Surreal City (Barcelona)

Member Name: Hunting_Bears

Product:	Barcelona
Date:	07/03/04 (2264 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cool architecture

Disadvantages: none

Barcelona is one of my favourite cities in this great continent of Europa, the Catalans are fantastic people once you get to know them properly and most of all Catalunya is one beautiful place.

I travelled to Barcelona on Monarch airlines from Manchester for the wonderfully obscene price of £65.00 return. It takes one hour and fifty minutes to fly there and I must say that flying over the Pyrenees Mountains is a beautiful experience, especially when the plane is descending through the clouds edging further and further towards Barcelona. On arrival at Barcelona where the security is terribly lax, to get to the city centre you can get the taxi or the train. I got the train for two euros twenty from the station that is part of the airport complex and it's heavily signposted.

The train takes about half an hour and is enjoyable enough. The train emerges into the metro system so it takes you to the heart of Barcelona's centre, the Placa de Catalunya. I stayed in a hostal just east of the square on via Laietana. The Hostal Fontanella is a great place to stay with excellent service by all of the workers there. The rooms are noisy due to the traffic of Via Laietana but great if you want to get up in the morning and get out and about. Who needs an alarm clock when the Catalan taxi service are on strike and honking their horns in protest for three hours from 9 'til 12 for two days in a row.

Barcelona's metro service is a bit like London's underground; it is not as hellish as Rome's but still subterranean and dirty. There are five lines, all are colour coded and each end of the line is named so only the thickest person can really get lost on them. The tickets are dirt-cheap and there is available a ticket for six euros that allows for ten metro journeys with no time limit. In London they charge you two pounds from one stop to the next, so the value is exceptional.

So what sites are there in Barcelona?

Well rather a lot, there is an excellent cava bar in Port Vell and a wonderful seafood restaurant called Empadoror. One of my favourite places was the Museum of Catalan history, which had an excellent exhibition about Franco's prison's and how the state murdered thousands of Spanish people during his thirty-six year fascist reign. The price is only three euros but it only runs until April so if you want to catch it then you best had be quick about it.

One of main attractions of Barcelona is the Antoni Gaudi architecture, which is bizarre to say the least. My favourite is Park Guell, it can be reached by getting the metro from Placa de Catalunya, changing at Diagonal to Lesseps. It is heavily sign posted and there are a few nice tapas bars around if you fancy a drink and something to eat. The day I went it snowed heavily and I felt like I was in some kind of surrealist dream, the snowflakes were the size of footballs and the multi-coloured mushroom houses are fascinating to look at. The view of Barcelona from the park's platform is wonderful and there are some cool sculptures of frogs and salamanders.

In the city centre just on the grand boulevard in Passieg de Gracia there is a the totally frightening Casa Batilo, it was designed by Gaudi and it features balconies that look like skulls and the entire building looks like a giant skeletal face. The most iconic of Gaudi's nightmarish, organic, surrealist visions is the Sagrada Familia. It is on the blue line and is situated in the 'Exiample' district North West of the centre. The Sagrada Familia is still being built and there is a lot of scaffolding and workmen on the site, so it lessens the impact but please study the various facets of the exterior because it is utterly unique and oddly beautiful.

A stroll around the Barri Gotic or 'Old Town' is an absolute must, the small medieval streets at first seem mysterious and threatening but deep
insi
de them are some wonderful tapas bars in which to spend the afternoon. My favourite place in the Barri Gotic is the small nameless square in which there is still a wall covered in bullet holes, it used to be a firing squad wall left over from the Spanish Civil War and chilling reminder of Spain's fascist past.

The Barri Gotic is just left of Las Ramblas, the main avenue in Barcelona and is easily reachable from the port and Las Ramblas. Another absolute must is a day trip to Montserrat, it's twenty miles outside of Barcelona and is a great day out to a mountain nature reserve. To get to there take the red line from Placa de Catalunya (its where I stayed anyway) to Placa de Espanya, then get on an FGC train from Platform 4, line 5. The train goes to Manresa and stops at Montserrat. Train times are from 8:36 to 18:36 outbound and half past the hour from Montserrat return. A ticket costs 12.00 euros return and includes the return ride on the incredibly scary cable car up the monastery summit.

Montserrat is as terrifying as it is exhilarating, if you are a Catholic like me then it’s a must pilgrimage. If you get to the Church for one clock you can here the choir sing 'Ava Maria' which is intensely moving but there was a lot fat stupid Americans talking and eating whilst watching it and even die hard Spanish Catholics were talking during it, so much for devout Catholicism. The Church museum is also worthwhile it features paintings by Degas, Picasso, Dali and many Catalan artists. It costs six euros and is a great way to spend an hour.

If anybody suffers from vertigo then the cable car will make you either catatonic or make you cry with panic, relax and take in the view, just don't look down. Germans constructed the cable car so it's reliable and safe in my view. There are several funiculars if you wish not to walk around the various mountain trails, I walked up the St. Michael path to th
e cross an
d the view was magnificent that I got all spiritual and shed a tear because the world can be such a stunningly beautiful place.

A great bar on Las Ramblas Santa Monica is 'Amaya' the owner was a great laugh and he taught me several Catalan phrases and food types. I highly recommend the squid with garlic 'sepia' in Catalan and the prawns 'Gambas' again in Catalan. The Catalan's are really great if you actually take the time to converse with them, they are fiercely independent and have a great Socialist streak in them, a wonderful working class vibe and lots of mullet hairdos. If you go to the Museum of Catalan History you will learn a great deal about these people and what shapes them and defines them. They feel that Catalunya should be its own country because Catalan is its own language.

Barcelona's architecture ranges from medieval gothica, renaissance and surrealism. I also caught a brilliant exhibition from arch-surrealist Salvador Dali and after a while you do get a sense of the surrealism in everyday in Spain. Everybody associates surrealism with France but believe me it firmly belongs in Catalunya. The Dali museum is fifty miles north of Barcelona in a place called Figueres not far from the French border. It costs nine euros return and takes one hour and forty-five minutes to get there. Dali is an absolute loony and I coined the phrase 'Catalunatics' whilst I was there. Barcelona, I love you! The tiny streets, the modernista architecture, the grand boulevards, the beautiful mountains, the place is wonderful. I had a great time drinking cava and eating tapas and I think you will too. It's full of brothels and sex clubs are the El Raval which is worth a wander around for its Bohemian atmosphere, Barcelona has got everything and anything!

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