took us to Parc de la Ciutadella, where we saw a lot of very large bubbles being blown.

Junior was mildly interested in these but as he was mainly concentrating on his breadsticks (a new discovery for him), he was not nearly as excited by them as a large hairy and enthusiastic wolfhound we came across, who clearly saw it as his responsibility to burst every single one of them (there was another dog with him who looked extremely embarrassed by the company he was keeping – I think he even rolled his eyes at one point).  There were all sorts of dogs being walked in the park, including one who was most definitely a cat (he gave us a wide eyed look as we passed him which could have signified anything from mild annoyance that he was being walked and treated like a dratted dog to a full blown existential crisis). There are some lovely fountains in the park, and if you are into large concrete statues of mammoths (and frankly, who isn’t?) you won’t be disappointed either.

Dinner on the first night was something of a disappointment, however. We were hungry and tired and disinclined to wait until the late hour that most locals eat their evening meal, so we wanted to find something that was open early and relatively close to the apartment. This we did, although they did not do English language menus or indeed speak any English, which we initially thought might count in our favour as it suggested a good non-touristy place which would serve authentic regional food. Then it dawned on us that the fact that neither of us have much Spanish might cause us a few problems. Julie’s grasp of the language is slightly better than mine - although I did briefly study it for about six months when I was 11 or 12, I only got to do half of the lessons that most of my classmates did as I was also taking Latin at the time. The fact that I managed to blag my way to 86% in the exam, through a mixture of guesswork and extrapolating from French, is a continuing source of pride but in fact was entirely down to the exam being entirely multiple choice, which would be fine if a bubble appeared next to Spaniards’ mouths every time they spoke with three possible translations of what they just said, but generally in practice this doesn’t happen.

I ended up with a seafood risotto type dish with copious amounts of squid ink, which was actually quite tasty (I was a little nervous as the only previous time I had been to Barcelona, everyone had come down with food poisoning, but I managed to dodge that bullet this time), but Julie’s meal had a distinctly gruel-like quality to it. We then went back to our apartment for an early night, watching Vicky Cristina Barcelona on our ipad as we fell asleep (an excellent film - after 40 years of making films about people being neurotic and shagging around in New York, it is refreshing to see Woody Allen really branching out and making films about people being neurotic and shagging around in other places!) Later in the holiday we started watching Biutiful, which is damn weird but packs a powerful punch (I’d watch Javier Bardem in anything, although if he turns up in Transformers 7 or “Fast and the Furious 9: Flogging a Very Fast and Very Furious Dead Horse”, I may revise this opinion!)

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning, after a delightful breakfast at the Café Zurich on the Plaza D’Espanya, we had our Spanish Civil War Walking Tour, which was recommended in Rick Steves’ guidebook (we are big fans of Rick and watched the episode of his travel show about Barcelona before we left – I am embarrassed to say that when we went to La Boqueria and actually saw in person the old chap at the famous Tapas bar there who had been mugging gleefully for the cameras in the background of the documentary we got inordinately excited as if we were meeting royalty). It is run by a fantastic historian called Nick Lloyd who reminded me of a small, bald, intense version of Bernard Cribbins (but younger, obviously – Cribbins being approximately 3 years older than God).

Were it not for this tour we could quite easily have gone through our entire trip without ever once thinking about the Spanish Civil War, so invisible are the few remaining traces of that remarkably unpleasant conflict, a fact that many on the tour, including our guide found inexplicable. I must admit I agree with them – I found myself almost hurling the remote at the TV a few weeks ago when “Big Talk” (sorry, “The Big Questions”) did a section on whether it was time to forget about the Holocaust. I was amazed that the BBC saw fit to give airtime to such a facile and idiotic question. How can we learn from history if we simply brush it under the carpet?

Having said that, the tour did not shy away from the atrocities committed by the Loyalist side either, although Nick did expose a Francoist fib about the markings on the wall of the St Felip Neri church being created by the bullets from machine guns used to execute any priests unlucky enough to be in the vicinity. In fact the damage was caused by shrapnel from falling bombs (neither side in this war was particularly cuddly, and the priests were certainly bumped off, but it was done more discreetly in the nearby hills) - one ex military man who had been on the tour recently had told Nick that if they had tried shooting the priests against the wall of the church, the gunmen would have ended up killing themselves when their bullets ricocheted.

