So we have come to our final few hours in Barcelona, and I’m writing this in the apartment that has become home for the past week, feeling highly grateful to its owners for allowing daughter and I to stay in it until 5.30pm, when ‘normal’chucking out time is around 11am.
It’s an odd day in the Catalan capital – a national holiday, the feast of Sant Joan (Midsummer´s Eve) and everyone is looking a little shell-shocked, as most of the celebrating started yesterday evening with fireworks that continued until dawn and strange groups running through the streets carrying lighted torches.
Fire and water seemed to play a large role in the festivities, with impromtu bonfires on the beach alternating with people throwing water over each other. Something to do with purification, apparently, or possibly just copious quantities of Cava (virtually the national drink), beer and Sangria being consumed.
Today we’ve fitted in a couple of hours on the beach (not looking its impeccable best, it has to be said), a final lunch by the harbour and a long walk back up Las Ramblas, waving goodbye to the mime artists in all their weird and wonderful guises, the bird sellers and the waiters touting for our business.
Highlights have been Parc Guell, Gaudi’s masterpiece, and also his Casa Mila, a massively over-the-top apartment block topped with statues so unsettling they’re known as the witch scarers, a cable car ride high over the city and its harbour from the top of verdant Montjuic, ‘our’ church, Sagrada Familia, again a Gaudi (unfinished) masterpiece and, just in case you’re thinking it’s all been a bit of a school trip – two fab bars in the Gothic Quarter, Ginger and Can Fly (for amazing tapas and cocktails), and the best restaurant on the seafront – Agua.
Adios Barcelona, we’ll be back.
Sarah