There is so much to see and do in Barcelona, so with only two full days at our disposal, choices had to be made.
The first choice is to incorporate a suggestion from probably our most die-hard reader, and to put the SOTD at the start of the text, so here it is.
SOTD - Ode to Joy, Beethoven Symphony No. 9 … and a particularly brilliant video of a live ‘unplanned’ outdoor performance in Sabadell, a few km’s north of Barcelona. It captures the stumble-upon joy we’ve found today, and throughout this trip.
Enjoy.
As for the rest of the choices, the one thing that was not negotiable was a return to see Sagrada Familia. This will be Kirsten’s third time seeing this wonder grow and evolve. Her first was in 1968 when she was 4 years old, so she admittedly doesn’t have great memories of it, and her second time was in March 2004 when we were here with our kids. We were all fascinated with it then, and all of Antoni Gaudi’s work in Barcelona, and were very keen to see the progress over the last 20 years. This will be Callum’s and my second tour and as Callum was only 8 the first time, his memory of it is better than K’s first visit, but still a little sketchy.
So with this firmly set in our calendar for the morning of the 27th, we had the rest of the days to fill. Did we tour the Ramblas area and market, the 1992 Olympic sights, the waterfront ? Nope, we did all that in 2004 … so we focused on Gaudi. On the morning of the 26th Kirsten and I went to Casa Batlló, a fascinating private residence that was actually a 1904-06 renovation of an existing building. We toured this in 2004 and it was only open to the public in 2002. Since our last visit more of the building has been restored and is open to the public. The only words that adequately describe it are “marine’, ‘organic’ and ‘flowing’. Not only was more of the building open 20 years later, there were also a lot more people here having a look at it. Fortunately we had pre-booked tickets (again a new feature since 2004!) and it was pretty well organized. We didn’t have an intimate exploration, but for a major attraction in a major city in the summer, it was quite pleasant.
After Batlló, we went back to our apartment, with a stop off at the Post Office that was only two blocks from the apartment to buy our bike boxes! This was one of the easiest and nicest ‘bike packing’ exercises we’ve had. There was a large well lit area in the apartment reception for us to put the boxes together and get the bikes into them. With the supplies we’d purchased at the Brico in Mataro, and the boxes from the Post Office, the bikes were securely packed up and back in the storage room in under an hour.
Callum and Brennan arrived from London (where they’d been for a friend’s wedding) shortly after we got the bike packing done and then we all set off for the next Gaudi attraction ( Gaudi as in Antoni, not a gaudy attraction as in Madam Tussaud’s or Blackpool), Parc Güell, a beautiful landscaped park in northern Barcelona with a number of Gaudi buildings, including his personal house, and great views of Barcelona and the sea. Once again, this was a place we visited in 2004, in late winter, with almost no one else there. Not the case today as it was pretty packed making photography a little more complex, unless you wanted selfies of throngs of other people taking selfies.
With the Parc done, it was time for siesta. Barcelona doesn’t quite shut down like smaller cities and towns, but it gets noticeably quieter and today we were part of that equation too. It was hot, the apartment was cool and comfortable so we did what the locals do, chilled and rested for the rest of the afternoon.
With Callum and Brennan now in tow, we had to continue the last few nights of gorging. They had already taken care of booking a place for tomorrow night, so for tonight we found a veggie focused Monsieur M recommended place, Virens and we got an ‘early booking’ - at 8:30.
While we were planning how to get there we realized that this restaurant was situated in a five star hotel, not always a great equation for a memorable night. Unfortunately that turned out to be the case. We all had one of their set multi-course menus with the wine pairing, and the food was very good - some of it excellent, but it was let down by the service which was, to be charitable, indifferent, and the wine pairings were strange. This is the second time we’ve been let down with the service in one of these high end hotel based restaurants and we’ll try to ensure that future bookings are in small chef owned and operated places. They are invariably the best overall experiences. Spoiler alert, that’s what we had the next night!
Just another interesting ‘street view’ as we were making our way to Casa Batlló in the morning.
The entrance stairwell to Casa Batlló. Very marine organic influences. You were encouraged to touch the surfaces and feel the building. Gaudi was ahead of the curve on ergonomics. The whole building felt good and worked, textures lighting, airflow … everything
Eva WaltersSuch amazingly beautiful spaces in Casa Batllo. We were so impressed that we visited it twice during the week we were in Barcelona. Imagine what it would have been like to live in an apartment in the building. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Kirsten KaarsooTo Eva WaltersYes, it really is a magical place and Gaudi's ability to make it feel so aquatic is remarkable Reply to this comment 1 year ago
With deflating the rear tire and scrunching the fender right up to the rim, the bikes ‘just’ fit in the box with the front racks and fender on. This made packing quite a bit easier.
More views of Barcelona from Parc Güell - dominated by Sargrada Familia. You just can’t shake that Gaudi guy here (although I’m sure that a million times more people associate Barcelona with Messi)
Curving benches tiled in ‘trencadis’ - broken ceramic tile, a Gaudi signature, surrounds the large terrace overlooking the park and Barcelona. This is only a very small section, to capture more would necessitate including about 300 people taking selfies!
