I had a trip up to Mataro today. (or down or sideways – not entirely sure where Mataro sits on the compass in relation to Barcelona. ! )
I will cover the visit in a separate post, but there was some cool street art 🙂 The faces are awesome.
Category: Europe
Viva Barcelona
Day 195, Tuesday 17 July 2012, Barcelona
Well – I was warned in the reviews on various hotel web sites that the noise at the Barcelona Center Inn can be quite bad, and the reviews were correct, lots of noise from the hallways as people arrived from their nights out and then an alarm went off at 5.00 AM, and 5.30 and 6.00 etc etc. I didn’t really get much sleep until an hour or so from 6.30. I didn’t use the air con either so found myself in a pool of sweat when I did wake, it has been a while since that has happened!
I was up late and faffed a bit, had my old standby breakfast of egg on toast from the cafe downstairs and then caught up with some blog posts until I left the hotel about 11:00 with no real plan, apart from wander the streets in the general direction of some of the key sights and hit the gothic quarter.
The day was sunny and already hot by the time I left, it is really nice to be wearing t-shirt and shorts again – and not with leggings underneath like I was in Cornwall. I picked myself up a Spanish SIM card as it is possible I will be staying in Spain for a while – plus I like having mobile access to the internet – I am a net junkie…
My first stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana, though I did not pay to go inside and my photos from the outside sucked a bit due to some really savage light… though it had some interesting bits.
I soon discovered the Barcelona Cathedral, the bulk of which was constructed in the mid 1400’s. It was a pretty amazing building and it was great to be able to take photos inside, though it was a heaving mass of tourists.
I particularly liked the paintings in the small chapels that contained some lovely 15the century paintings, this was my favourite from an unknown painter and completed in 1475.
I also really liked the small carvings I found while waiting for the rickety lift to the roof, they remind me of LOTR !
There seems to be a mass of renovation projects going on in Barcelona, perhaps it is work created by various government bodies during these recessionary times, but a huge number of buildings are under cover. The roof of the cathedral was one, though the view was good.
And the gargoyles were awesome.
From the cathedral I just wandered the streets for a couple of hours, mainly in the old gothic quarter, the streets are so narrow there are very few cars, and the area is full of bars and galleries that do not open until much later in the day. It was relatively peaceful and cool compared the bustle of the big squares. I took a lot of photos ! Most of the doorways have been graffitied in some fashion, some good stuff, but a lot of aimless tagging as well. I did take a number of photos of the stencil and sticker art which I really like and will post those separately one day.
The small touches were fantastic, this old well in one of the squares was a favourite.
It was the alleys and the 5 or 6 story buildings looming overhead that I liked the best.
I did accidently wander into Plaza George Orwell.
Now I knew where I was I went and visited Palau Guell (Guell Palace). This is one of the big attractions in Barcelona and since renovation is now a UNESCO protected building. It is not particularly old but was designed by Antoni Gaudi and completed in 1890. Gaudi (possibly where gaudy comes from ?) was a Catalonian and designed a number of the key buildings in Barcelona. The Guell Palace, was semi-interesting, I am not hugely into furniture and floorings etc, but it did have some nice touches, I liked these doors
And the roof was very cool, with all the decorated chimneys.
Plus I liked the roof top photo opportunities.
I wandered off for lunch and a beer and was heading towards the Picasso museum when I realised I had the wrong debit card in my wallet and could not get any cash out ! so I meandered back to the hotel.
I had a wee rest before heading out again in the early evening, got some cash (whew) and walked up to the Temple de la Sagrada Familia – another Gaudi designed building, sadly the skyline was broken by a number of large cranes and the ground was broken by about 1 billion tourists, maybe a million, a lot anyway. The building is stunning though and I may go back one morning for a quick lool before the hoardes arrive.
The queue to get in was not worth effort so I wandered back down to the hotel.
On the way back I passed Salesians church, built in the 1870’s and designed by Joan Montells, who was a teacher of Gaudi’s. It is unsual in that the bell tower is in the front of the church.
I spent the rest of the evening ripping my hair out trying to do two things online. Firstly i wanted to transfer some cash from my NZ bank to my English one. I had already jumped through the various hoops to get overseas transfer set up, but this was frustrating as I had to fill in so many boxes – and find the information for those boxes – that by the time I had finished the session with the bank had timed out and I had to log in again and start all over, grrrrrr. And I am not even sure it worked yet…
Secondly I wanted to book myself to Malaga, I started with bus and trains, found the best options for dates, length of travel and cost, and decided on train. The train web site would not accept either of my two NZ credit cards, so bus – yeah 16 hours is a long time but I have done it before – same result on bus web site, grrrr… Next resort – fly. Ryan Air, looks good, price is cheap(ish), convenient time departing and arriving (so my cousin can pick me up). Booked it , YES, payment accepted. Go to add a second bag as booking only allows one bag – 48 frigging euros !!!!!! the fare was only 62… WTF Ryan Air! So my cheapish flight cost way too much..
