Barcelona Day 1

After a hot and noisy night with not a huge amount of sleep we woke up hoping to talk to our hosts about what was happening in the city and where we should and shouldn't go. We were out of luck as they had left the apartment already but it was about 9.30/10 in the morning. I had let Lew sleep in whilst I finished up the long blog and did some washing in the bath since Lew has said he was almost out of underwear! When we finally sat down and planned out our day we thought we should just book a Fat Tire Tour again which was starting at 11am. Since the meeting point was only 9 minutes walk away and it was 10.15am we booked it! This disorganisation works well for us sometimes :D Getting ready quickly we borrowed the washing machine to spin our clothes (I don't think we were supposed to use it but I found it whilst searching for toilet paper!) hung them onto the towel rack which was super hot and made our way to the town square Placa Sant Jaune. We didnt actually realised that this was where all the riots took place yesterday since it held the Spanish government building on one side and the Catalonian building on the other. Riots are very popular in the square and there is actually a three month waiting list to hold one! We were all put into different groups since there was such a large amount of us and we ended up with a few too many Australians, a couple from the UK, a man from Georgia and a family from Colorado. Our tour guide was Ben who's from Wales and I had been reading good reviews about him on the website this morning. It was a bit of a different set up to Paris since it was right in the heart of the city and was rather busy. We were the last group to set off as we waited for any stragglers/late comers. Since we were in the main square we had to walk our bikes out, Ben had already given us a talk about the square and the buildings surrounding us. Of course the elections and yesterday's strike came up and he was able to give us a bit more of an update. Whilst we were standing there the National Guard was standing by with their eye catchingly large automatic weapons in their hands.

We were finding this tour rather different to Paris since Barcelona isn't as bike friendly as Paris. In saying that they do have tonnes of bike paths all over the city but it still felt a lot more dangerous than Paris. I don't think it helped that we weren't told the rules when biking in lanes on the footpath and we got yelled at in Catalan by a women who was trying to cross over and we clearly didn't know we were supposed to give way to her. A short bike away was the Palau de la Música Catalana (Palace of Catalan Music) which is known to be designed by Antoni Gaudi the famous architect from the region but it was actually his mentor Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Lluís loved glass so the building features many glass accents which the locals believe look like a huge amount of empty beer bottles in the sunlight. Francisco Franco Bahamonde a military dictator from 1939-1975 abolished Catalan being Independent from the rest of Spain which I wrote about yesterday. Because of this he wanted to get rid of everything that made Catalonia different from the rest of Spain, including the language and also the Catalan modernism which is the style in which Gaudi and Lluís built in. Many of the building were destroyed however the dictator had a love for music so allowed the Palace of Catalan music to remain so he could enjoy it. But he didn't let it remain viable and made sure it was covered up with large sheet thus preserving the building beautifully for modern day Barcelona.

A short bike away was the Arc de Triumph which is usually built for a war victory but instead Barcelona who wasn't involved in any wars built this one for their victory in town planning. You see when the city was a fortified town and was full to the brim wiht people and the living conditions were appalling due to lack of space and fresh air/sunlight able to get through the buildings. This meant that the average life expectancy at this time was 23 years! This is when the plans to build outside the citys walls came into action and they celebrated like crazy when the first person living outside the barricaded city lived to the age of 24. It is believed that the first Arc de triumph was built in Rome but the largest is believed to be in North Korea although no one would ever know if this is true or if they are bluffing. Riding precariously between pedestrians we made our way to Parc de la Ciutadella created in the 19th century and is next to the Barcelona zoo. Next we ventured past the Plaza Monumental de Barcelona which was the last bullfighting arena in commercial operation in Catalonia before it was banned in 2012 by the Catalonian Government. This isn't due to animal welfare but the fact that bullfighting is a very Spainish tradition and remember Catalonia is trying to seperate itself from Spain as much as possible. In 2016 this ban was officially annulled by the Spanish Government since Bullfighting is part of the cultural heritage of the country (Spain) but you still won't see any bullfighting taking place in Catalonia. 

Now for the main attraction the Sagrada Familia. Wow! Such an interesting building that Gaudi designed to tell the entire story of Christ. Gaudi's inspiration was from the land and the land has no straight lines hence neither does the part of the Sagrada Familia making it look as though a Gothic Church has been put in the microwave and melted!

