Jamiewrites: Last day in Barcelona

On our last day in Barcelona we first headed up to Montjuïc, where there’s a castle that overlooks the city. We’d bought tickets to get inside, but that wasn’t until 11 and we had a bit of time to kill and chose to spend it wandering around the streets looking at old buildings and street art. And, for some reason, a giant cat statue.

You can walk up to Montjuic, but a) it’s a long way and b) the alternative is way more interesting: firstly, a funicular (which I’ve always liked, and only more so since one was so prominent in Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’) which is part of the regular metro network for which we already had tickets since we’d been using the metro to get around the whole time we’d been here; then, a cable car up to the castle itself, for which we’d also bought tickets in advance since we’d seen how big the lineup was when we went past on the city sightseeing bus a few days earlier.

So, after using these interesting methods of transportation we found ourselves at the top and went inside the castle to collect our audio guides - and then promptly had to go back inside to replace mine, as it had been set to Spanish rather than English.

I’d read that the castle tour was somewhat uninspiring, and this turned out to be fairly accurate; there wasn’t a lot to it, at least not that you could get to on the standard access ticket. But it didn’t cost all that much, and the ticket price was worth about the views it gave you over pretty much all of Barcelona. Once we’d gone all the way around and taken plenty of pictures, we made our way back down to the city.

After some metro-jumping, we ended up at the City Park and spent some time wandering around there. Rochelle saw that you could hire a rowboat and float around one of the small lakes, so of course that’s what we did. Was pretty good value: only €6 for half an hour. We took turns on the oars and managed to get ourselves around without too much difficulty and only a handful of minor collisions with other boats.

One thing we did dislike about Barcelona (apart from the heat; I may not have mentioned this before but it was very stuffy and humid the whole time we were there): a distinct lack of public toilets, paid or otherwise. This would, of course, explain why the streets in some part of town smell like they do - what the heck else can people do under the circumstances? Anyway, we did also want a coffee, so we found a place and sat down for a while before using the bathroom and looking for our next destination.

Other than La Sagrada Familia and the basilica and Montserrat, we’d not spent much time (at least by our standards) in churches, so we found one on the to-do list that was quite close - Santa Maria del Mar and bought tickets to go through. As big old European churches go, it was quite impressive.

Next on the list was the nearby Cathedral of Barcelona, which we’d gone past on our walking tour but not seen any more of. It’s another impressive building, way more Gothic. But having just gone into a church, we didn’t feel the need to go inside.

By now it was almost time for dinner, so we went back to the hotel for a bit and then struck out to find food and then go to a bar a friend in Adelaide had told us about, Sips. It was about a 20-minute walk from our hotel, so we set out for it with the idea we’d stop for food along the way when we found somewhere. For our last night in Barcelona we wanted some tapas, so when we came across a place that had a few things we liked - patatas bravas, mostly - we went in.

Then it was on to Sips. It turned out to be quite small, and was already full when we got there so we had to line up outside to wait. But it was only about 20 minutes before we were inside and struggling to get our phones to connect to the internet in order to read the menu. Eventually got online to see the impressive list of options - it’s not just that they make interesting cocktails that’s made them so popular, it’s that many of them are very creative - some you have to inhale, others come with parts that you eat before or during, that sort of thing.

My first one has fairly straightforward - Last Word, made from gin, chartreuse and a few other things - but Rochelle had the Frida Kahlo, and that began with a chocolate shaped like a kumquat that had fake leaves attached. For the next round I got the one the place is most famous for, Bubble, and Rochelle got one called Compress that came in a strange glass that came with a wafer thing to eat throughout.

Website is here, but I suspect they change their menu quite often.

We then had a slightly drunken walk back to the hotel - the drinks were good but not overly strong; I wouldn’t recommend going there if you plan is to have a big boozy evening - it was time to pack for our train trip to Valencia in the morning.

Rochelle put the tv on; we’d found that the Disney Channel had things in English - animated stuff, mostly - but I was not prepared for them to be showing an episode of Bluey.

Stuff got packed and we went to bed.