Friends Until The End (Spain, Part IV)

Barcelona is one of "those" cities. It's one of the places that's quoted every time you mention Spain, whether the person quoting it has been there or not. It's a city that's famous simply for being famous, in a way. I arrived there at 11am on Monday morning.

The weather was great, and the city was bustling. I hopped on the next airport bus to the city centre, maybe a 20-minute trip, before switching to the metro at Placa Catalunya. The thing about Barcelona is it's the capital of the Catalonia region, which is highly nationalistic - that is to say, they want to be their own nation. The Catalan language is as, if not more common, than the official Spanish language of Castellano (the language which we know simply as Spanish). Following various language reforms all the place names in Catalonia are in Catalan, and it remains in common usage alongside Castellano. In Barcelona most things are trilingual - Castellano Spanish, Catalan and English - but in smaller cities they often just Castellano and Catalan, and in the countryside no-one uses Castellano at all.

I descended at the correct metro stop and successfully checked into my hostel, dropping my bag off before heading out for the afternoon. Though far from the city centre, my hostel was conveniently close to what was, I confess, essentially my entire reason for coming to Spain, and especially Barcelona - La Sagrada Familia.

Though I knew very little about La Sagrada Familia before I arrived, there were two things of which I was particularly unaware:
1) La Sagrada Familia is a church. Though most intricate, decorative structures in Europe are religious buildings, for some reason I had assumed that Gaudi had simply created a pretty building without any greater significance. As it happens, La Sagrada is one of the most important Basilicas in Spain, consecrated by the Pope himself.
2) It isn't finished. Though construction began during chief architect Antoni Gaudi's lifetime in the late 1800s, over a century later the Basilica is still not complete. The interior and main facades are complete, but only 8 of the planned 18 spires are currently built. In fact, though the Basilica was consecrated once the interior was complete, this was done by Pope Benedict XVI - the current Pope, in 2010. Ongoing lack of funding is the main obstacle, but completion is currently envisioned for 2026.

Incidentally, the name 'La Sagrada Familia' is Spanish for 'The Holy Family', dedicated to the 18 central figures of Catholicism and Christianity. Each spire on the Basilica represents one figure - 12 external spires for the Apostles, four central ones for the Evangelists, a tall one for the Virgin Mother, Mary, and one giant spire standing 170 metres tall to represent Jesus Christ.

La Sagrada Familia was absolutely incredible. That's the only thing I can say about it. Words cannot describe it. If you ever get the chance to go there for yourself, do. The outside is an absolute labour of love, intricately carved on every facet and loaded with symbology and religious meaning. The inside is, somehow, even more incredible. It's a modern design carried out in an ancient architectural style, and far from being distasteful, the result is actually awe-inspiring. I have never been in a church that can create such a feeling of joy and welcome in its atmosphere alone.

Since La Sagrada was so important to me, I decided to pay the bit extra to go up one of the towers. The views of Barcelona were amazing, and you get a really interesting angle of the Basilica too. Though my ticket was for the Nativity towers (on the Nativity facade), they sent me up the Passion towers (Passion facade) so that I could take the lift down as well as up, because of my foot. It ended up being a blessing on more than one front. Though not as high as the Christ spire, the Passion towers are more than high enough to trigger my acrophobia - acutely. As I realised that the staircase before me was the one descending to the ground, the fear of what lay before descended on me around the same time as the realisation that it was more than my foot could handle. Even beating a retreat to the elevator to await a mechanical descent didn't help. I had to step back from the platform to avoid a panic attack which, I confess, has never happened before. One day, when I have two feet again and someone to hold my hand, I will walk all the way down those towers, phobia or not. One day.

I've always had a special sort of affinity for Barcelona as a city. I was an Olympic baby, born a few months after the 1992 Olympics were held in Barcelona (damn! Just gave away my age there ^^), and both of the official anthems of the Barcelona Olympics have been among my favourites since I was a kid. It was a little weird and overwhelming finally being here at last - something that, as a kid, I never really imagined that I would ever do.

The next morning, after my first night in a coed dorm at the hostel (nice hostel, coed dorms nothing particularly stressful or exciting) I hopped on the metro and headed back to Placa Catalunya, the main square of Barcelona, for a walk down La Rambla, the main street. After going north instead of south for a while, I backtracked and made it on the true Rambla. It was nice, if a little touristy with all the booths, and the flowers were wasted on the girl who takes an aeroplane home and can't mail plant material through Australian customs. I found a cute fresh fruit and veg market and stopped to have a look, happily purchasing some fresh raspberries for a euro to eat for lunch.

