Gaudi Day

18 Apr - Day 34

Today we left Granada and made our way to El Puig, a small town a few minutes out of Valencia. The drive was about 5 hours long and went as you'd expect: it took five hours and there was a lot of driving.

After navigating the streets of Valencia and then taking a wrong turn once we got to El Puig, we eventually ended up at the Hotel Ronda I (the Hotel Ronda II was a few doors down the street). we unpacked, had a rest and then went for a walk. There isn't a whole lot to do there unless you like skateboarding in carparks or visiting the one cathedral that they have. We did see an apartment with a New Zealand flag hanging from its balcony but refrained from yelling out the national anthem in the middle of the street.

The restaurants around town wouldn't be open until 8.30 which was far too late for us. Instead we went to the supermarket to buy what would end up being an excellent but very cheap dinner of ham, bread, sardines and peppers. The room tragically didn't have any glasses for the consumption of wine so my dad had to repurpose a jar of beans that we had eaten earlier that day. Gross.

19 Apr - Day 35

We checked out of the hotel and continued our journey onwards to Barcelona. The ride was good and we had a nice shower of rain to clean the mass of insect guts off the front of the car.

After several wrong turns, we managed to reach our apartment half an hour before we were due to meet the owner, Eric. I sat in the car while my dad went for a walk around and to sit outside to wait for Eric to arrive. A few minutes after our arranged meeting time, dad gave Eric a call. I saw a man walking down the street a few metres away from him pick up his phone. Assuming the man to be Eric, I waved at dad telling him to turn around. Eric (for it was he) thought I was waving to him and waved back; my dad didn't take the hint and started walking towards me, away from Eric.

Eventually we figured things out, parked the car and went up to the apartment. Turns out Eric is a French guy who has been living in Barcelona for 13 years and runs this place with another guy, who we didn't catch the name of. It is a very nice apartment and is big enough for 5 people. It's about 3 times larger than out apartment in Paris and is the first place we've stayed in that has more than two rooms. The best part is that I now have my own bedroom. Exciting stuff.

After we unpacked, we went for a walk around the neighbourhood. This was during siesta time and there was not a whole lot to see so went to get groceries and returned back.

The plan was for dad to cook a chicken noodle soup for dinner. We couldn't find the right noodles at the supermarket and ended up buying rice macaroni tubes instead but it was still very nice. The only downside to having a kitchen is that I have to start doing dishes again.

20 Apr - Day 36

Today I had planned to meet my school friend Felix, who is currently spending a gap year living and going to school again (sucker) in Italy. It so happened that he was on an art and history trip in Barcelona and we were able to meet up.

I found him in Barcelona's Hard Rock Cafe where he was contemplating buying a t-shirt. We sat and lunched in the Placa de Catalunya on sandwichs kindly prepared by my father that morning.

We then took a walk down one of Barcelona's most popular streets, La Rambla, where we bumped into some of his Italian classmates and then caught the metro to La Sagrada Familia, a gigantic church in the middle of the city with some very interesting architecture, very different from all the churches I'd seen so far.

We then had a little walk through this garden that I don't know the name of on the way to the waterfront, a place often frequented by Felix and his classmates late at night during their stay in Barcelona in their search for the city's discotheques. We stopped to take some photos with Chris Colombus before seeking out a gelato shop. Felix had to return to his hotel at 5 so as to not get stranded in Barcelona, so we parted ways until I see him again, which will probably in a few weeks when we hit Italy.

Meanwhile, my dad had been looking around at a whole lot of Gaudi buildings (that's the name of the artist/architect, not a rude description of the buildings) and had also visited La Sagrada which was desgined by Gaudi too. The design for La Sagrada Familia was actually concieved in 1912 but is still under construction today, 100 years later. This slight delay is due to the fact that Gaudi got hit by a tram and died sometime before it was to be built.

We met back at the apartment and prepared for a dinner of quail eggs on lettuce, whitebait (which looked like Medusa's hair) omelette and stirfried veges and basmati rice. I was given the task of peeling the boiled quail eggs which ended up being very messy, with large chunks of the eggs missing, but I got it done and now I'm really full.