Barcelona

We went to Barcelona for a few days at New Year. I kept putting off posting about it because I had so many pictures and it was quite a full-on experience.

My overwhelming memory of Barcelona is of the architecture of the city itself. The overwhelming attention to detail, balconies beautifully tiled underneath so that if a passerby looks up they will be rewarded with a lovely sight, building facades as intricate as wallpaper, wide, generously proportioned streets with each paving stone on the footpath individually patterned... it is as if no surface has been left untouched by the artists' eye. We stayed in the Eixample, which is where the modernist influence is most obvious.





Then there is the natural beauty of the city. It's a harbour town, with the Port Vell (old port) developed into a pedestrian precinct including an excellent aquarium, a marina, shops, restaurants and plenty of places to stroll and sit. There are some large parks, some on hills with beautiful views, and of course the beaches. We were really impressed.



There is one drawback however, and that is the huge numbers of people there. In 8 months last year, more than 4.4 million tourists visited Barcelona - that's more than the entire population of New Zealand! I'm not good in crowds, and I found it really off-putting.

We did visit the aquarium, and the zoo, but spent most of our time just wandering round looking up at buildings, oohing and aahing. Catalan seems to be the language of choice in Barcelona, with most restaurant menus in Catalan rather than Spanish. We found this difficult!

A point of interest to any railway enthusiasts out there - the rail gauge in Spain is wider than that of the rest of Europe, including France. In the old days you had to disembark at the border, and change trains. However, now they use these 'Talgo' trains (pictured below at Barcelona station), which have a special mechanism in the undercarriage that changes the position of the wheels while you wait. Just across the border, the train stops and after some creaking and groaning from the nether regions, off you go.