I turned off the Rambla a little further on and made my way to the Barcelona cathedral. Apart from La Sagrada Familia it does have a regular cathedral as well, a nice Gothic construction largely dedicated to Saint Eulalia.  After wandering through the church and the cloisters (the cloisters enclosed a courtyard containing geese.  Geese!) I took the lift up to the towers.  This seems to be a theme in Barcelona.

The wind up there was amazing, but so was the view of the cathedral and Barcelona.  I braved the gusts as long as I could to enjoy the architecture from up close, but after 10 minutes or so I headed back down and continued south down the nearest main street towards the ocean.

I didn't have the legs or the time to go right down to the beach, since I wanted to get back to the Rambla in time to buy some things I'd seen on the way down and I calculated later that I walked nearly 10 kilometres that day anyway, but I did go for a walk along the waterfront and enjoy the views of the boats, the water, the sun and the city behind me.  When I reached the statue of Cristobal Colon, I knew I'd reached the bottom end of the Rambla and turned north (oh yeah, the Anglo pleb translation: Christopher Colombus.  It sounds sooooooooo much cooler in Spanish).  I wandered back up to Plaza Catalunya and took the metro home, doing some shopping on the way.

I clocked up the rest of my 10 kilometres in trying to find the small supermarket I found coming back from La Sagrada Familia so I could pick up some cheap pasta to cook up in the hostel kitchen.  I eventually gave up and bought a lasagne at the bar in the activities floor of the hostel - it's a large, purpose-built hostel.  The bar guy turned out to be a transplanted Frenchman from just across the border, so we had a nice chat in English about - guess what? - Lance Armstrong and the Tour.

The following day I set out for the Mercat del Encants, a four-times-a-week market near the hostel that had been commended to me by some Italians who left the hostel the day after I arrived.  It was cute, and fun to look at, but I couldn't find anything that I'd been looking for there - it was more for locals.  Instead I headed back to the Rambla and picked up some fresh strawberries at the market.

I had to leave Barcelona that day - exactly when was up to me, but with only a few hours  either way there didn't seem a lot of point in going to a museum for only a handful of hours.  That, and Barcelona and I were having a bit of a bad day.  I figured it was time to therefore call it a day.  I bought a ticket for the next train outta there, collected my bag and boarded the train.

And if you have no idea where the title of this post comes from, then you clearly need to brush up on your Freddie Mercury, though I'm more familiar with the Russell Watson remix, myself.

The Nativity facade of La Sagrada Familia

Inside La Sagrada Familia

Inside La Sagrada

The ceiling of La Sagrada

Stained glass in La Sagrada

The nave of La Sagrada

Views from the Passion towers

The Passion facade of La Sagrada

The Cathedral of Barcelona

Geese!  Geese in the cloister!
(Thought you ought to know)

La Rambla

Barcelona from atop the cathedral

Cristobal Colon

My market off La Rambla

España Extraña (Spain, Part III)

So in Oviedo at the bus station on Thursday night I was met by my friend Armando. We drove the 20 minutes to his hometown of Mieres, not far from Oviedo, and headed for his family's apartment for a late dinner - salad and tortilla. Turns out I still don't like mushrooms (surprise surprise) but the tortilla, which is a Spanish omelette made of potatoes, was really really yummy. By the way, Armando - I know you're reading this, so I want that recipe. (Then I need to buy potatoes).

After being thoroughly spoiled by Armando's mother and sister (by the way, the stereotypes about Italian grandmothers also apply to Spanish mothers) and plied with a million different teas and these amazing toffee-and-chocolate biscuits called Moscovitas, we walked around the corner to his aunt's apartment, where we were staying for a couple of days, for yet another of my many late nights recently. Spain, you see, operates on a time zone about three hours later than the rest of Europe. I have no idea why. They just do.

Friday was field trip day. Armando packed a picnic basket full of food and he, his sister Laura and I piled into the car for The Visiting Australian's Guided Tour of Asturias. We started with the Roman bridge and the hanging cross that symbolises Asturias in...well, you know, I've forgotten the name. Oh, wait, Cangas. Yes, before you ask, it does sound like 'kangaroo'. This was followed by coffee, obviously. Then we headed up to the sanctuary at Covadonga. There's a giant red basilica there, and a holy cave where the first king of Castilla y Leon defended his army against the invading Moors.

