Barcelona

Barcelona is really our kind of city. It's a big call, I know, but I really think I like it better than Paris.

It's a city of space, of trees and grass, of secret gardens, and of beautiful buildings. Everywhere you look, there's some amazing structure. Even very utilitarian buildings have something special about them. Public art is everywhere, and good things to eat are everywhere, too.

There are not too many people here; or that's how it seems; perhaps it's because the streets are wide and studded with trees. Sandy particularly loved how the tram tracks are set over grass, so there are lovely green strips through the streets. The trams themselves are great: frequent, cheap and new-looking. Trams are such a great mode of transport because you can see what's going by, unlike undergrounds. So we have had a really good look at the city during our tram trips, which have been long because of our distance from the city.

Of course Barcelona is well known as the home of many great modernist buildings, and was the home of the famous architect Antoni Gaudi, whose presence and influence is everywhere. No more so than at the Sagrada Familia; the great cathedral he designed and which is still under construction 125 years after the foundations were first laid. It must be the most-visited construction site in the world; it is due to be completed in 2020 but from what I have read this is quite an optimistic estimate. The bits that are complete are quite incredible, and even someone with only a passing interest in architecture can see genius at work here. The two finished facades are beautiful, especially the main facade, which looks, as one description said, like someone poured wax over a gothic cathedral. Up close you can see that every shape is actually a tree or a bird or a flower. It's quite awe-inspiring, in much the same way that York Minster is, or the Duomo in Florence. I was intrigued to see something that looked very much like a Nikau palm in amongst the carved jungle.

The thing that really got me, though, was that Gaudi spent 40 years of his life working on this project. For fifteen of those years he worked on nothing else. Imagine having a magnificent obsession like that, and the ability to pursue it above all else? The man is even buried beneath the cathedral. (Spookily, Gaudi was killed when hit by a tram. He carried no identification and no-one knew who he was; he was taken to a paupers' hospital before they realised this was the world-famous acrchitect).


There's a lot of life in Barcelona, and although we read all kinds of spooky warnings before we got here that it's rife with pickpockets and bag-snatchers, we have felt nothing but safe. We've walked all over the place; along the main throughfare, the Diagonal, which is like a wider, greener Champs Elysees, down the Rambla, which is the main touristy drag through the old town. We watched singers with guitars, human statues and tango dancers perform (a bonus for me; I've been away from tango for two months!), and then wandered around the waterfront, where Christopher Columbus points out to sea from a high monument. Amusingly, he is not pointing towards the new world, but rather in the completely opposite direction. Towards, in fact, Mallorca, which is our next destination.