All in all it was not a barrel of laughs, safe to say, especially as it turned out that one French chap taking the tour had a grandfather who was caught up in the war and ended up fleeing to France only to be turfed into a labour camp by the Nazis a few years later where he died (there was even a suggestion that he was not quite dead when they put him in the incinerator). Even Nick was moved to tears by this story, even though he is hearing stories almost as unpleasant all the time on his other tours.  But I can honestly say that I have rarely been as impressed as I was by Nick’s ability to bring history to life with remarkable vividness (Simon Schama, look to your laurels!) and I would vigorously urge anyone visiting Barcelona to book themselves onto a tour.

Nick even gave Junior a couple of toy cars, although older attendees shouldn’t count on similar acts of generosity! He had a four year old who was getting too old for toy cars (we may soon need to build an extension purely to house all the cars we have had foisted on us recently from people with four year old children!) We had of course brought along the little lad’s “singing” Fire Engine and Police Car to entertain him during our time in the apartment, which, as you can imagine, never get irritating at all. The Fire Engine appears to harbour operatic ambitions, although he also apparently “loves to race”, which I find slightly reckless and disturbing. The Police Car, meanwhile, is unlikely to cause the criminal classes too many sleepless nights (OK, I wasn’t expecting it to growl “OI! THIS IS THE F***ING SWEENEY! YOU’RE NICKED!” in the dulcet tones of Ray Winstone – that would have been inappropriate - but the line “dial 999 and I will…catch the burglar” is delivered with all the menace of an adenoidal CBeebies presenter. So having a couple of “silent” cars for Junior to play with made for a refreshing change.

The tour also did a rather good job of showing us quite a few bits of Barcelona we had been intending to visit anyway, taking us past the great tapas restaurant Xaloc (just off the Ramblas) where we ended up eating dinner every night (plus the equally fabulous Gelateria “Manna” opposite – Manna from Heaven indeed). After the tour we took a ramble down the Ramblas, which led us to the statue of “Cristobal Colon”, aka Christopher Columbus, ironically perhaps the one man who did more harm to Barcelona’s economy than Franco did due to his “rediscovery” of the Americas (I use that word deliberately due to the number of historians and ASNACs I know who would start trumpeting the cause of Leif Erikson otherwise – if there’s one thing worse than crossing a Viking it’s crossing a Viking enthusiast!). And of course there is the small matter of the Native Americans who had been there for millennia and who had presumably therefore discovered it at some point….frankly, Columbus was something of a Johnny Come Lately when you think about it (am I the only person under seventy who uses that expression?)

Then we moved on to the harbour, wonderfully designed (for a moment it almost felt like we were in a Hispanic Sydney Harbour) and still retaining the wonderful feeling of freshness and vitality it must have had during the 1992 Olympics, which of course had a wonderfully regenerative effect on the city including this area. Then back up to the Café de l’Opera for a coffee served by a “wacky” waiter who Junior resolutely refused to be remotely amused by.  After that we had rather run out of puff so took the Metro back to the apartment (stopping off at the supermarket – Julie always insists that visiting the local supermarkets and looking at what brands they have to offer is an essential part of the tourist experience, which is fair enough, and Junior didn’t mind as he got lots of breadsticks out of it to munch on – he packed away a lot more food on this trip generally than we have ever seen him eat before, which is hardly surprising given the quality of our meals).

NB: Barcelona’s Metro system is extremely clean and efficient and boasts a remarkable variety of gargantuan vending machines offering not just the usual drinks and chocolate bars but various bits of IT equipment and other accoutrements. My initial awestruck reaction was pretty similar to that of Djimon Hounsou in Gladiator on seeing the colosseum for the first time (“I never knew men could build such things!”) Even Junior, who screams blue murder every time we try to drag him onto the tube, was grudgingly impressed! It is worth noting that every single time we took the Metro in Barcelona, whichever of us was wearing Junior got offered a seat (take note London Tube Folk, chivalry is not dead everywhere!)

Wednesday

On Wednesday we had our “away day” to Montserrat, which offered some terrific views, an opportunity to hear their famous boy’s choir (L’Escolania) - and it turns out it was a good place to buy honey as well. It was however marred by the ghastly tourists who insisted on taking selfies with La Moreneta (12^th century wooden statue of the Virgin Mary) who almost had me wishing for the return of the Old Testament God (before they abolished the smiting and leprosy) as I have no doubt they would have ended up deservedly feeling the sharp end of a bolt of lightning back in the day!

