Awful, ghastly hangover this morning - that will teach me to hang out with a group of 20-something backpackers and match them drink for drink....
Left the hostel at 12pm with Carrie from Washington State USA, and our dorm mate Lourdes from Brazil, in search of sustenance. Unlike the constant rain of my first day, today was hot and sunny - the sort of weather I expected in Spain. Applied sunblock liberally in between taking painkillers and feeling sorry for myself. Brunch was at a tapas bar around the corner from our hostel, where I had several cokes to try and kickstart by struggling brain.
After successfully navigating the Barcelona Metro, we emerged to behold Gaudi's Sagrada Familia. Oh, oh, oh what an amazing, miraculous building! Every detail bursts with creativity and inspiration. Stone that seems to have been encouraged to grow like a flower into strange curliqued organic shapes. Breath-taking attention to details. Cute workmen in hard hats and shorts. Leering stone grotesqueries. Saints. Monsters. Soaring columns supported on the backs of turtles. And a 45 queue to start the slow ascent of the spiral stairs which climb up, up, up and round and round the towers of this amazing construction site...
Word of advice: Don't try and climb a 350 step spiral stair in a narrow tower with people pressing in on either side and a vertiginous drop to your left when you have the kind of hangover that makes your legs shake and your hand (grimly clutching the iron railing) tremble. Baaaad idea.
But the waves of nausea and sudden vertigo were all worth it for the view at the top, and the close-up view of the fine details of the Temple of the Sacred Family's spires, which are still works in process. The climb was a penance for last night's debauch, this sun-drenched panorama my reward.
I'd planned to spend the afternoon exploring another Gaudi site, the Park Guell, but instead, on a whim I took the train out to Montjuic and spent hours walking through the parks which flank this great rocky headland overlooking Barcelona. Atop the great rock I found a solid castle, now a military museum, whose moat is now a beautiful garden, and on my way back down the mountain I discovered the Botanic Gardens and started chatting to a cute Belgian boy.
Returning to the city via the waterfront I chanced upon the 14th century Portal de Santa Madrona, one of the old gates of the city, where junkies were sleeping beneath its old stone walls. Dinner followed, and then an early night that was interupted by the drunken return of Matta, Matt and Simon at 2am and then again at 4am. Grrrr.
Sat 10th September
Up at 10am as the rest of the dorm slept and out to Gaudi's magnificent Park Guell. I took a direct route from the station rather than the long way, and consequently hiked up a hill so steep that its footpath became stairs, and eventually a series of escalators - which were, of course, broken today. Breakfast was a fresh juicy peach and a bottle of water.
Initially, having entered the park via its topmost gate, I was underwhelmed - it seemed to be little more than a rocky path winding through semi-arid scrub. Then I turned a corner and saw the most beautiful plaza, ringed about by undulating walls and mosaic-tiled benches, surrounded by scalloped butresses and palm trees full of squarking parrots, all overlooking two of the most surreally beautiful buildings. I'd seen this place in films and photos but still, what an enchanting place it was.
The afternoon was spent at MACBA, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, which I adored. Its great white, wide-windowed three-storey high foyer sent light streaming into the building, while the balconies on the first and second floors had semi-opaque glass-brick floors, allowing more light to flood through the building.
The artworks which struck, moved or delighted me included:
- Joseph Ponsati's Sculpture for a pictograma, a recreation of an older work: "I always considered the important thing to be the work's contents, which should be able to be projected with full force beyond any temporal limitations..."
- Antoni Tapies' Four Grey Squares on a Brown Background, a beautiful exploration of abstract space, texture and the creative process.
- A.D. Reinhardt's Abstract Painting (1956), which appears at first as a solid black canvas before you start to see the details emerge in blocks of deep blue, dark indigo...
- A series of photos by Robert Frank, including his 1959 work Pull My Daisy, also the name of a Beat Generation poem-turned-film, and who was in the photo but Ginsberg's lover Orlovsky...
- Dan Graham's video work Rock My Religion which linked estactic dance, Patti Smith, punk rock, the Shakers and speaking in tounges.
- Beautiful photographic work by Suzanna Lafont and Fina Mirables
- And a beautiful photographic sequence of 100 different models each a year older than the former, called simply 100 Years.
The evening, my last night in Barcelona before flying to Dublin, was spent with Carrie, Lourdes and a new dorm-mate, a rather handsomely bedraggled Canadian lad. We went in search of rock music, and ended up in a bar called Tequila, where headphones dangled above every bar stool so that you could listen to your request in private. It was in a definitely seedy part of town, where I was several times offered cocaine and hashish on the street, and I'm glad we were there en masse - it might have been a trifle scary on my own.
Tequila was a bit pricy, so we wandered off, at which point I left the group for a meeting with my Belgian boy from yesterday: alas, he stood me up, so no last night of passion in Barcelona. Such is life.
As I lay down to sleep that night I wondered if I had seen as much of Barcelona as I could have, and decided that the language barrier was a trifle intimidating: this would be less of a problem was I with friends, but as it was, travelling alone, I found the city just a little daunting. Nor did I get out to the country, or see enough of the gay scene, or go to the Picasso Museum, or Dali's deranged surrealist castle. Next time...
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