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For our fourth day we decided to go and see what was on offer in the big city. Well, we sort of knew what was on offer, so on this day we decided to go and buy a bit of it.
We left home at around 10:15 after Kas had been for her run. The drive into Barcelona was pretty uneventful and Cynthia did a grand job of taking us along the main coastal road rather than through the middle of town. We parked up in a massive car park on the side of Montjuïc. I then decided I didn’t like where I’d parked, so I did another lap of the car park and parked somewhere I thought more acceptable. The problem was caused by the fact that it wasn’t obvious whether you were supposed to pay to park or not.
Anyway, back at the plot, on the top of Montjuïc there’s a castle which has been kept in pretty good order and which was surprisingly cheap to get into. We had a good old walk around the inside, taking lots of photos of both the castle and the views over the city. Of the three things I expected to be able to see from a high vantage point in Barcelona ( the Camp Nou, the Sagrada Familia and the Olympic Stadium) we only managed to spot one from up here. The Camp Nou was hidden in buildings and we didn’t know which direction it was in, and the Olympic Stadium is at the foot of the mountain hidden behind a load of tees. The Sagrada Familia stands out a mile from its surroundings. I think the surrounding buildings are being deliberately kept at a low height so that the cathedral stands out more.
After a while we found ourselves in an inner courtyard with what looked like a load of tea towels hanging out to dry. Turns out they are full of profound questions. The only question we had at this point was “is there a cafe in here?” and we found a member of staff to answer it for us. “No”, she said. “But there’s some vending machines in room 10 that contain cold drinks.” Well that’ll do us, because we had sandwiches and crisps in the backpack anyway.
Back outside after lunch we went for a walk around the path on the outside of the walls, partly for more views and partly to do a few geocaches dotted along the way. Some of these ones were actually there.
After walking all the way round we took the cable car down to the bottom (lazy, I know, but we’d have to come back up again at some point, and it’s part of the experience, innit ?
From the bottom of the cable car it’s about a third of a mile walk along flat ground to get to the Olympic Stadium. They very nicely keep this open at one end so you can enter on the mezzanine level and get some good photos around the stadium. There’s also a souvenir shop and a cafe inside. Excellent. Time for an ice cream then.
From the stadium we dropped down a level onto the big open spaces they built for the Olympics. There were a few more caches down there as well as a load of extra Olympic venues that were closed.
By the time we’d done all this it was getting a bit late, so we headed off home, via a drinks stop at the same service station we’d used on Saturday.
When we got home we decided to go out for dinner again and walked down into Sant Feliu, where we found a rather average pizza place after having wandered most of the town centre looking for something other than the rather samey tapas bars that the town centre is filled with.
The walk back up the hill was quite slow after a long day, and once we got home Kas and Izzy went straight to bed while Ami and me sat up for a while reading.