Our last full day in Barcelona allowed me the time to get my money's worth at the all inclusive breakfast buffet. Quite an unhealthy array of fatty pastries, meat, eggs, cereal and more pastries were consumed. I was hoping it would tide me over until dinner time as we had found that lunch, and take away food in general was becoming prohibitively expensive, especially since the Aussie dollar continued its downward trajectory.
Our plan was to visit the tallest building in Barcelona, La Sagrida Familia, or, as a rough translation, the 'massive funny lookin church'. The cathedral, if you aren't familiar with it, is the pinnacle of design from the architect Antoni Gaudi. He was famous for rounded, organic lines in his buildings, inspired by natural shapes and geometry. Truly breathtaking indeed. Construction of the cathedral began around 1890, however, due to the complexity of the design, engineering limitations of the time prevented the entire cathedral being built. In fact it has been a constant work in progress so much so the the expected year of completion will be sometime around 2050. As a result, the interior still resembles a building site, although much had been done since I last visited four years ago. But, in truth, I dunno if it is worth the admission. A building site is a building site, and not very exciting at that. Despite that, Miss R and I completely lost track of time and realised we had spent nearly three hours in there.
We got on the tourist shuttle again and headed for Parc Guell. I thought it would be nice to chill out there for a while. Parc Guell is a park constructed by Gaudi for a good friend of his, but is thankfully open to the public. The unfortunate thing was that this was a sunny sunday, so I think just about every person in Barcelona had the same idea as us. It wasn't bad, just not very peaceful. Dodgy men from north Africa were everywhere trying to sell 'tourist tat' and were being 'moved on' by the resident security guard.
We decided on having some good Spanish tapas for dinner and we weren't disappointed. If I could remember the name of the restaurant I'd write it here for a strong recommendation. If you're ever there, I think it was north of Placa Catalunya and had a red and white colour scheme. Anyway, the food was great, the establishment clean and the staff very friendly. Our waiter was very interested that we had come all the way from Australia to be at his restaurant, but I don't think he was as enamored with the American couple sitting next to us.
So, the next day we flew out to Paris, but here was where Spain was to give us one last bit on the bum.
Miss R checked us out whilst I stood outside the hotel with the taxi driver waiting...and waiting...and waiting. I went back in and asked what was going on. Apparently, all those 'collect calls' we had made to Australia had cost us €78.00. That translates to about A$160! for three phone calls! Talk about rort, we were even told that they were reverse charges. But oh no, the check out guy suddenly couldn't speak English and wouldn't understand our protests. So what else could we do but suck it in and pay. As if they hadn't already got enough of our money. Then, so cap it off, we had found that teh taxi driver had had his meter running the whole time, so before we had even left the hotel there was €6 on the meter! That's $A12, enough to get me from Reservoir to Fitzroy and still have change, and yet we hadn't even moved yet! By teh time we had gotten to the airport, the total amounted to €35...phew, not a total rip off...until the driver presses a few buttons on the meter and suddenly the total is €45! Easily the most expensive cab fare I have ever taken.
Step into Barcelona airport and it was pandemonium. The check in queues were hideously long and they weren't moving at all. I thought, this can't be right, these people aren't all going to Paris, indeed they were all heading to Madrid. And then I saw it, three check in counters at the end with three people lined up at each. It occurred to me that sometimes people are just sheep, they just accept the norm, whereas, thankfully, some people break the mould. I lined up adn we checked in in 10 minutes. If we had stayed with everyone else in the long lines we would've missed our flight and that would've just taken the biscuit.
Quite frankly, Barcelona this time around was a disappointment. It just felt dirty, tacky, touristy and like no-one was willing to help us and that everyone was trying to stitch you up.
Good weather but. |
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