View of the tiled seating and the columns supporting the large terrace in Parc Güell. The red brick building on the right I believe was Gaudi’s personal residence.
The 27th was a Tuesday … may favourite day as a retired guy. Most Tuesday’s you can go wherever you want, whenever you want and pretty much have that place to yourself.
Unfortunately that doesn’t apply to the Sagrada Familia. It wasn’t overly crowded and it was an absolutely stunning morning …. And even if it was elbow to elbow and poring rain, we still would have gone to see this place.
Wandering around it for the last 36 hours we could see that a lot of work had been done on it in the two decades since we were last here.
For context on how much the construction on Sagrada Familia has progressed, here's a few pictures from our March 2004 tour. The building was a partially complete shell with what is now the main floor area of the church a 'no access' construction zone. Most of the tour was from elevated walkways, which were part of the construction access very high above the ground. Such a different perspective from what we saw today.
It is now a fully functioning Basilica, albeit with construction activity still happening, and what we saw 20 years ago, and in Gaudi’s other completed works in Barcelona, hinted at what the finished product would be, but the current mostly completed reality is mind blowing.
These pic's were taken with our first digital camera - a 'near state of the art' Nikon Coolpix with a 2.1 mega pixel sensor and an SD card that could hold about 100 mega bytes!
The Fruit adorning one of the towers - this is how high up and close we could get …. I didn’t have a zoom on the camera!
Fast forward to 27th June, 2023, 19 years and some change since the above photo’s were taken.
I’m running out of coherent narrative (you may think that’s already happened), but nothing can really describe what this place is like on the inside. It’s a close as any human has got to creating something like the caves and grottos we saw at Gouffre de Padirac. Regardless if you’re a religious person, agnostic or atheist, I think everyone would be moved in some way by the feeling this space creates. The light, the organic forms, the grandeur and the intricate details …. It’s amazing. I’ll let the pictures speak but like so much of what we’ve seen over the last 10 weeks, they only hint at how marvellous the reality is.
The Nativity Facade, about the only thing that is the same as 20 years ago.
Kirsten KaarsooTo Rachael AndersonI was so impressed with how the the 'trees' were made of different stone so different colours which just added to the forest effect. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Scott AndersonYou’re right, words aren’t really sufficient to describe what an astonishing place this is. All the light! Reply to this comment 1 year ago
The morning tour of the Sagrada Familia was quite awe inspiring. I can’t think that any feeling person would not find some wonder and inspiration from this place. We all certainly did.
We had a relaxed low key afternoon - it was too hot to really do much of anything, except hang out in the street cafe’s and graze on Pintxos like the locals. So that’s what we did before our siesta.
Our final dinner was a real tour de force. Callum and Brennan had made a booking at Hisop, a small 10 table restaurant that’s owned and operated by the chef Oriol Ivern Bondia. It’s been in business since 2001 and has had a Michelin star for the last decade. With all that, it was an intimate, friendly, low key, high food note, relaxed, fun … and just incredibly great evening. Once again we had their multi course set menu and wine pairings and everything was exquisite. Very understated menu descriptions and exceptionally flavourful real food. A perfect ending to our gorging and basquing experience!
Some of our lunch Pintxos … very good set up for an amazing finale at Hisop
Followed by baby broad beans ‘a la catalana’ with eucalyptus. The server, a very friendly and funny young woman, finished this with some freshly grated ….. Fisherman’s Friend throat lozenge!!! This was all done with a smile and a laugh … try it, you’ll like it … and we did!
Eva WaltersYum! Have very much enjoyed all your food pics throughout the journal and the detailed descriptions of the dishes. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Kirsten KaarsooThanks Eva,
We enjoyed posting the pics, and even more, eating the food :)
Spain has some amazing restaurants! Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Scott AndersonWe’ve had a similar exposure to the Sagrada Familia. We first saw it in 1997 when it was still skeletal and we could ride an elevator high up inside; and then we revisited it in 2018 and we’re stunned by the transformation. Like yourselves, we’ll have to make it back for another look someday.
Here’s our take on the experience: https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/europe2022/the-sagrada-familia/ Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Lyle McLeodTo Scott AndersonJust re-read your post …. I’d forgotten that you’d toured the Sagrada just last year, and honest …. I didn’t cut and paste a couple of your photo’s into our post ….. it just looks that way! Some scenes and places are just naturals for everyone to take a shot of! Amazing place and it will be high on the list to return to. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Jacquie GaudetI'm kicking myself for not visiting Sagrada Familia when I was in Barcelona! I guess I'll have to go back. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Kirsten KaarsooTo Jacquie GaudetYou definitely do have to go back. Both the inside and outside evoked similar feelings of awe as did the caves at Gouffre de Padirac Reply to this comment 1 year ago
Kirsten KaarsooTo Eva WaltersThanks Eva,
SOTD is really important for us as it provides another sensory reference to remember the day. Most of the time it really only means something to us, but every once in a while there's a song or video that's transcendent. I think this is one of those. So glad you enjoyed it. Reply to this comment 1 year ago
