Friday, December 08, 2006
Thursday 16th November - Barcelona
The night before we travelled to Barcelona the heavens opened and continued to rain all night and the following day. We were so glad that we took down the awning on the previous day! The site was quite small and narrow and we were quite pleased we had managed to drive it to reception without any bother. We paid up and started to leave knocking over a large terracotta plant pot and the tree inside! Oops! The first dent on the caravan! The pot was still in one piece though.
We made it to Villanova Park just south of Barcelona in time for tea. The boys had watched the DVD all the way and behaved exemplary. Hurrah! A tactic we will use again!! The park had a small wildlife park and the boys had a great time feeding some of the deer, goats and birds. We had a pleasant night despite the mossies taking us by surprise and feasting well.
Friday 17th November
On Friday we set off early to explore Barcelona, I (Ali) was driving. As expected with a big city and 3 little children it was stress, stress, stress! First off driving in a city you don’t know with a zillion different lanes, parking signs which mysteriously disappeared and mad taxi drivers zooming in and out of lanes, not to mention the well hidden traffic lights made for a pretty tense time not helped by cries of “this is boring”, “When can we get out?” and other such useful phrases. We finally found somewhere to park but couldn’t get the parking meter to accept our card – as we had no change – so had to move on. Jon decided to take over the driving, I think he had got fed up with the clenched knuckles, the fact that my face was pressed against the windscreen, big sighing and the snappy answers to anything he said! We finally managed to park in a 24hr car park, the parking attendant was really helpful by writing down the streets where the car park was situated so that we would be able to find our way back, it didn’t help that the car park was off the map that we had!
The other problem was that we were miles away from anything interesting – so we dragged the kids at a snails pace with cries, that fill a parents heart with dread when they are in the middle of a foreign city and where they speak so little of the local language it is not worth mentioning, of “I need a Poo!” They also spread out each request by about ½ an hour each time. So one Hotel, one pizza place and one café later we had eaten our lunch and were outside the famous Gaudi Church still being built, Sagrada Familia.
To my surprise the boys really enjoyed it, they loved looking at the numerous sculptures at the front and the back of the church, they particularly liked the turtles holding up the pillars and the bowls of fruit at the top of some of the spires. The stained glass window was truly beautiful and reflected wonderfully onto the pillars inside. We probably missed quite a bit by not travelling to the top in the lift and then working our way down the hundreds of steps. The 45minute wait for the lift was enough to put us off, the thought of standing in a queue for that length of time with the boys just didn’t bear thinking about. So with that done we retired to the play park across the road. So not only are we touring all the European toilets we are also touring most of the play parks! I made the comment that we could probably have enjoyed the church just as much by looking at the outside without paying to go inside, but Jon was quick to point out the opportunity to see a church of this size being built is very rare indeed.
We took in Las Ramblas during the evening, it felt like the city had come alive. We thoroughly enjoyed walking down this famous street and looking in all the street vendors stalls. There were many pet stalls with tortoises, large chickens, fish, parrots, hamsters and so on, the kids really enjoyed these. There were many mime artists along the way that added to the magic, although the lady dressed as a sunflower had the children screaming in fear and clinging to me for dear life when she decided to pretend to chase them.
It was time for tea and the boys were really tired, but we wanted to reach the pedestrian swing bridge in Port Vell at the end, we climbed and played at the base of the Christopher Columbus statue and then walked over the bridge to find tea only to be confronted by a €100 per person set menu which we kindly declined. We headed back the way we had come and eventually came across a tapas bar very reasonably priced and we had a fantastic meal there. The Spanish are always very welcoming of the children, especially Jory with his blonde curly locks, blue eyes and willingness to shout “Hola”, “Gracias” and “Adios”.
The following day we decided to visit Tarragona. We arrived in time for lunch enjoyed by the beach and the kids had an hour to frolic about in their underpants. We then made our way to the Roman amphitheatre, which had fantastic veiws to the sea. Jon and the boys had much fun pretending to be gladiators and shouting “Hooh Hah” every so often much to the amusement of the other sightseers.
We traversed a bit more of the town and then headed home. Although we did not see all that Tarragona had to offer we enjoyed the gloriously warm weather and we were all totally relaxed. We felt great!
