Snowy Barcelona, November 20th - 21st 1999
Train Estrella left Málaga just in time on 8:00 pm towards the northern Spain. The train seemed to be quite plain, not flashy, not worn. The cafe car was surprisingly quiet to be Spanish. After a little evening snack and viewing the dark scenery passing by it was time to hop onto the uppermost bunk.
After passing Córdoba, Albacete and Valencia during the night the morning is sunny and the landscape picturesque. An hour before Barcelona the track follows the shoreline and we pass by some nice little towns with their churches and castles. The area seems to be greener than Costa del Sol, but then, it's quite natural.
After arriving to the train station I look for the metro, and luckily I don't have to change, but just ride the green line all the way to Montbau end station. There I had to wonder for a while the whereabouts of my hotel, having quite chilly wind hastening my decisions. Hotel Alimara seemed to be worth the four stars, and since I hadn't had the opportunity to use a really nice bathroom for months, I took a nice warm shower. There was even a water massage option in there!
But then I was already in a hurry to the town to hunt for the main attractions. My biggest interest was the works of Antonio Gaudi, and the biggest of them, the church Sagrada Familia was my first goal. So, with the metro to the nearest station and up to the streets. By a pure change I got up just in front of Fundació a T?pies, one of Gaudi's houses. From there I walked towards Sagrada Familia. I had known it was not finished, but I was surprised to see that actually only the outer walls and towers were ready, there was no roof or any other inside in the church! There were paintings of the church in the form Gaudi had designed it to be, and boy it will magnificent place, if it someday will be finished! The construction work was on its way, but it is somewhat slow, since (I got the impression) it uses only money got from donations. I hope those are plentiful enough to finish the building.
From the church I continued towards Casa Milá, or La Pedrera. From outside it was somewhat a disappointment, and I realized that the exceptional forms had skillfully been exaggerated in most of the photographs I had seen. It would have been possible to go inside, but I was already so hungry that the basic need won the more cultural one. I headed to Las Ramblas streets hoping to find some attractive place to eat. In this account Barcelona seemed be weaker than Málaga onto which offering I had got used to during the last months. I saw the newly built opera house Liceo and continued to Port Vell, a new free time area built on the shoreline. There I decided that a man has to eat and chose a place that didn't seem to have too much the American effect. The first course I chose from the list, the anglerfish soup, was not available after all, so I ended up eating tortellini and an entrecote. That didn't have that much local feeling, but at least the dessert was definitely local: crema catalana. The staff was polite, but the overwhelming 'Sorry Sir's and 'Thank you Sir's didn't feel that natural to me.
The weather had become cloudier during the day, and it was cold all the time, about five degrees Celsius. When I was leaving Port Vell I had to notice that it was raining. Damned. In that temperature I didn't want to get wet, so I practiced some serious window-shopping for a while, since there wasn't anything really worth buying to me either. After some moments the rain had ceased to some occasional tips, so I left and headed towards the gothic blocks. In there the main attraction is the Cathedral, in which they were having the ceremony just when I peeked inside. In the front of the church they had also some happening, there was a brass band playing some obviously local music since there were many groups of people dancing some peaceful dance in circles. After seeing this it was the time to head for the hotel to rest for a while.
From a brochure of a travel agency I had read that it's no use to come to Barcelona to sleep. This in mind I left to the town to find some nightlife. This seemed to be difficult, though. The streets were empty of people, and the cold came through my jacket. I had some information where there supposedly were some nice restaurants, but in a big city the distances are big also, and since I wanted to walk, it took time. All in all, finally I found one place with a plenty of people, a disco called Bikini. Before that I had walked more than ten kilometers! The prices in this city were quite different of those in Málaga; with the fee of entrance of 1500 pesetas (9 euros) I was able to get one drink, though.
