For some reason, people liked to talk to us while WH & I were in Barcelona. There's the "KONICHIWA!" & "NI HAO!" from strangers who walk passed us, and from uber friendly servers who seem to be befriending every guest in the restaurant. Of course there's "Hola!" from the spanish, but there were also other spanish words thrown in occasionally which we don't understand. Until just now, I remembered to look up the word "bonita" because I heard it from a senor, and to my huge surprise, it means pretty. HAHA.
Anyway, Barcelona is a beautiful city with impressive architecture, good-looking & stylish people, gorgeous weather and delicious (but expensive) food. However it also has a terrifyingly difficult and complicated transport system to navigate, and walls and corners often smell strongly of pee. The air is not very clean and everyone smokes - everywhere! Even on trains. FYI, the city is full of graphic signs telling you to do this, or not to do that. It reminded me very much of Singapore. The only difference is that Singapore imposes FINES, whereas there's no penalty for committing the 'offence'. I suppose that's not an offence if there's no punishment, it's merely undesirable behaviour.
Anyhow, our first stop was Girona, which was a 20min drive from the Girona Airport where Ryanair flies to. Most people skip this town on their itinerary, but I thought it'd be a good place to explore, since we are already there.
WH was hunting for some food for lunch & so we walked into this seemingly authentic spanish bar.
Then, we saw 3 chinese faces staring at us when we walked in, a sudden chatter of mandarin exploded in our ears as they bombarded us with questions of whether we were chinese, where we were from and what we wanted to eat. Eventually, they let us take our seats and we let them decide our meal for us - Fish ball soup and fried dumplings!
How ironic is this? Real chinese food in a catalan town in Spain.
Girona has a river which runs through the centre of town.
Riverside alfresco cafes in the afternoon sun.
This looks like a classic mediterrean postcard picture.
The great walls of Girona, as recommended by our hospitable Chinese friends.
Views from the top.
The walk is really long, so soon it was sunset.
Eventually we made it to the cathedral.
PHEW.
Back to the town centre and day light is scarce.
The bright scarlet bridge which looks really 1940/50s.
Dusk falls and we departed for Barcelona on their rickety train which was 15mins late. The platforms had no lighting & there was no way of us knowing which stop it was. It was a miracle that we were able to reach Barcelona City centre. So, fortunately we survived and we met Melinda & Adrian, (WH's cousin & her husband) who were our host in this Catalan city.
Tapas & beer made me feel better after my 8 hours of torture at the Stansted airport on friday night.
On Sunday, we visited the town centre. And this is la rambla. It's PACKED with tourists and the 2 sides of the streets are lined with street performers and buskers, especially those who dress up to look like statues. Souvenir stalls which scream TOURIST-TRAP were spotted all along the street as well. In the mid section, there were florist shops selling potted plants, flowers and other sort of home decorations. It was a nice place, but it wasn't earth-shatteringly pretty as promised. I thought it looked just like most european shopping streets.
We walked through la rambla, with our arms firmly clutching on to our belongings. The clear blue skies and the picturesque sea revealed itself to us when we reached the port. Together with the warm sunshine, it put us into a fabulous holiday mood. Its such a luxury to be able to enjoy such great weather. We finally understand why the Europeans lie down in the sun every opportunity they get and why the angmohs come to Singapore to bake themselves lobster red. We felt like true Brits, peeling off our outerclothing to make some vitamin D. By the way, the wavy structures lead us to the mall called MareMagum. It was one of the few malls open on a Sunday.
The sea was filled with yachts and other types of small-ships, ignore my lack of vocabulary. I'm ignorant, so sue me. haha. It looked really posh. I guess Sentosa cove will eventually look like that. And is it just me? But the wavy structures reminded me very much of Vivocity. Haha.
SHOPPPPINGGGGGGGG. Lefties! Pull&Bear! Zara! Mango!
Casa Batlló
The Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família. I needed to pinch my cheeks to realise that I am standing before this massive structure after seeing this on travel programmes on TV all the time. :) It's REAL! I'm in Barcelona! It is truly one magnificent, breath-taking structure. It was good to look at all the iconic buildings in the city. Antoni Gaudi is a genius.
Chocolate con Churros. It cost me 4 euros. SOB.
Paella for dinner.
Monday was spent shopping for WH's shoes because her shoes were falling apart and she was determined to find a perfect pair of flats despite it being the FALL season. That means that flats were hardly found and the shoes you should buy are BOOTS. Nevertheless, we persevered and trudged through thousands of streets, visited millions of shops and scoured gazillions racks, searching high & low of WH's perfect flats. Thankfully we did manage to get a good pair at a good price. So that was the major achievement of the day.
The original plan, however, was to visit sitiges, which was a quaint coastal town with lovely beaches. The whole shoe shopping episode and our fruitless search for the right station to take the train to our destination resulted in the lack of time. Therefore, we had to make alternative plans. Instead of getting real spanish beaches, we made do with man-made Barcelona beaches.
The promenade which was occupied by posh restuarants and bars.
BEACH! PALM TREES! SUN! SAND! SEA!
Soon, the temperature dropped and we headed to our next destination.
Museum of erotica. Hahaha. I know what you're thinking. I was thinking exactly the same thing. We came here out of curiosity and boy, it was a 5.5euros well-spent. We didnt get any skanky porn content, but we got real information which academics would have been proud of. The highlight was this film which we took great pleasure in watching. Hahaha. It was the beginnings of erotic films and apparently, it was comissioned by the Spanish king- for his own personal enjoyment. The irony was that the film was SO FUNNY! Because it was about this household with a horny mistress who had a pervy husband who refused to have sex with her. The mistress then summons the maid to pleasure her. The husband seduces the maid and the butler seeks the maid out to screw her as well. Apparently the maid is in really high demand- she does every job imaginable in the house. So the husband was having 'fun' with 2 female guests he invited, his wife and the maid & the gardener or butler or servant were having a orgy in the bathroom. The husband went to look for the maid and saw them through the keyhole of the bathroom door. Instead of bursting in on them, he merely watched through the keyhole and started to jack himself. Soon, we got bored and we left. But before this, we saw the ending where the mistress was seducing a priest during a confession session and a fellow priest walked in on them. haha. Hilariousssssss. While we were watching the film, this bunch of Canadian/french boys joined us and we were laughing together, making comments about it. It was a silent film, so some parts were confusing and we were trying to make sense of it. haha.
Day 4 - we decided to visit Montjuic, since I had to leave that evening. Check that out! It's a huge-ass VENDING MACHINE. It has everything you possibly need - condoms, tampons, hair conditioner, toothbrush, body lotion, snacks, drinks, pet food etc etc.
The Castle.
The view of the expansive port below our eyes.
View of Barcelona city from the top of Montjuic- its a monochrome sprawling metropolis. Its generally very flat, with a few of the buildings jutting out. Like the sagrada familia in the centre. It's flanked by mountains at the back and the seas in the south. :) Good fengshui, I approve.
