Day 70: Girona to Barcelona

October 18, 2024

City to city train:

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Along the Rambla in Barcelona:

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I noticed this rather amusing lamp on the ground floor of our stay.

Also, reading in Tripadvisor, or somesuch, someone complained that thre place had no elevator and also that the armoire door would not open without banging into the bed. On complaining to management, the writer was told that this is not a hotel, but a 200 year old house, so tough.

We descended our stairs again, to get to the bike shop at the base. Fortunately Dodie had an alternate route for getting the bike back up.

Stephan had bled the brake again, giving the theory that if there is a leak, it would be inside the frame, since nothing can be spotted outside. It would be a matter of replacing the whole line, to track it down. "Next time", we told him. This was not an idle pleasantry, since we are indeed likely to be back in Girona, quite soon.

We set off for the train station, since today our plan was to shift to Barcelona while avoiding any trauma of riding into that large city.

We began in the Girona old town, and Dodie said "Quick, there is nobody in the street - good for a photo". But in a flash, someone jumped in front of the photo, and in another flash there were ten people, plus one car!

Out by the river, we found that once again this year school kids were out in force, with drawing materials, in a competition to create representations of the town. Lots of them greeted us nicely as we passed.

We of course had to pass beyond the old town to find the train station. This photo illustrates generally what the not old town looks like.

At the train station, getting our tickets was super easy, and the price of 17 euros for two was for some reason less than last year. We also found out that there is a train we could take some time, with the bikes, from here to Cerbere, which is just over the border in France!

Up on the platform we could see this one Gaudi-like roof out in the town:

The train had somehow been allowed to get covered in graffiti. But it did feature a car with a straight on level entry, while others involved three steps. The level entry was really in support of wheelchairs, and there we no specific bike provisions.

Just inside the doors, we found that a lady had grabbed the jump seat of the wheelchair designated area. There were other seats open in the car, and we asked her to move, but she refused. So fine, we locked her in with our bikes.

Incredibly, the lady was getting off at the very next stop. She asked us to move the bikes, which we did, but veery slowly. What was the lady thinking?

When we got to Barcelona, in the station we were immediately immersed in the crowds of a big city. It was rather a shock. Girona is a much smaller and calmer place.

Dodie did a good job of filtering through the hustle and bustle outside the train station and getting us started on a bike path that led to the city centre.

We passed this shopping centre, which is in remodelled bull ring.

And we got onto a large boulevard heading downtown. This is not "the" large boulevard, but only one of many in the city.

Soon we were on the "rambla", the main walking street of town. Dodie's yellow outfit allowed her to stand out here.

and here ... she is still easy to follow

But crowds on the rambla can be very thick

Our place is called the Hotel Gaudi, the reason being no doubt that it is right across the street from the Palau Guell, Gaudi's first commission in the town. At street level this building looks quite normal, but once you look at its roof, you see the Gaudi silliness!

At the hotel, Dodie launched the usual discussion with the desk staff about when we would pay, where to put the bikes, breakfast, and so on. But she could barely hear, because of the lady at the next position, engaging in a loud and lengthy debate over which room she was getting and the bed it would have for her hyper active kid. I say hyper active, because during this it was running around, periodically shouting. Dodie eventually had to ask the lady to pipe down, so she could hear her own desk clerk.

We retired to our room, noting this juvenile herring gull at our balcony. There are really a lot of gulls at Barcelona.

One of the first chores we always do is to connect devices to wifi, and to download the track of where we had travelled in the day. Not only does wifi quality vary a lot from hotel to hotel, but the hoops they have devised for logging in vary as well, and often these like to log you out unexpectedly as well. In this case, they seem to have gone out of their way to devise an impossible to remember or to type in password. That's why it is in my camera and appearing below. I had to photograph and blow it up. That last "fi" was specially hard to see clearly!

Here is that Gaudi thing across the street. It costs 12 euros to get in. But we got a good look at its roof from the terrace of our hotel:

The building across the street, from above.

Also from our terrace, we got these other looks at the city. That includes the peek at the Sagrada Familia church, behind the red building.

The barcelona cathedral on the left, and the Torre Glories office tower on the right.

We dumped our stuff, typed in that wiki code a few times, and set out for a quick look at the town. We walked on the Rambla, at first toward the harbour.

There were several street performers along the way.

Also trinket vendors who it seems must be able to close shop and run at a moment's notice. So they have their wares on cloths, with strings tied at the corners. They can yank these up and go, really fast.

The statue of Columbus stands prominently at the port, pointing out to sea.

Out in the port, there are just all sorts of boats, moving this way and that, and buildings.

We had begun to clue in to the fact that the America's Cup was in town. There were hints like those below:

So we stopped a man with a tee shirt reading "Emirates Team New Zealand" and asked him. It turned out that it was New Zealand (the incumbent champion) vs Great Britain, that they had just won today's race, and were on the brink of final victory.

This adult Herring Gull does not seem to care.

It seems they sail up and down outside the port.

We of course have no idea what an "AC75" looks like. Is it this:?

Columbus is actually showing us where to look.

Zooming in from across the harbour, we see this:

Yes, yes, all the colours are coordinated.

These are right near where the boat is docking.

Leaving the sailors to their exciting event, we reversed course and walked up the Rambla. Some distance up, we passed Casa Bruno Cuadros, a house decorated with a fancy dragon. This is not the Chinese embassy, or anything, just one of many fancy houses in the city.

All along the Rambla are restaurants, with similar, colourful menus. We were vaguely considering stopping at one of these. It would be easy to do, because if you stop to look at at menu for more than 5 seconds, a personable host will offer to usher you to a table.

Our guide mentioned a pastry shop called Escriba, so we stopped in there as well. They only had a few items, but they were indeed very artistic.

Instead of the Rambla restaurants or the pastry shop, we headed for the St Josep market.

Unlike a French market, this had only one bakery and no rotisserie. Instead, there was a wide variety of ready to eat foods, such as prepared fruit cups and juice, empanadas, sardines breaded and arranged like French fries, and much more.

There was also an extensive sea food section. Not sure, though, why all these cockel shells:

Back to the fruits, look at these great figs!

This man is making the fruit cups, fresh:

We were somehow attracted by the chocolates and fruit gums:

But we thought Laurie would really like these olives:

As we headed back to the hotel, we ran into a demonstration, but we had no idea about what.

So we waded in and asked some of the demonstrators what was going on. It turned out that a workers meeting venue was being scheduled for demolition by the city, to make a parking lot, or something like that. This being Barcelona, they said, it was time to take to the streets.

The police were having fun playing with their radios and stuff.

This pretty much wrapped up our fun for the day as well. Tomorrow we will walk the town again. Stay tuned!

Today's ride: 15 km (9 miles)
Total: 3,626 km (2,252 miles)

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Scott AndersonThanks for the confirmation about the train into France. That matches my understanding but it’s good to know for sure since we plan to be on it soon.
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2 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Scott AndersonWe will be watching your experience eagerly. The climb over the Pyrenees is getting harder every year and uses time that could be more profitably spent in other locations.
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2 months ago

Tricia GrahamKiwis are really focused on Barcelona at the moment. Will be much rejoicing if Team NZ wins one of the races tonight as it means we retain the Americas Cup
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2 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Tricia GrahamWe will undoubtedly hear the rejoicing from wherever we are in the town, the Kiwi contingent was so large there will be a huge yell of victory.
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2 months ago

Karen PoretTo Tricia Graham👍🙌
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2 months ago