The Sunday morning is quite dark, the reason being the clouds in the sky, not in my head! And this had to be seen, it starts to pour snow from the clouds! Of course this is familiar to me, since I have lived in Finland almost all my life, but I wouldn't have expected to experience this in the Mediterranean coast. The snowfall lasted the whole day. Later I heard that it was the first time in Barcelona since 1993. On Sunday also Córdoba had its share of the snowfall, and there it was the first one since 20 years! This day proved to be quite exceptional experience, the conditions were like in the Lapland, but surroundings were those of old Mediterranean culture. But before heading to the city it was time for a superb breakfast in the hotel. My travel agency had said that the breakfast was not included in the price of the room, so I tried to pay for it, but the waiter wouldn't take the money.
My main goal for Sunday was to see Park Güell, designed by Gaudi, of course. Because it was reasonably close to my hotel, I decided to walk there. The city looked nice with the white jacket the snow formed. Little by little I realized that it was really exceptional to see snow around here, since I saw many people taking pictures and video recordings of the snow and people playing in the snow. To me it was actually getting used to the conditions I would face again after returning to Finland in the weeks to come. I was experienced enough to put enough clothing on me: two layers of woolen socks, long middle pants, two under shirts and two T-shirts under my fleece jacket. This proved to be quite appropriate clothing to wear when you stay the whole day outside in cold and damp weather.
Park Güell was a little bit hard to find, when I approached it from the north. It is on the edge of a bigger park area with hills and forest, and no signs, at least not from where I came from. From the pictures and works of art I had created an image in my mind that proved to be too big or grandeur, but the arcs built from natural stones were really handsome, though. A nice detail was the home of Gaudi himself on the edge of the park, which served now as a small museum. The pictures I took in the park may not be colorful because of the weather, but certainly they are rarities because of the combination of snow and Park Güell!
I had decided to find a Catalonian restaurant to eat lunch in. I took the metro to the railway station, left the bigger backpack in a locker and studied my guide map. The first restaurant in the alphabetical order, Abrevadero, was situated just in the perfect place near street Paral.lel (notice the dot, it seems to distinguish the double l from yj consonant in Catalan language). Later Pedro told me that el Abrevadero means the place from which the domestic animals eat their food, so this place had to have just the right attitude!
The restaurant was really nice, although the clients are scarce. The personnel were just appropriately friendly and young. The other clients greeted me also, and above all, the food was really tasty! I suspect if my choices were Catalan at all. For starters I had a light salad with goat cheese and plum sauce, and for the main course fish Dorado with sautéed garlic claws and other small vegetables. At first I was surprised and thought that it was quite minimalist, but while eating I realized that it was just the right combination to be enjoyed, not just anything to fill your stomach. Even the rose vine de la casa was exceptional, very brisk without the usual sticky feeling in your tongue. And for dessert I had chocolate-apple mousse in hard chocolate cover. With the coffee they even served some little sweet things, one of which obviously had some oatmeal inside. Great!
After the lunch I took the trolley to the Montjuic hill, where I found a cabin station and decided to go all the way. While waiting in the line I saw the technical information with the elevation figures and got amused. This cabin would take me a whopping one hundred meters higher, and the trolley I just came with climbed at most a couple of hundred meters. Later my image of Catalonian people being afraid of climbing got even stronger when I found a series of escalators in front of the art museum.
On the Montjuic hill there is an old fortress serving now as a museum, as well as many premises for the 1992 Olympic games. The scenery was nice, since it just the time of sunset. But at this point I had to hurry, because my train was about to leave quite soon. The walk towards the train station revealed several points of interest: Palau Nacional, Plaça Espanya and Parc de Joan Miro. Even in the station I had an eye pleasing experience: the font used in the light tables looked like Comic Sans, not the basic crude thing you see everywhere in other places!
The train left just on time, and the fellow travelers were again of pleasant and quiet type. Now I have to say - as the commentators in the Lonely Planet TV series usually do - that a visit this short was just enough to give you the certainty that this place would be worth visiting a much longer time. And preferably in some warm spring weeks!
Copyright(c) 2002 Jari Kirvesoja. All rights reserved.