But anyway… I am staying here in Barcelona for one more day, I leave Friday morning for Alcaucin, a small village about 40 minutes from Malaga where my cousin Ian lives. Looking forward to it.
sin cena
Day 194, Monday 16 July 2012, Paris to Barcelona
Lousy sleep again, medicated myself a bit but still only managed a few short hours and all too sudden the alarm was going off and it was time to get up, pack up and eat a final tedious of bad coffee, croissant and baguette – I never thought I would get sick of fresh bread, but that was all that was on offer for the included breakie.
The airport transfer shuttle picked Emily and I up on time and proceeded to take us on a morning tour of Paris to collect other travellers heading to Charles De Gaul airport, luckily both our flights were in the same terminal building, let alone the same airport. We arrived with plenty of time and Emily’s British Airways flight to London took about 3 minutes to check in while my Easy Jet took about 40. We said our fair wells while I queued. It was most excellent to see her again and spend a week such a cool city.
With Easy jet you do not get an allocated seat, something I have not experienced since catching a flight from LA to San Francisco with my parents way back in the 70’s, a flying bus service. I got on early enough to make sure I got an aisle seat though.
The flight to Barcelona was excellent, I sort of dozed a bit, but no turbulence at all, clear skies all the way. It was 27 degrees and sunny in Barcelona – my first real touch of European summer, and the first non-running related sweat for over a month !
I took the train from the airport to the centre of town and then joined a mass of confused tourists standing at an intersection after we left the underground train exit in a street with road works and no signs ! after a while someone noticed a Metro sign and arrow painted on the side walk, so we all followed that till we found the Metro station so onward journeys could be completed. The walk to my line (purple) was the longest I have ever experienced, it just went on and on and on. Once I got to the correct station I had a wee moment of wandering around in three wrong directions before I managed to locate myself on the map and found my lodgings for the next few days. The Barcelona Centre Inn in Eixample, about ten minutes walk from the good bits. The room is about the size of a large bed – thank goodness it was only a small one, but it does have a balcony – with no view.
I found myself a convenience store and got some wine , water, potato chips and Oreos and then went for a walk to the nearby Arc de Triomf, built for the Barcelona Expo in 1888.
I went in search of beer and dinner and only managed to find the first, the restaurants around here only seem to serve breakfast and lunch, no dinner. Bum ! glad I bought the chips and oreos then. I retired to my room and finally managed to get some reasonable wifi, had a few wines a bag of chips and went to bed.
Another day, a new country.
Being nothing
Day 193, Sunday 15 July 2012, Paris
Today is the last full day in Paris, so I made the best use of the time and did sod all for the entire morning. After a huge amount of procrastination I did book myself some accommodation in Barcelona for three nights from tomorrow, hopefully it is not too bad. Everything is so damn expensive – Ok I will try and not go on about that any more, must be getting boring.
The rest of the morning was spent running between showers to the laundrette, editing photos and reading an Economist magazine I found in said laundrette, nice to read some decent current affairs, I am so out of touch with what is going on in the real world, outside of brief checks of NZ news on line.
In the middle of the afternoon we set off for Montparnasse and the cemetery there. It was an easy ride on the train, now I am getting used to working out the signs and lines it is almost time to go! After a showery start to the day the sun finally came out and was beating down on Cimetiere de Montparnesse when we arrived. We had kinda not done any proper research and assumed that this was where Jim Morrison (of The Doors) was buried, but that was an incorrect assumption ! However there are numerous other well known personages here, some with remarkably unadorned grave stones. The poet Samuel Beckett was one of these, and the sun was at such an angle a photo was not worth the pixels it would have used. My favourite was the incredibly phallic looking piece dedicated to James Dumont d’Urville who was (one of ?) the first to map the south island of New Zealand in the 1820’s in this ship Astrolabe.
We also saw Serge Gainsbourg – adorned in fag ends.
And Jean Paul Sarte and Simone De Beauvour
There were a couple of headstones that I really liked, my favourite being this large fish!
I was also quite taken by the variety of crosses on the doors of the sepulchres and posted a selection prior to this post.