After that it was time for lunch, taken on the mostly dry steps of an abandoned chapel in another small town, at which I tried empanada, 'pregnant bread', and casadiellas, like Spanish baklava, and which was of course followed by more coffee. Then it was a drive home through the misty, rainy Asturian mountains, stopping frequently to check out the views from beaches and vista points (and getting rather well-soaked in the process).

Saturday dawned cold and rainy, as usual, and Armando and I piled in the car for a driving tour of Asturias. It was lucky we planned the 'driving' part of it. The only English word to describe the weather was 'freak'. Branches all over the road, wind buffeting the car, rain and spray everywhere. We stopped a couple of times, but quickly retreated. It really was crazy weather. Instead we headed straight for Gijon to have lunch - eggs, chips and vegetables, with Gijonesa, a yummy local nougat cake, to follow. Nearly got blown off my feet on the way.

Picking up Laura from the Gijon train station on the way, we went to the aquarium for the afternoon. We had good fun laughing over the otters, turtles and sharks, while Laura and I imitated all the Finding Nemo fish as we found them ("My bubbles! My bubbles!"). It was dark by the time we left, and we made our sleepy way back to a pizzeria in Oviedo for drinks and dinner before another late Spanish bedtime.

Sunday was, unsurprisingly, family day. Around 11am (Spanish early morning time) Armando, his parents, his sister and I all piled into the car (again) for the 20-minute drive into the mountains to Armando's father's hometown. I conveniently managed to time my trip to Asturias for a local festival of cheese. Yes, I did try the cheese. I'm getting better on this whole European-cheese thing.

We walked around town for a while and visited his aunt and uncle (and all the aunts and uncles who dropped in on THEM) and his grandmother. I love small towns, but I've never seen one quite like this. It's a quintessential, out-of-the-way, rural, lost-in-time European thing on the side of a mountain. I loved those mountains. I felt like I was in the Sound of Music. Armando's mother in particular was thoroughly gratified by my desire to take one or more of said mountains home.

Leaving Armando's parents to a long family lunch, we said goodbye and headed into Oviedo, capital of Asturias, for the day. After a lazy lunch at a nearby shopping centre, we began the drive to the top of the hill above Oviedo, where there's a Rio-style giant statue of Jesus Christ and amazing views over the city. With Laura asleep in the backseat, we drove back down the hill and headed into the centre of Oviedo for a walking tour.

We started, of course, with a coffee. Then we began traipsing around Oviedo. We passed by the shop that sells the toffee-chocolate biscuits that Armando's mother gave me on my first night there, so I decided to buy some to take back to France. We made our way to the cathedral, but we didn't stay long on account of the service. We wandered the town for a while, until Armando and Laura decided it was time for the promised excursion to the sidreria to try the sidre - that is to say, Asturian cider-time.

Asturian cider is an experience in itself. It's poured...well, look up the photos on Google. There's a lot of mess involved, and you have to drink it fast. It's better than stuff we call cider, but it's still alcohol, so, well...still didn't like it. I did try, though, which is the key thing.

Tired, we walked slowly back to the car and headed home to Mieres, where Laura gave me a short tour of the neighbourhood while Armando dropped in to see his parents, before walking back to our apartment to eat a late dinner and pack for an early flight the following morning.

The Roman bridge in Cangas

The sanctuary at Covadonga

Stingray!

Pinguino!

Views from above Oviedo

Mountains in La Foz

Churches on the hillside

My Tour of Burgos (Spain, Part II)

So my final day in Madrid started with disappointments and ended in smiles and tears - literally.  I had a very late start to my day.  Madrid didn't grab me as some cities have.  It's just a city.  Sure, some of the monuments are different, but they're the same kind of monuments that every city has.

Anyway, found some places to go, so headed for a nice little walk to some nearby gardens, where a funicular railway went up to a nearby hill and botanic gardens.  First disappointment of the day - it was closed.  Sit down.  Regroup.  Decide I'll go for the longer walk past everything I visited on my first day in Madrid and visit St. Francis' Basilica.  Looks great from the outside, but disappointment number two - I get there right on midday closing time.  Everything in Spain closes between about 1pm and 4pm.  I have no idea why and it's really annoying.  The guy at the desk tells me the Basilica is reopening at 4pm, but I'm not sure I want to walk all the way down there again given I have somewhere to be at 8.30pm and I'm still not the fastest walker.

