Plaça de la Vila de Madrid

Having got the basics out of the way we decided we'd devote the next two days to visiting Barcelona itself. Brian carefully mapped out a plan whereby we'd drive into the city, park at the Estacio de Nord (the northern bus station) then do the tourist thing by buying tickets on one of the hop-on, hop-off double decker buses.
Talking first about the drive, it can best be described as hair-raising, even if Brian doesn't have a great deal of hair to raise.

Our hotel was about 75km out of town, and given that about half the trip is on motorways with speed limits between 90 and 120 kph, it's clear that the bits at each end were dead slow. That's something we didn't realise when choosing where to stay. At one end are the narrow country roads and hairpin bends while the Barcelona end is jammed with traffic. Making things scarier, the speed limits are all about 20kph above what we Australians would regard as sensible, and the Spanish view anyway is that the posted speed limit is the absolute minimum at which one should drive. In our 1000km or so of driving we never once saw a police presence on the roads. There are many places where the traffic lanes are way too narrow which adds further to the challenge of driving a left-hand drive car.

The first part of the trip took us through the centre of Manresa, a place made famous by its laundrette and its misguided saint Ignatius who lived in a cave. We were to follow the road through Manresa a few times on this trip.

Anyway, back to the more interesting aspects of our holiday. Everything went to plan and we then caught the very efficient Metro from Arc de Triomf to Place de Catalayuns. We bought two-day passes and jumped on the first of our buses. The city is spectacularly beautiful, with so much interesting architecture, statues and promenades to see. So many of the old Spanish buildings have been beautifully restored, then there are the fascinating early 20th century buildings of Gaudi and his contemporaries. Finally, there are many modern buildings which are stunning in their unusual features.

One of the stops was the famous Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral designed by Gaudi. The crowds milling round it were HUGE with hundreds of selfies per minute being snapped away. It was hard to get any sort of shot which wasn't like everyone else's and which didn't have lots of vehicles and fellow tourists dominating the foreground. Brian took what shots he could with the mobile phone.. Tickets to the cathedral were well and truly sold out so we never did get to see the interior.

Speaking of Gaudi, we'd been highly recommended to visit Parc Guell, a futuristic precinct initiated by Gaudi. It was one of the listed stops on the bus route, so we hopped off at the so-named stop. From there, it turned out that we had a 15 minute climb through narrow streets to reach the park entrance. That was fine and we handled it easily. What we weren't expecting when we got there were the very large crowds. Furthermore, as with the cathedral, tickets had sold out for the day. The very helpful information lady at the entrance told us how to get tickets online, warning us that there were plenty of dodgy websites claiming to sell tickets. Unfortunately by the time we got back to base, tickets for the following day were sold out too. Barcelona certainly beckons us to make a return visit, one which is better planned and more leisurely.

Having done a lot of walking and having seen a great deal we navigated our way back to the car followed by the long drive back. We must have hit the evening rush hour because the traffic in the city was exceptionally slow and challenging.

Rather than head straight to hotel we diverted into Cardona village where we enjoyed a cheap and cheerful meal. The place didn't have an English language version of the menu, but fortunately our waiter was able to drag the cook out of the kitchen and her English was good enough for us to be able to know what to order. After that it was back to the hotel to draw breath for Day 2.Read more