Somewhere in my ancient roots there must be a touch of Spanish blood as Barcelona touched my soul in many ways. Sounds corny I know, but I can't find other words to explain it. We landed in Girona on a Sunday morning, 10 minutes before the scheduled arrival time, picked up our suitcases, purchased bus tickets into the city and found our seats all with 30 minutes. Ryan Air delivered on their promise again.
The drive to Barcelona was dotted with ancient stone ruins, aquaducts, vineyards, green rolling hills and fields, with the odd country villa where only the rich and famous could reside.
On arriving at Station Nord bus and train depot we had our first real experience with a foreign language. Signs and ticket machines were bi or tri-lingual, Spanish, Catalan and sometimes French. We punched the button that said Placa de Catalanya and boldly fed in Euro coins until tickets came out. Faced with a choice of 2 platforms we stopped a nice young couple to ask for directions. After much animated discussion on which was the right way to go the young man points us towards a tunnel leading to a platform where the machine kept spitting our tickets back out at us. At seeing our obvious confusion, a good Samaratin stopped and with sign language and limited English explained we were on the wrong platform for the ticket we had purchased. Back we go to our starting point and 10 minutes later we boarded the train for Placa de Catalanya stop.
A short ride later we disembark only to discover a maze of exits, none of which indicate the way to Las Ramblas. As panic starts to set in we notice a staffed information booth, so off we go, suitcases in hand. To our dismay none of the attendants spoke English, so with sign language and broken high school French we asked for directions. In response to our gestures and fractured French one gentleman emphatically pointed straight ahead. As I start out in what I think is the right direction he bangs on the glass and waves his arm up and down, pointing again. Don then starts off towards a turnstile, which brings on more banging on the glass. We return to the booth and again, with gestures and questioning looks, ask him to repeat the directions. He now points downward, where to our surprise we see there is a gate attached to the booth.. we point to it....he smiles and nods.....we sheepishly open the gate and proceed down the obvious exit...to our enjoyment all 3 attendants stand up and smiling broadly, give us a rousing round of applause. Nice folks.
A short walk later and we find our daughter leaning up against a building waiting for us. She greets us with a hearty "welcome to Barcelona, I see you made it".
Our apartment was located at #6 Calle Portaferrissa, which literally means "the street of the iron gate". The mouth of the street is the entrance to the old city, holding a great iron gate. The dark narrow streets house an accumulation of shops, restaurants and bars.
Sleep came quickly the first night and we woke Monday morning to the sounds of roosters crowing, monkeys screeching and shopkeepers rolling up their doors to open for business. Overnight a nasty head cold settled in and cramped my style for the next 2 days, but hey, you might as well be sick in an exotic location, right? On Monday morning I did make it as far as the La Boqueria market to pick up sausage, fruit, cheese and bread but had to head back to our apartment and a nap. The next 2 days were spent reading, sleeping and popping cold tablets. By Wednesday I felt almost human and ventured down the 89 stone steps into the world.
My list of MUST SEE sights include the Sagrada Familia, La Pedrera and Casa Battlo designed by Antonio Gaudi, the Barri Gotic medieval ruins from the 14th and 15th century, the Barcelona Cathedral, Roman Ruins and Las Ramblas. 4 days is not long enough to even scratch the surface of what Barcelona has to offer. My list of things I will do next time (see I'm already committed to returning) include the various museums, Parc Guell, the waterfront, Aquarium and Montjuic park.
One thing I did get my fill of is Paella, had it for 3 meals and surprisingly the one I liked best was a seafood concoction described as "Black, with squid ink". I felt very brave trying it.
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