From Gaudi to the Romans

This was a busy one starting with a taxi to Sagrada Familia at 7.45 on the internet suggestion that you should go ‘early, around 8am’ if you wanted to attend the International Mass at 9am, but literally hundreds of others had the same idea so we had a half hour line-up outside in a chilly breeze but didn’t worry. We’d grabbed a roll and sausage at the hotel breakfast room so ate that as we waited. Many languages could be heard around us. We had to go through the X-ray machines then on into the church, we were lucky to get front seats on the right-hand aisle so could see and hear everything, target for the incense and holy water as the priests walked through the congregation. They had an internet site to download the order of service – never thought I’d see the day that a fair percentage of any congregation was glued to their phones in the middle of the service! That’s life today isn’t it? I had plenty of time to get a video looking around at the colours and music in the background.

The service was mostly in Spanish, a bit of English and French, but it was reasonably easy to follow. The choir and music in general was lovely and of course the stunning colours of the stained glass just made it a very special part of our holiday, especially for Pete as he is a regular attender of Mass, and I just like the ritual, maybe the lapsed Anglican coming out in me from my childhood of Sunday school three times a month and Family Service with Mum in Bulls on the fourth Sunday while Dad stayed home and cooked the Sunday roast. Being Palm Sunday there was a blessing of palms/random tree branches some of the congregation had brought, more incense for that. It looked like they had two bishops, one priest, one choir conductor, one congregation music conductor, and a cast of several altar servers and readers.

Hard to say how many attended though we had seen on line they restricted it to 500, and there were already people in the ‘normal admission’ line for I think a 10am opening so they were keen. We were certainly chucked out in a hurry; I snatched a few photos but was happy I’d managed the video earlier and some of the glass and colours.

We took the underground to La Rambla just along from our hotel, shot into the Gothic Quarter and had empanadas and pastries at a café, it was our ‘second breakfast’ which we learned about on the food tour: first breakfast when you get up early and maybe have coffee and something small, second two or three hours later which would be a bit more substantial, third is lunch around 1 or 2pm, then it’s siesta time, then fourth a reasonable snack and back to work, and a fairly light dinner around 9pm or later. In our few days here we have managed the five feeds quite easily but not necessarily as light as some of them should have been?

Back to the hotel for a spell then it was off to the Palau de la Música where we did an audio tour around the beautiful art deco auditorium and public areas, 50 minutes, two short organ recitals. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, known for its intricate stained glass in the side windows and a stunning glass chandelier, lovely red velvet seats, smallish stage where very well-known artists have appeared. Well worth the visit – have a look at the link for much better photos than I could put in. You could go out on a terrace overlooking one of the main plazas too.

https://www.palaumusica.cat/en/the-art-nouveau-…

Next stop was the History Museum which to our surprise had free entry and it was fairly busy. It’s in the old castle/cathedral area, is in three parts and the first covers an overview of the city over the last 2000 years – I was more interested in the older stuff, not the fairly extensive 20th century industrial and civil war stuff, but it was well done. Pete and I had split up (he reads everything very slowly) and I went to the older building which has a very plain chapel which, when you look closely, has lovely stained glass and an old painted ceiling. There’s also a large, fairly empty, main hall, high ceiling and windows, and exhibit cases around the edges with all sorts of pottery, jewellery, tools, all kinds of things found around the site.

Met up with Pete and we had a look at a garden in the next building, open to the sky, tinkling fountain, stone stairs, very Spanish and peaceful. I left him there and was about to head to the hotel when I saw movement behind a big glass door and thought it must be another exhibit – young woman asked ‘do you want to see the Roman ruins?’. Well, did I? We didn’t even know they were there and they are ENORMOUS, an incredible walkway through the remains of a dyers factory with brick tanks where they soaked stuff in urine and other liquids to process it; next along was a garum (fish sauce) factory with fairly intact circular pottery vats/jars more than a meter across where the sauce was stored; then we were into a slightly later time, wine making on a large scale, where the juice was fed in channels around the factory and ended up in similar round storage jars set into the ground. What a find this place was. There was a part where church leaders of a later period were buried, a private walkway the bishop would have used to go from residence to the church which even had a resting bench on the way. I texted Pete to make sure he found it too so we were both well satisfied with our day’s touristing.

https://www.barcelona.cat/museuhistoria/en/heri…

We had noticed lots of school groups on La Rambla on Thursday and Friday, high school age, and there were still some around on Sunday but more families and some fairly big walking tours. I’d expected to see more hen parties or the famous ‘lager louts’ but no real evidence of either – or perhaps we just weren’t out late enough in the evenings. I think this was a good time to come to Spain weather-wise and before the real tourist season starts. There are smokers everywhere so cigarettes must be cheap, shopkeepers sweep the streets endlessly in front of their cloned tourist shops all selling the same T-shirts, mosaic-patterned everything from fridge magnets to……..you name it, and there’s quite a heavy police presence, all in black, armed and visible in cars and on the street but an awful lot standing round in front of the several cop shops.

We often heard singing in the squares, lanes and subway, all sorts of music, instruments, voices, it was nice to stand for a couple of minutes to listen. And that was a chance to look around and up at the houses though at street level the shops in early mornings had shutters pulled down (like roller doors), many covered with graffiti, as were the huge wooden doors leading to mysterious courtyards – many of them had ornate doorhandles or knockers, very heavy-looking.

We’ve been seeing the Catalan flag everywhere – four red stripes, five yellow; the red either signifying the stripes being drawn in blood by King Charles the Bald on Count Wilfred the Hairy of Barcelona’s golden shield in about 900 as an act of gratitude. Or possibly Ramon Berenguer painting the bars in his own blood on a yellow shield, or even Louis the Pious drew the bars on a golden shield during the conquest of Barcelona. Lots of different accounts and a fair bit of blood involved.

For dinner we decided to look for the other two places we’d been on the food tour but both were closed so we just wandered, ended up very close to the Bridge of Sighs and its skull decoration, sat outside with a drink for ten minutes but a very thin wind sent us inside where we had yet more tapas. I was going to have cava but in the cocktail list I saw …..peach juice, cava…….and skipped over the rest, thought it sounded like my favourite Bellini cocktail. Bellini on steroids, two or three shots of something else, I have to admit I was a bit light on my feet when we left, partly cobbled streets don’t help either. Having the days in Barcelona before the cruise was the best thing we could have done, we saw and did such a lot without it being crazy busy, and the weather was kind to us.Read more