I decide to take a scenic route through another part of Madrid back up to the hostel and have lunch on the way.  Since I was almost out of cash I was keeping an eye out for an ATM, too, so when I spot a Caja Madrid ATM I figure I'll stop.  This was how I got my excitement for the day - put bankcard in ATM.  ATM eats bankcard.  Run around like a headless chicken and panic in Spanish.  Manage to explain to the tellers inside the branch fairly coherently that the machine ate my card.  Teller rescues card.  Successfully retrieve money and card from working ATM inside branch.  Go to cafe across the road, collapse in relief and order lunch.

I tried a bocadilla, which turns out, sadly, to be like a Spanish baguette.  Still, I tried, right?  I took a long, slow walk back to the hostel and spent some time online.  Like I said, theatre tickets for that night and everything is closed mid-afternoon, so I spent some time doing work on my computer.   In the end I didn't make it back to the Basilica, mostly because my feet and mind were tired, but also because the logistics of getting down there and then up to the theatre in a different location were just awkward, given the times.  Instead I fled the hostel at 7.30pm fearing I'd be late for my show after a lengthy conversation with my Spanish roommate.  Antia was fun, and our conversations were good for her English and my Spanish, but I really was running out of time.

I did just make it, and Sonrisas and Lagrimas (Smiles and Tears) was great, every bit as good as the movie.  You Anglo plebs might know it as something along the lines of 'The Sound of Music', I believe...seeing it in Spanish was a better idea than it sounded, and I left the theatre feeling thoroughly uplifted.  A brisk walk back to the hostel and I packed my bag for an early train the next morning.

Despite all my panicking, I made my train on time, as usual.  It was a beautiful four-hour ride from Madrid to the city of Burgos, a few hundred kilometres north.  As we crossed a series of rocky peaks I could see snow all around.  It really was beautiful.  Arriving in Burgos, I made my way to my hotel and settled in for a bit, checking the weather forecast to see if I should expect rain.  Late that afternoon I head out again, buy a bus ticket for the following afternoon and make my way to the cathedral.

Burgos is most famous for its cathedral.  Personally, I know the name from the one-week cycling stage race La Vuelta a Burgos (The Tour of Burgos), but as the former capital of the Castilla y Leon region, it has the most stunning cathedral in the area.  I spent two hours on a tour of the freezing cold cathedral before deciding it was time to go and find somewhere to have a nice warm dinner.  This resulted in some interesting experiences regarding Spanish ideas around food (around 8pm you have pre-dinner drinks, and around 9.30pm or so you have dinner, not helpful for a 6pm-hungry tummy like mine) which results in me walking nearly an hour round trip to the nearest fast food place for something hot that I can eat.

The following morning I had my latest start yet.  At noon I burst out of my hotel room, having hurriedly showered and packed to make the check-out time.  Leaving my backpack behind, I began the lovely half-hour walk along the river to the local monastery.  Though I apparently arrived 'late' (the ticket window, it says in the fine print, closes an hour before the monastery does), a lovely English-speaking tour guide took me around.  It was fascinating, and the most interesting part was that it's still a working monastery.  There are still a small collection of closed-off nuns there, mostly over 70, but there are a pair of young novices as well, she said.  An hour later the security guard let me out of the monastery museum and I began walking back to the town.

The Spanish siesta caused me a few problems.  Finding lunch food between 1pm and 4pm was way too hard (found a bakery that was open), and every single church I went to was either not where the map said it was or was closed.  In the end I sort of wandered around the tourist attractions of Burgos for a few hours, unable to do anything much because by the time everything reopened I had to go and take my bus.
 
The four-hour bus ride wasn't too bad - I slept a bit, read a bit and then discovered that the bus had wifi, so when my similarly crippled seatmate (crutches and moonboot on right foot) got off at Leon, I got stuck into work on my latest article which, like its predecessor, has gone somewhat viral online thanks to being shared by the cyclist subject of the article.  I'm on holiday in Spain, writing articles from a press conference in Belgium in my spare time, and they're being retweeted and shared on Facebook by the cyclists they're about.  My life is strange.

Just after 9pm the bus pulled up in Oviedo, the capital of the region of Asturias, and I hopped off the bus to meet...

But that's another story!  Stay tuned for Part III...

The Basilica of San Francisco, Madrid

The Burgos Cathedral from the side

An altarpiece in the Burgos cathedral

One of the many amazing street statues in Burgos

The Monastery of Our Lady of Rest, Burgos

The main fountain at Plaza de Espana, Madrid

The main ceiling vault in the Burgos Cathedral

The main facade of the Burgos Cathedral

Looking along the river in Burgos

A star ceiling in one of the chapels of the Burgos Cathedral

Looking east along the river in Burgos

Artsy photos of the cathedral and the fountain

¡Hola, España! (Spain, Part I)

So for all those at home who rely on my blog for their daily vicarious adventures, I'm sorry for my absence, but I was having some not-so-vicarious not-so-adventures over the past few weeks that took the form of finals study and final assessments.  There may have been some adventures in the midst of this that will be documented separately, but for now let's get stuck into the 'I-survived-my-first-semester-and-I-have-two-weeks-free' adventure that is my first trip to - you guessed it - Spain!

