"Var-tha-lone-a"

Park Guille Viaduct
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This morning was spent driving from Valencia to Barcelona. We arrived about 12:30pm and as we entered the city I was surprised to see that the port was right next to the centre of the city. There were a couple of large cruise liners in dock. Our hotel here is right in the centre of the city – in the middle of the Rambla. This is a pedestrian area that seems about a kilometre long, and apart from souvenir shops every 10 meters, has market style shops in different areas. Just near our hotel is the pet area, where stalls are selling not only pet food items and novalties, but also ducks, hens, chicks, budgies, cockatiels, bunny rabbits etc. Further down is the flower section where many stalls sell premade bouquets and straight flowers of many types. Then there are the mimes and other character artists that are vying for the tourist tips and a section for the painters and artists who will sketch your picture for 20-40 Euro.

Park Guille Town square area surrounded by bench
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We only had time for a quick bite for lunch before leaving at 2.30pm for a brief city tour, which took us to Park Guille. Initially intentioned to be an exclusive city within a city for 60 families, the park and gardens designed by Gaudy never took off with only one block ever being sold over 14 years, due to its distance from the centre of the city.  We walked through the park, admiring the multi-use viaducts and passageways, through to the town centre area. The twisting and turning ergonomic bench that surrounds the area is regarded as the longest bench in the world. We tried out the bench and, although cold to sit on, was comfortable. The area was also designed to capture and filter water through the sand base, into the many Grecian looking columns below. The water was then to be used to water the gardens. Everything is decorated in the now familiar to us cracked ceramic style of Gaudy, using everything from glass bottles to light conductors, plates and cups and saucers.

The rain in Spain, falls mainly on us!

Joe sitting on the ergonomic bench
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From the town “square” area, we can also see the two houses that were built by Gaudy, one was the park managers residence and the other was to be the sales office. These two houses are reminiscent of something out of Hansel and Gretel or gingerbread houses. Once again, there are no straight lines anywhere in the houses and they are made in the cracked ceramic style.

After this we were dropped back close to hotel and then had the remaining night at leisure. We started by wandering up and down the Rambla with some of the others in our tour group. Rui had told us to visit St Joseph’s fresh food market, and here we found lots of colourful stalls packed full of fruit and vegetables, lollies, chocolates, meat and fish. You could even buy a pig head! Being late afternoon, the stall holders had start to juice and sell it in many different concoctions, as well as selling pre-cut-up fruit in bowls very cheaply. I was downhearted with my recent illness that I had to be careful with what I ate as the fruit just looked so nice!

Bench closeup
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We kept wandering down the Rambla towards the port end and ended up by the large statue of Christopher Columbus pointing to the new world (but pointing the wrong way!). It then started to rain so we headed back to a restaurant recommended by others from lunch that had a specials menu of tapas and paella. Joe and I shared two plates of tapas and both chose the chicken paella for our main, with was quite flavoursome. After dessert it was straight back to the hotel through the rain as it was getting late - and it was lucky we did, as soon after it poured down. We were happy that we had finally managed to try a Spanish Paella.