40. A Fiery Introduction to Barcelona

After an uneventful trip down the north eastern coast of Spain, which began on the French autoroute and then became the autopista (literal translation: racetrack), and the timely purchase of a map of Espana & Portugal, we cruised into Barcelona with reasonable ease.  

I just can't trust the lady on the SatNav!  I like to have a real map in front of me and I still haven't got over being put out of a job!  One of the problems with the SatNav in a non-English speaking country is that hotels and businesses often give you their location address in either "local lingo" or as a translation into English, which doesn't necessarily match up with the Spanish data base of the SatNav.  But, once you figure out the key differences between the roads on your map and the address you've been given, you can give the SatNav lady the local name and she can then "do her thing" and take you to the door.

I tell you this because we had some difficulty with the address of the hotel we had booked the night before on the Internet.   The address on the website was Aragon, 569 Bis, Eixample, Barcelona. (Street, Number, Suburb, City).  The SatNav would not recognise the street name.  But once Paul worked out that the street name of Aragon had probably been translated into English and that the Spanish name was probably Arago, the SatNav recognised Arago and the lady brought us directly to the door.

We arrived at about 3.00 pm and got right down to business.  The first priority was, of course, to chill a bottle of white wine (for me) by tying it to the air conditioner outlet ...

... with lots of pillows underneath - JUST IN CASE .

Please note that all of the pillows were from Paul's side of the bed.  Most appropriate!

While Paul's bottle of red went into the hand basin.

There are always boring necessities to take care of and in this case it was quite a bit of washing.  I did the first load by hand, in the bath, and filled my makeshift clothes line.  The rest would have to wait until the morrow.  

In the hour it took me to do this, Paul tried to solve the problem of car parking.  Hotel reception had said "Oh dear, our car park is full and the roller door on our spare car park is broken!  But tomorrow (Friday) is a public holiday and you don't have to pay for parking on the weekend, so if you can find a street car park now, and pay until 7pm tonight - you'll be OK for the rest of your four night stay."   So Paul spent an hour walking and driving around the streets looking for a (legal) car park.  No success!  

Finally, he spat the dummy with reception telling them the situation was not to his liking and miraculously they said they had solved the problem of parking and had gained access to another private car park just down the road and "Of course, you can use that, sir.  Just pay the man at the gate."  So for 90 euros ($128.00 AUD) we had four days parking!  

With the essentials taken care of .... and fortified by a reasonably cool glass of vino, we hit the street.   We left the hotel about 6.00 pm and failed to find a suitable restaurant until 9.00pm.  It seemed as though the hatches were well and truly battened down.  And no wonder - it was the eve of the Festival of St John and it was all fires and fireworks.  

The fireworks were on sale to anyone, of any age, on every street corner and the fires were - quite literally - in the intersections of the main roads.  It was as though the locals had decided to build a bonfire in the middle of Moorabool and McKillop Streets and sell fireworks willy-nilly.  It all started about 7.00 pm and finished about 4.00 am.  The photos below were taken about 10.30 pm in the main street of our suburb.

Yes, a public urinal.  But better than using the street.

There were toddlers nonchalantly playing in this playground while chaos reigned around them.

This fire had been quite large. 

I heard the Council trucks out cleaning up the streets at about 4.00 or 5.00 am; they did a pretty good job, but what a mess.  There are still fireworks going off tonight (Sunday) in odd little neighbourhood pockets.

So … this was our introduction to Barcelona.  And I had read that this was supposed to be a sophisticated city.  Hmmmm!