The train journey out there also offered us our only chance this trip to get a look at the always lovely Spanish countryside (and, for me, an opportunity to re-read a bit of my favourite book set in Barcelona – “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon which is an utterly enthralling and fantastical tale involving a Barcelona based “Cemetery of Forgotten Books” and various sinister events that befall a young lad who picks up one particular forgotten book). We were sitting opposite a nice couple from Yorkshire on the way out, but luckily their accents were not too pronounced as I have discovered that the thing that above all else makes Junior descend into fits of uncontrollable laughter is me talking in an exaggerated Yorkshire accent with overly pronounced glottal stops (T’ Lion, T’ Witch and T’ Wardrobe) and I was afraid for a moment that he might start giggling at them and put their noses out of joint!

Thursday

On Thursday we had our “Gaudi” day, seeing the Sagrada Familia in all its glory, after much queueing, of course. I am not an enthusiastic queuer but for once I will say it was definitely worth it, although if anything I may have been more charmed by the Casa Batllo on the “Block of Discord” (which I will always think of as the “George and Dragon building”). We also hopped on the bus up to Park Guell, which was worth a visit although I wouldn’t recommend that you linger in that rather insalubrious part of town for long afterwards as it's a little short on charm.

I believe that was also the day we saw the lady on the Metro who had forgotten to put most of her clothes on (that sounds facetious but that was actually what it felt like – she displayed no other signs of exhibitionism and behaved in all other outward respects like just another slightly hurried and frustrated commuter on her way to an important meeting – she may even have been carrying a filofax!) She was wearing a coat and stockings, I should add (albeit that was about all), and before the chorus of “ooh, but why were you looking” start up, I should point out that (a) Julie spotted her first and (b) the back of the coat was more revealing than its wearer probably thought it was – it was hard to miss even for someone as notoriously unobservant as myself.

Friday

Friday was our arty and walking day – we did a couple of the Rick Steves recommended walks (yes, him again, sometimes I wonder whether we should take the next logical step and just invite the man on holiday with us, considering he is so damn good at knowing what we want to get out of our breaks!) In the morning we did the El Born walk (during which we popped into the Picasso Museum and purchased a Picasso inspired rubber duck from the store – not quite as disturbing looking as you might think!) Junior was a big fan of Picasso (and the duck), which was a pleasant surprise to me as he had definitely taken the view the day before that Gaudi was a bit “maverick” for his tastes. In the afternoon we did the walk around the Gothic Quarter (which we preferred to El Born, although I can imagine that the latter would appeal in the height of the tourist season when it is probably a bit quieter than the touristy bits). I particularly enjoyed finding the Temple of Augustus (one of my all time favourite ancient tyrants!)

In the evening we popped up Montjuic to have a look at the Miro collection. I remember giggling my way round this exhibition on my first visit to Barcelona as a philistine youth many years ago when I was a touch cynical about “modern art” and the uncanny resemblance it bore to the stuff I used to churn out in bulk in kindergarten. My crowning moment of glory was when I inadvertently leant on one of the exhibits thinking it was a piece of furniture (but then I have never pretended to be anything other than a thoroughly clumsy oaf – I was once given the nickname of “The Fall Guy” in Maori by a tour guide when travelling in New Zealand, and only this week I managed to get blood and coffee on the same legal document – both mine, I hasten to add, but separate spillages (no serious harm done except to my little finger)!

This time round, I found myself absolutely loving Miro! Yes, bits of it are funny, but they are supposed to be (or at least I assume so)! The man was a creative genius with an astonishing vision and I feel terribly sheepish for ever having scoffed at his magnificent life’s work – he was clearly a man who enjoyed what he did! I particularly loved the big 400 square foot tapestry at the beginning of the exhibition, woven to look like a huge colourful painted canvas (there used to be a similar one in the Twin Towers, which Julie remembers once seeing, but it was destroyed in 9/11).

As it was after 6pm there weren’t many people around at the exhibition so it was nice and quiet, but we kept the visit fairly brief as we wanted to see the nearby “Magic Fountains” at 7pm. This a fun and colourful water show near the Plaza D’Espanya (in the summer they do it every night) accompanied by various pieces of classical and modern music – I enjoyed the John Barry but we moved on when Celine Dion piped up! Then off for a final dinner at Xaloc and a final gelato to follow before an early return on Saturday. Luckily we got one final breakfast at the airport - even Julie, who is not a big breakfast person generally, was almost in tears once we had finished it, as our breakfasts on this trip were some of the best we have ever had (Barcelona seems to specialize in delicious chocolate pastries). We arrived back in the UK just in time to listen to the News Quiz on the way home – what better way to round off a holiday?