Building commenced in 1882 and the original architect wasn't Gaudi himself but another man called Francisco Paula de Villar. After a year Francisco resigned and Gaudi took over making the original plans a lot mire extravagant. Saudi projected that would take 200 years to complete this as he said its owner didn't have a time limit (Christ). He knew that we would never live 200 years and he wanted his work to be continued so he set up a workshop within the Sagrada Familia with his detailed plans, scales and models. He became so involved with the project that he dumped everything else and also moved in to the building itself, sleeping on the floor. He became unrecognisable as he never left and his personal hygiene standards dropped so much so that one morning he left the Sagrada only to be hit by a tram. He was left in the drain for a couple of days as no one recognised who he was guessing he was homeless the police took him to a local hospital. His friends searched far and wide for him and when finally discovering him in the hospital he refused to move as he was a man of the people. He died in this hospital at aged 73 years. In July 1936, after the military uprising and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, revolutionaries set fire to the crypt, burnt down the provisional school of the Sagrada Familia and destroyed the studio workshop. Original plans, drawings and photographs were lost and many large-scale plaster models were broken. No one knew what Gaudi wanted but building still continued trying to take into account what he wanted it to look like. As you might know the Sagrada Familia is still being worked on and expected to be finished by 2026, it will be 170m tall once completed and will be the tallest church in the world. It is paid for by the tourists visiting it but initially Gaudi funded it himself. It is also going to expand out on either side where there is currently houses but these are slowly being brought back in order for the building to continue as planned. The Pope visited in 2010 and it officially became a Minor Basilica but it cost the country 40 million for him to visit for two days! We were released from our tour for 10 minutes to take photos but Lew and I have booked tickets for tomorrow to get inside.

The first place on our tour was the Plaza Del Ray which is a 14th century medieval public square that is flanked by the Palau Reial Major (big royal palace). We were told that there is infact remains of the Medieval city below the current city and you can view them at the Museum of History also located in this square. There is lots of Spanish history that Ben told is about which was so in-depth it was hard for me to remember it all to post here! But I do remember that the stone staircase leading out of the museum has been around since the 11th century. In 1137 AD Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona who at the age of 18 married his future Queen Petronilla of Aragon at age 1 lived in this Palace. There was a lot more history about people being burnt/killed by hot oil since they refused to convert from Christianity or leave the country but I don't feel I am knowledgable enough to tell you about it since I will have to spend the next day reading through the internet just to understand it. So I will leave it there and we biked onto our next site of interest. That was the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia or also known as the Barcelona Cathedral. It looks similar to the Sagrada Familia due to its gothic appearance but is very different once you have seen the Familia itself! Ben told is that in the back right hand corner of this Cathedral is the most amazing cloister display which you can see for free in the mornings or evenings. Once again we didn't go inside on these tours and we didn't actually get back to this to tell you more about it. 

Our last stop before lunch was to the Barcelonetta Beach which is man made with sand brought over from Egypt. Every year the sand has to be retrieved from the sea as it disappears with the tide. This area used to be industrial but was tidied up for the Olympics and now it had made Barcelona from the 14th most visited city to the 3rd. Lunch was at this small beach side place and we were starting since it was 2pm. Lew had a burger and I had some nachos. Luckily our guide Ben is also dairy free and he was able to translate this to the waiter as he was rude and not very interested. This took about an hour before we made out way back to the office.

By now it was 3pm and we still had some time to do something. Since we were so close we found out way to the Museum of History to check out these ruins of Barcino underneath Barcelona. Despite forgetting my student ID the lady just made me show her an email from Auckland Uni and I was able to get the discounted price of €5 and for Lew €7. You get free audioguides which was incredibly helpful and we started watching an overview video of Barcino to modern Barcelona. You then get into an elevator where it take you down a story or two into the ground. You come out of the elevator looking at the remains of a city! It was such a strange site and incredible that this is all spanning underneath what we had been walking around on. They had excavated parts of it out and diagrams showed you what the entire building would have looked like and the age. The oldest part was the internal part of the wall protecting the city that was 10-15 BC. I can't even imagine that far back!! The had discovered laundries where they found traces of lime, ash and ammonia used for cleaning. They obtained their ammonia from leaving buckets out on the street for passerby to urinate into and then letting it become stagnant. There was also a wine making facilities, the church, fish processing plant and of course lots of houses. You could see that even back then they had used sewers and drains that look similar to what we have today. We spent a good couple of hours here admiring the ruins before walking back to the apartment. We picked up a cold Mojito as we walked since we were a bit dehydrated and spent some time back at the apartment since people in Barcelona eat late and the place we wanted to go to wasn't open yet. It was called Mosquito which is a Chinese restaurant serving dumplings and all sorts of goodies! It was busy since we arrived at 8pm and everyone else was out wanting dinner too. They found us a small place down the back and we tried to decipher the menu working out what would be the best. We ended up ordering two different types of dumplings - pork/beef, some rice, and sichuan pepper beef. It arrived amazingly quick and was by far the tastiest dumplings we have ever tried. After finishing we even ordered another lot of them we loved them so much! Walking back to the apartment we picked up some ice-cream/sorbet and whilst I was trying to enjoy the area of El born at night Lew was head down tail up since it was dark. We made it back unscathed other than Lew having chocolate chip ice cream all over himself! Tomorrow we have a big day planned with Sagrada Familia and Park Guell on our list and its also supposed to be 27 degrees! :D