Garnet's Life Adventures

16 Feb - Barcelona Day trip

We decided on Wednesday night that we'd wake up early and catch a bus up to Barcelona for the day. We had breakfast at the hotel, walked down to the beach & stood by the "Tarragona/Barcelona" bus stop with a couple from the UK (overheard their accent). First bus that came by we asked if they were going to Barcelona and the driver said, "no, 10 minutes" which meant the bus was running late but we didn't much care since it was coming.

4 buses later, still no Barcelona bus - at this point 3 other couples from our hotel had joined us to stand at the bus stop. 2 of the couples where older and from California the 3rd couple was from the UK as well. I think it was about the 6 or 7th bus that the driver said no more Barcelona buses till 2pm but we can take this bus to Tarragona and get a bus to Barcelona from there, this was very confusing since the time table said departures at 8.15, 9.15, 10.15, 11.15, 2.15, 3.15, 4.15, but we all hopped on the bus.

At Tarragona we searched for the Barcelona bus, to no avail. We went to the ticket office to ask about it and found out that the "winter" time table is different than the one we'd been looking at and there were only 4 buses a day two in the am (8 and 9am) and two in the afternoon (2 and 3pm) seeing as it was now 11.30am we didn't want to wait around for the bus at 2, so we tried to find the train station. We asked for directions along the way and eventually after a few wrong turns and a few locals flagging us down we made it. By flagging us down I mean they gave us directions in Spanish & when we were trying to follow their directions we apparently misunderstood them & they yelled for our attention to show us what they meant - VERY VERY nice of them! Course they were probably laughing their butts off at the "dumb tourists" but I don't care since we made it to where we were trying to go!

Not sure if you can read it but this was the Barcelona train - YEAH!!!

After about an hour we arrived in Barcelona - since all Susan & I had was the huge Lonely Plant Guide to Spain we decided to go to the information center and buy a more detailed city map. Unlike the other couples who were all going to hop on the open top tourist buses (38 Euros for the day, not on a student budget!!) So here is the main walking route we tried to follow from the LP guide, of course being wonderful explorers that we are, we often got side tracked by a cute little road or shop or sign so we probably walked this route about 5 times in different directions, back tracking quite a bit to find the "touristy spot" we'd missed while walking down an intriguing alley way.
We set out first to find the cathedral - how hard could it be to find? Large building with cross & bell on top, right?!?!?! Well nice theory, but we walked to all sides but the front (STOP LAUGHING) there's a good explanation . . . There was construction on the front side so when we walked near it we saw all this scaffolding & plywood we went to the side of it. Since it was about 1pm and we couldn't find the official entrance we decided to get some lunch.

Forgetting we don't know a word of Spanish it was rather interesting to read the menu & try to order food. Susan's bikini turned out to be a MINI hand and cheese sandwich (by mini I mean the roll was round and smaller than the palm of my hand!) I got a fococcia that had tomato, cheese & anchovies on it since I didn't know all the words :( After that meal was done and we'd managed to pay, we wandered down towards the sea. We found a few cute post cards, bought them and tried to find a post office, but we think (again not fluent in Spanish) it's under construction & not open till 20 Feb - no help to us as we're here for the day).

We saw the Mirador de Colum,

walked up the famous, La Rombla and got an ice cream & 2 souvenir shirts at a good deal,

walked through a rather large market (size of Borrough market here in London) and bought some fresh strawberries,

FINALLY found the front of the cathedral (aren't you proud of us!!)

over to the Exglesia de Stn. Maria del Mar with beautiful stain glass!!

trip down a side road and found a little sports shop with great deal on trainers, so I got myself a pair :)

found the Palau de la Musica, but it was closed so we decided to try to get into the inside of the cathedral (it was closed when we found the front entrance)

from there it was getting rather late so we decided to just take another stroll up La Rombla & have a little snack at Cafe Zurich.

From there we rushed back to the train station to catch the 7.01pm train and as we got down to the platform, the doors were beeping, closing and we'd missed it by 3 seconds (Susan was pushing the door open button but it was not opening, but rather pulling away). We went back up to the ticket office & found out there was another (faster) train in about 20 minutes, so we paid the 70 cents upgrade fee. We sat, wrote out postcards, and eat our strawberries! Did I tell you they were huge??

yes, that's a normal business size envelope!!!!

On the way home we met some interesting characters from the US, but I'm off to my local to watch 6 nations rugby with Rob (I'm already late!!)

posted by Sara @ 2:15 pm