We left the cemetery when it closed at 6:00 and went and found a cafe to sit and drink beer in until we met for dinner with Jean and Ettiene, the sons of Emily’s French friends. Both spoke perfect English (of course) and have been to and love New Zealand it was a good evening.
Two days in Paris and two links to old favourite New Zealand record label Flying Nun bands.
John Paul Sartre Experience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMDH__herJA&feature=relmfu
Gallery – GBWY
A very short walk around Cimetiere de Montparnesse in Paris.
Gallery – Paris – random graf, sticker and stencil art.
I accumulated a bit of random street art, graffiti and stickers from my strolls around the streets of the old city in Paris.
I am not a huge fan of pointless graffiti, but love little works of “art” , political messages, stickers and stencils.
Death and the Maiden
Day 192, Saturday 14 July 2012 – Paris – Bastille Day
The morning was all about planning, made difficult through lack of a good guide book, hopeless internet, a lack of knowledge about where I can go for a few days and the fact it is peak season in Europe and everything is really expensive !
Add to this the fact I am feeling rather vague at the moment and I have no idea where I want to go or what I want to do next. I think going to my cousins place in Spain for some down time is a good thing. Recharge the holidaying batteries, read up on Europe and get a good list of things to see and places to go. I know I want to see everything, but I am not sure what everything is – and I have no idea how much “everything” will cost.
After hours of internet faffing and indecision I have decided to fly to Barcelona and spend a few days there before heading south. Flying was not my first choice, but given intermittent internet (which stopped completely soon after I booked the flight – and I have no accommodation!) trying to find a land option was getting complex, the train to Marseilles was more expensive than the basic flight – adding bags pushed the flight cost up of course.
Once the internet was dead we headed our separate ways for the day, Emily to return to Gallarie Lafayette and the shopping district, hoping things were going to be open on a public holiday weekend, and I was going to enjoy a brief splash of sunshine and walk around the Latin Quarter. We went our separate ways at the St Michel station and I wandered off down the left bank of the Seine, overlooking Notre Dame.
All along the bank there are these long green lock ups across the tops of the walls, they contain little pop-up stalls, mainly selling old books and magazines, prints of paintings and some tourist knick knacks. They are quite cool.
At some random point I headed away from the river towards St Nicholas du Chardonnet where I popped in for a brief look. This church is not marked on the (rather vague) tourist map I am using, so is obviously not overly important to the history of France or Paris. But I enjoyed my visit all the same, each chamber had a small statue and a large painting on an opposing wall. The paintings varied in age from the 1500 to the 1800’s and were by artists completely unknown to me, what I found quite remarkable was the wonderful condition of these ancient works. Great pipe organ as well.
I also really like the wicker chairs, high side for sitting and low side for kneeling to pray. These are very common in the churches in Paris, so much better than those horrible wooden pews.
I wandered on up some reasonably deserted side streets, till I came across the centre of the Latin Quarter, which was fairly busy with tourists, most of which seemed to be French, the area is a small next of cobble stone streets packed with cafes, bistros, tabacs and restaurants.
I was getting peckish and had my stomach set on some pizza until I wandered by this maison – in the house were the poet Paul Verlaine passed away in 1896 – and Ernest Hemingway lived from 1921 – 1925. If you are of a certain age and musical taste, you of course have THAT chorus in your head right now ! I had to stop for a small vin rouge and a bowl of onion soup, both of which were average. but I did avoid a passing rain shower.
After lunch and with the sun out again I headed over to the Pantheon for a look around.
The Pantheon was designed by Soufflot under the instructions of King Louis XV and completed in 1791, In the crypt it now holds the remains of some of France’s more famous name’s Hugo, Curie, Moulin, Zola
Voltaire
and Rousseau.
The building is massive and the main hall way is very impressive.
As it is Bastille Day (France’s national day) there was a military band out the front of the Pantheon playing some modern pop tunes to the appreciation of the crowd. I snapped this shot as I walked away and then found the guys and girl removing their helmets, moved to the front of the band and some synchronised dancing for a couple of seconds, a mix of line dance/disco. One of them was glowing red, it was hilarious. Join the army !
After the light relief of disco dancing soldiers I meandered back to the hotel round the corner and dozed and blogged for a few hours – while waiting for the internet to come back to life and Emily to return from shopping. The internet did not come back to life until the next day, but Emily did return from shopping.
We took a walk down to the Seine at St Michel, pass the Sorbonne, which was glowing in the early evening sunlight. We stopped for dinner at Tabac De Le Sorbonne again but the experience was a real let down compared to last time, the waiter was obviously trying to set the example for how rude a Parisian waiter could be.
