It was another smooth, fast train ride from Valencia to Barcelona where I arrived just after noon.
For the first three days, I stayed at the Sant Jordi Hostel during my five day stay in Barcelona. For the last two days I stayed at the Safestay Hostel. Both were fully booked and their prices continue to adjust higher as more tourists were increasingly visiting Spain. The Sant Jordi Hostel was €44 per night and the Safestay Hostel was €82 per night—the weekend.
I followed the instructions to the Sant Jordi Hostel and they were perfect from the train station to their place using the metro.
My plan was to visit the Barcelona Cathedral, but on the way it started to rain and I realized my water resistant was not up to the task.
I ducked into a tapas bar to have some food, hoping the rain would taper off, but it didn’t. It was so bad. I didn’t even take photographs of the rain.
I navigated my way to a metro stop, hoping my iPhone wasn’t going get saturated and stop working since I am more and more relying on Google maps for navigation rather than paper maps.
I spent the rest of the day at the Hostel, drying out, relaxing, and reading, and hoping the rains were going to be gone by the following day.
Sure enough the rains abated and I was able to go to the Barcelona Cathedral, which was very interesting. After entering, I obtain the QR code to use my iPhone to learn about the cathedral at the various stops.
Baptismal font
The patron saint of Barcelona is Saint Eulalia, and there were several statues in bas reliefs of her tortures along with a picture of the annual celebration they have in her honor.
She suffered several tortures when she was just 13 years proclaiming her Christianity. These are depicted in the bas reliefs in the main chapel area.
Just as aside, my grandfather owned an apartment called Eulala or Eulalia. It was on Borden and Cherry in Seattle— maybe it was named after that Saint. During college, I used to remodel those apartment units by sanding the floors, painting the floors and walls, replacing the toilets, removing the refrigeration units, recycling the copper tubing, and other tasks.
The seats in the choir area were carved very elaborately and beautiful.
They had a virtual reality show and it was just amazing that summarized the history of the Cathedral and some of the events there. With the headset, I had a 360° view of the entire chapel from above.
Afterwards, we continued climbing up the tower to the rooftop where we saw the cross that they venerate annually and was featured in the VR show.
We also had a view of the skyline, including the continual building out of the La Sagrada Familia Cathedral which they expect to complete in 2032, the 150th anniversary of its start. It is the cathedral in the our lower right corner of this photograph.
I much prefer the Barcelona Cathedral over the La Sagrada Familia Cathedral. The La Sagrada Familia Cathedral looks kind of clumpy.
The final area of the cathedral I visited was the sacristy which has the tombs of the craftsman denoted by the symbols on the pavers. I will let you guess which trades these tombs represent.
It also had the smelly 13 geese walking around their pond area. These geese represent the age that Saint Eulalia was when she was martyred.
I then took the metro to the La Sagrada Familia Cathedral. To get tickets, I had to use a QR code and after trying a few times to find a time to see it there I learned that there were no available spots until a week from now. So I satisfied myself I just walking around it and also enjoying some music and dancing in the nearby park.
Near the Safestay Hostel, I saw an apartment building that Gaudi had designed. Each to his own I say.
I visited the Picasso museum that had a number of interesting art pieces as well as a picture of Picasso himself. Some of these were done when he was a teenager and others later in his life.
He also featured some artwork that he did for the 4 Gats Restaurant in exchange for food. It is still in business.
Later, I decided to go there for dinner and enjoyed a good lamb shoulder meal along with some eggplant. I could just imagine how the artists that gathered there enjoyed discussing their artwork and their lives in this very same restaurant.
Now that the sun was out, I decided to visit the Costa Brava by taking the Passeig de Gràcia Metro stop just steps away from the Safestay Hostel.
The boardwalk and promenade was about 2 miles long, which I enjoyed walking along.
I also went down to the beach area took pictures of the people sunning themselves, or playing volleyball over the weekend. During the week there were far fewer people.
Along with beach goers, these men enjoyed several games of dominoes with the clacking of the pieces for emphasis when they thought they gained an advantage over their opponents.
I walked out to the pier area, where the cruise liner was moored along with several multi million dollar yachts.
From there, I walked up by the Arc de Triomf.
I continued through the Barri Gotic area and on to the wide Rambla walkway where I saw the Miro mosaic on the pavement.
There were lots of florists and gelato shops along the way. I then came to the Mercat de la Boqueria that I visited and sampled some of the tapas including olives, crab meat, eggplant, and some mango juice.
I also tried some decadent chocolate stuffed churros.
After returning to the Safestay Hostel, I had dinner across the street at the Tapa Tapa restaurant where I had some crab and shrimp tapas along with some stir-fry vegetables and my favorite drink, bitter Kas, a red drink comprised of various aromatic herbs, a bit more complex flavor than tonic water.
I got to the Barcelona Sant train station early so I stopped at a nearby café for an egg sandwich OJ and coffee. It was delicious and much better than I would’ve found inside the train station based on my last train station in Valencia.
At this train station, they offered a toilet using your credit card or Apple Pay €1. It’s very clean and when you were in the toilet area, you could hear the sounds of many birds chirping away. A very pleasant experience.
My 9 AM train from Barcelona to Madrid was an AVE train had speeds of up to 310 km/h or 192 mph on a 2 1/2 hour journey. Cars took about four hours for this trip. It was a very smooth ride as we flew by the wheat fields and villages with only one stop in Zaragoza.
The metro was co-located with the Atocha train station. and I used the ticket machine to get 10 rides for €8.60 With each ride costing about $1.50 if you pay individually.
I just love the transportation systems I’m finding here in Spain. They are fast, clean, comfortable, frequent, and cheap—especially with my seniors discount.
Subscribe to my YouTube Channel
I have recently uploaded all of my travel videos to YouTube now that they allow longer uploads. I have also added other shorter travel videos.
That link is https://www.youtube.com/c/huntforgold
If you do go there, please subscribe to my video channel since it will help me eventually get some income there and help with my future travels. Fewer people are using DVDs so I am transitioning to streaming my travels on my YouTube channel.
No comments:
Post a Comment