Day 32: Back to the beginning: Barcelona

PW: Left a wet and damp Santiago on a 4:15am taxi and boarded a 6:45am flight to Barcelona. Need to be there 2 hours before departure. Got to airport and surprised to find Spaniards already queuing at check in, well before time, when no assistants there! In NZ, more relaxed attitude about internal travel.

Got to beautiful Barcelona around 8am. Really a favourite city of mine, in terms of architecture, food, climate, Catalan people and being by the sea. Who’s can go past Zafron’s trilogy based in Barcelona?

Navigated metro and found our way to hostel. This is our last base after 33 consecutive days of changing places. We’ll kind of miss the privileged transient life we’ve had. We’re based near the beach so wandered down with the hope of a beach day, which wasn’t meant to be. Wind and cloud got up. Managed to have a doze on beach, which is always nice.

We then wandered along the storefront, passed the Americas Cup venue for the Rich Boys. Small Paul tried to charm himself in but I saw his New Balance shorts and Macpac cap wasn’t going to cut it. We were duly referred to the Fanzone for the general riff-raff down the beach. We spent a pleasant few hours in warm weather watching the challenger races (Britain v Italy) on the big screen while we could also watch the boats fly across the water. An engineering marvel to watch. Britain won two races and in strong position to challenge Team NZ.

In process, we chatted to a young Kiwi guy about his life as a two person crew on a super yacht for a super wealthy German. Boat is only used three months a year, rest of time is maintenance and repair. Winters are slow. Gets €4000 per month which pays off his student loan. Could stay on and move to a captains position, but thinks about re-entering the real world back in NZ.

After races we walked back to hostel via a corridor of Super Yachts and vessels moored at Barcelona. Quite the juxtaposition coming off the Camino just the day before! Maybe these things and football stadiums are the modern day cathedrals? Small Paul and I ogled at the wealth in similar way to the Spanish churches we’d seen.

Our plans are to get some washing done, visit Sacrada Família, have a Catalan lunch with the lovely Merce and touch base with Harry Cave. In between, we’ll just wander around this beautiful place, hopefully fit in another beach day, weather permitting, and do some shopping before we jump on the plane on Saturday.

Not much time left on our adventure.Read more