The sunset over the Seine was very cool – not up to Karekare beach standards of course, but then Karekare does not have Notre Dame either !
We watched some young guys tumbling in the square at St Michel.
Wandering the back streets of St Michel we stopped at this cafe for a coffee and drink.
This is now my most favourite of coffees, cafe noisette, espresso with a dash of milk, lovely.
The Verlaines – Death and the maiden.
Mona madness !
Day 191, Friday 13 July 2012 – Paris
Again it was another big day planned, there is so much to see and do in central Paris, even in a week I will only barely touch I want I want to see and some of those visits will only be short as well. Today we had three things to cover, Arc de Triomphe, Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the Louvre, an iconic (and big) list.
After a bit confusion in the Gare D’ Nord (again) we did find the right train to take us to the Arc de Triomphe (AdT). It was a wee bit wet when we left, which was great as it seemed to have put off the worst of the seething masses and we had a relatively pain free hike to the top of the Arc. The views over the city were just awesome.
Over the Avenue des Champs-Elysees
The Eiffel Tower (obviously)
Sacre Cour
We also had a good view down on to that most famous of Parisian roundabouts. I have no idea how cars get out, or why they would choose to go in, there were not many cars when we were there, but you can see the chaos – can you spot the cyclist in the middle ?
After AdT we took a walk down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees (ACE), which has to be one of the worlds more famous streets. It is a couple of kilometres long and seems to have all the major brand name stores, including a few low-brow ones as well !
The whole of ACE is covered in pedestrian barriers, assuming in preparation for the formalities and parties happening during Bastille Day tomorrow. Sadly most of Place de la Concorde is closed off to the public and seating and army vehicles have surrounded it.
We stopped for lunch in a cafe in Jardin des Tuileries, just outside of the Louvre. It was an entertaining meal, the waiters were constantly arguing, I think over tips as one of them pulled out a wad of cash and thrust into the hand of one of the others – ah the French !
The queue for the massive art gallery that is the Louvre was surprisingly small, under thirty minutes, which was fabbo as we missed the rain entirely during the wait. We entered the museum through the glass pyramid and the ticket counters and entrance point for the three main wings are all underground.
We started off with the ancient Egyptian collection and then worked our way around through the various painting and sculpture collections.
I loved this beautiful little wood carving, gorgeous.
The biggest tourist attraction at the Louvre has to be the Mona Lisa, as everyone who has seen it has said, it is surprisingly small. I could not be bothered fighting my way through the hoards to see it.
I am not big on painting, especially the classical, romantic and renaissance periods. My tastes tend to be from the impressionists onward, so the art collections at the Louvre, amazing as they are, were not studied at length. Though there were of course, many pieces I did like, especially this one by Luis de Morales from 1565.
One of the things that did impress me about the museum was the ornateness, detail and beauty just contained in the room construction, of course most of the rooms were bare gallery, but some were stunning to look at.
And of course there are the Napoleon III apartments, he must really have suffered !
I also quite liked this piece from Henri Bellechose from 1415 (man that is a long time ago!)
And I really liked these too, but forgot to write the atist details down, they are some of the very few paintings behind glass.
And minute compared to these bad boys.
It was drizzling again when we left the Louvre and started a slow walk back to the hotel, my feet were knackered after another few hours of tromping around and I was looking forward to shoes off and a lie down…
Looking over the Pont des Arts to the Institute de France.
We crossed the Pont Des Arts over the Seine, with its thousands of padlocks that young (and I guess not so young) lovers leave on the wire.
Walked along the side of the Seine, looking at the house boats, I liked these letter boxes on the river bank for the houseboats.
Pont Neuf
Dinner was trusty old bread, cheese and wine in the hotel room, it was raining again and my feet went out on strike !
I would loved to have spent more time in the Louvre, but it is a huge day…
Gallery – faces from the Louvre
Awesome visit to the Louvre today, did not see it all, but saw most. It is so big and an exhausting few hours wandering around. It is not necessarily my artistic cup of tea as my interests are more modern, but it is certainly an amazing collection.
If you have followed my blog for a while you will know I like close up shots of the faces on statues – There was way too many to choose from at the Louvre ! These are from the Egyptian and European collections.
Gallery – Paris street art – part one
My first day of strolling some of the streets of Paris’s left bank. There was not a huge amount of street art, though there were some stencils and stickers I liked, hope to see more as I work my way round the streets and alleys.
Where is Phil now? 