September 25, 2005
Five go to Barcelona (and one meets us there)
The five of us (Nic, Martin, Nick, John, myself) left for Barcelona just after 2am on Wednesday morning, travelling to Luton to pick up our EasyJet flight. We arrived in Barcelona just after 10.30am, grabbed a cab and headed over to the apartment. The apartment was our first pleasant surprise of the trip - it was beautiful, clean, and well-appointed. It was located on Carrer de Independentia, near Hospital de la Santa Creu i de Sant Pau, and just a couple of blocks from a Metro stop.
Not long after we arrived, the sixth member of our party arrived. Steve had been in Valencia for a few days beforehand. We all headed out to explore, and ended up at Sagrada Família, the famous Gaudï cathedral that's still under construction. Between us we took several thousand photos of every conceivable angle of the cathedral. It was breathtaking, though it was only later in the week when we were looking out over Barcelona from a mountaintop that it was really possible to appreciate the scale of the thing, dominating the skyline and rising above the rest of the city.
That evening we went out to eat and find the nightlife. We were lucky with our choice of restaurant, picked entirely by chance, and it turned out to be the second-best meal we had. We were far less lucky with the club afterwards, "CDLC" or Carpé Diem Lounge Club, which was almost completely empty and horrendously overpriced (€32 for six drinks). We didn't stay for a second drink. The only other nightclub we could find on the beachfront near the Olympic Village was hosting a student night, which we decided to avoid.
The following morning we headed out to explore more of the city, making our way to Parc Güell, "Antoni Gaudí's most colourful creation". Lots of breathtaking designs and buildings. We then headed down toward the waterfront, and walked through the Gothic Quarter to the Picasso Museum. From there we headed home for a quick siesta, before heading out to party. We hit La Ramba just as a drum band were walking through, as part of La Mercè celebrations. We walked through a seething mass of people, many dancing in time to the drums. In the distance we could just make out a large dragon in the procession, with green flares generating an atmospheric glow and veil of smoke.
That evening we made a disastrous choice of restaurant (€102 for tasteless rubbish), and then spent a long time wandering the streets looking for somewhere to get a drink that wasn't already full of people. In the end we gave up, hopped in a cab, and headed over to the Apolo nightclub, recommended by David. We got there around 1am, but when we went in, we were surprised to find it almost completely empty. This was definitely not Norwich, where many of the nightclubs are starting to wind down around 1am. We sat and had a drink, and slowly the place began to fill up. The music wasn't to our taste (tending toward a constant beat all night, rather than the peaks and troughs of a UK club, where the DJs work the crowd more). Somehow in a nightclub full of Spanish we ended up talking to some incredibly cute Irish girls, which contrived to keep some of us there til six in the morning. As we left the Metro, the sun was just starting to brighten the sky.
On Friday we took a more leisurely trip around the city on the tourist bus, stopping off at Montjuïc and several other places. We headed back to the apartment and then ate at a restaurant just a few doors down the street, at a place where they hand you a Spanish-English dictionary rather than print English on the menus. This was definitely the best restaurant we went to, hardly surprising given it was packed with Spanish people. The meal was almost the same price as our tourist-trap-fodder of the previous evening, despite us all having three courses instead of one.
After the meal, we headed round the corner to a bar that also became packed with locals (but only around 2am, a couple of hours after we first arrived). We settled in for the night, Nic and Martin practicing their salsa with a local guy who played the TomToms, while John and Steve practiced their Spanish talking to the gorgeous bar staff. We left around 4am, though the exact time seems to be a bit hazy...
The following morning was a mad rush to get packed and out of the apartment by 10am, followed by sandwiches and lots of water at the café around the corner. With some sense of life restored (or at least the hangover under control), we headed into the centre of Barcelona to stroll along La Rambla. We then headed over to a Tapas bar recommended by another local, before moving on to the beach to relax and enjoy the last of the sunshine before heading over to the airport and back home.