I flew in late on Saturday night,  and thanks to my careful preplanning it was easy enough to take the metro from the airport to the station nearest my hostel.  I was briefly diverted by the fact that I misread the address when I made the map, but I soon put myself straight and found the place.  I was in a room with three girls from Taiwan and another girl that I never saw, and after a quick check of the internet it was time for bed.

Saturday began with breakfast - bread and juice - before I picked up a map and began looking for the places that my Asturian friend, Armando, had recommended I see.  I started with the Egyptian temple near my hostel.  It's an actual temple from...Nubia, I believe, that was transplated to Madrid.  Many of the temples from Aswan were relocated to countries that helped preserve them when the enlargening of the Aswan Dam meant the temples would be flooded - Holland, Spain, Italy and so on.  I then decided to keep walking further south to where I could see the Palacio Real, or Royal Palace.

The Palacio was quite cool.  I paid the discount rate to see el Armario Real y las Salones Oficiales - that's the Royal Armoury and the Official Rooms for you Anglophone plebs back home.  Now, my avid readers will remember that during my last (and first) encounter with suits of armour at a chateau in the  Loire, I discovered that not only am I scared of mannequins but also of suits of armour.  Well, unfortunately for me, the Armoury is largely comprised of mannequins wearing armour.  And plastic horses wearing armour (but they weren't as scary).  I, however, managed to keep my irrational (though very scary) fears in check to enjoy the various styles of defending and attacking in Spain over the years, and gained a new appreciation for the Belgariad in doing so.  The armour was definitely more interesting, though - Kiri, I saw real codpieces.  They were very amusing and I thought of you.

The official rooms were interesting, though a bit repetitive - seen one fancified palace, seen them all, really.  Then I headed to the Catedral de la Almudena next door - love cathedrals.  It wasn't as pretty as the churches in Italy, but it was grander, and the design was much more elegant.  I headed up to Canal metro to pick up a theatre ticket for that night, and then took refuge in a nearby cafe to read for a while until the show opened.  I went to see 'Memorias de un caballo andaluz: una espactaculare ecuestre' (Memories of an Anadlucian horse: an equestrian spectacular) which was good and quite quintessentially Spanish - lots of flamenco, toreadors, dancing and a very pretty white dancing horsey.

Today's plan was to cover most of the other sites that Armando had recommended to me.  Late morning I took the metro again down to Sol, from where I explored la Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor.  There was nothing particularly exciting about either one for me, but the street performers deserve a mention - I was particularly amused by the 'headless' men wandering around Plaza Mayor.  A hat and a pair of sunnies sit above the neck of a shirt, apparently headless.  My favourite was the sailor, naturally.

Next stop was Calle Gran Via, basically 'Main Street'.  I walked up from Puerta del Sol and began walking east, admiring all the tall elegant buildings along the way.  After a basic utilitarian lunch stop, I continued on my way to the Puerta de Alcala, which I eventually found in the Plaza Independencia.  It was much more like what I'd expected of the Puerta del Sol - one of the original gates, or 'puertas', in the wall that used to surround the city before it was pulled down to expand the city.  It was the biggest I've seen, bigger than Italy or France.

The final location on my list was a bit further to walk, but the metro was impractical, so a long, slow walk it was.  I thus ended up in the Parque de Madrid.  It was lovely, and huge.  In the middle there's a big artificial lake with a massive monument on the other side.  You can even hire boats and paddle around.  I kept going further south, wandering through the hedges and enjoying the peace and quiet while talking to the pigeons and non-magpies (because they're not really magpies, they're just confused).  I eventually found my target - El Angel Caido, the fallen angel sculpture atop the fountain.

Having walked a considerable way, I then felt justified in taking the metro back to the centre of the city, where I picked up another theatre ticket for tomorrow night.  After a brief stop to watch some guys feed the sparrows, I continued my nice, slow walk home.  Early bed for me tonight!

The exterior of the Cathedral

The Palacio Real from the courtyard

El Templo de Debod

For Kirily.  In the supermarket

The lake in Madrid Park

El Angel Caido

Madrid Park