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Barcelona is a beautiful city that is full of interesting architecture, great cafes and lots and lots of things to do and people to watch. 

The buildings Gaudi designed and built are of course very popular and unique, but there are lots of other unique places in addition.    We've enjoyed having a few days to explore.  Here's a few shots around town

Gaudi Apartment Building

The Music Consrvatory

Gaudi's Park Guell

Gaudi's architecture has had a huge effect on this city, as it brings in swarms of tourists to look at it.  And it is hard to capture the scale of La Sagrada Familia with photos.  Grandiose in scale and vision, it is getting more and more difficult to recognize Gaudi's hand as construction continues well past 100 years now.  Whether you consider it an architectural masterpiece of a work more fitted to an amusement park, you can't deny that it is unique!

Plan B

We pieced together two bike boxes that a guy at ProBike in town was nice enough to give us, and put the wheels in a separate wheel box, so Das Bike is packed and ready to go.  It isn't near so secure as the bag that we lost, but it will be fine.

I hope that you've enjoyed this blog.  It has been fun to share just a few of our experiences.

See you at home!

Barcelona Day Trip to Montserrat

Remember the boat party in Figueres that we blogged about a few days ago?  One of our shipmates was from Barcelona and he suggested that if we had time and wanted to get out of town that we visit Montserrat.  We decided put Plan B bike packing on hold while the weather is great to go hiking and our friends' suggestion sounded perfect. 

Montserrat is a mountainous region about 1 1/2 hours by train from Barcelona and the name essentially means serrated mountain; the name is easy to figure out once you see the front part of the range. 

Montserrat from the train

 We hopped a train and headed inland.  Montserrat is now a Spanish National Park (or equivalent) but it also has a fairly long association with religious activities with the Catholic Church.  The main train from Barcelona drops you off at a secondary station where you have a choice of either riding an aerial tram to the top, or getting onto a rail-link cogged train that takes you up to the village, which is mostly a monastery but no also has lots of tourist features like restaurants and a hotel.  The gondola looked a bit sketchy to me, kind of like it was built in the early 1960s, so we opted for the cogged train.

The train goes up a pretty sharply and takes about 20 minutes to reach the village.

Looking down at a train coming up

In the village there are all sorts of things to do...

 Once to the village you can take a funicular further up, or hike (a funicular is a train that is pulled by a cable and pulley system).  Our tickets were good for the funicular so we skipped that part of the hike and went up.

Riding up and passing the car going down

The funicular is steep, about 40 degrees.

Once to the top of the funicular there are many hiking options so we just set off on a path.  The rocks are sedimentary; the mountains used to be, millennia ago, a seabed.  Even so, the rock is very hard and there are lots of climbers in the area. 

Sedimentary rock

From the top of the funicular

Climbers atop a nearby spire

Not sure what this one is called, but it reminds of us Monkey Face at Smith Rocks

Unique rock formations

We hike along some trails and then went off piste and hiked to the top of some stone formations we call "swirl tops":

Swirl Tops

The hiking was awesome, as were the views toward the valley

Reluctantly, we turned back and rode the funicular down, then the cog train, and finally the intercity train back to Barcelona.  Montserrat was a perfect way to spend a day.

Tomorrow, Plan B!

Tossa de Mar to Barcelona

Our final day of riding on the open rode.  We typically get some idea of our route the night before we ride.  There were lots of sources saying that riding into Barcelona is pretty rough with heavily traveled streets, few bike lanes and fast-moving impatient drivers. We decided that after covering over 2,000 km, we don't need the last 50 or so to be filled with tension.

Adios to Tossa de Mar

So we climbed a hill out of the Tossa da Mar campground over a headlands and then rode swiftly downhill to Lloret where we stopped for coffee.  The tourist buses were everywhere even though it was only 9:00.  We continued down the coast road to Blanes and the traffic was already very heavy -- in fact, at one point we missed a turn and had to ride about 3 km up the road to a roundabout to turn around.  The traffic was so heavy that we could not cross the road.   

We found the train station and caught the commuter train to Barcelona.  Most of the route followed right along the coast, at times less than 30 feet from the ocean.  The scenery was great, the ride took about an hour and a half.  At one point a guy boarded the train with his amplifier and wireless mic and serenade the train.  The first song he sang was “What a Wonderful World” in English.  Most of the bored commuters looked away, but the guy had a great voice and a lot of moxie; we gave him a tip.

La Rambla, Barcelona

We managed to get Das Bike out of the metro station in Barcelona using the escalators since the lifts were too small to hold our bike, and relatively easily found our hotel.

We've given up any hope of getting our bike case returned from Spanish customs/Correos.  Dealing with bureaucracies is a very frustrating thing to do, especially in countries where we lack familiarity with language and local ways of doing things.  But losing the bike case is a big loss, in addition to being a big pain since we now have to devise a Plan B for packing Das Bike and getting it on the plane.

In addition to Gaudi, Barcelona is filled with unique buildings

The Harbor

Bari Gotic

Bari Gotic

 

 We have a few days, though, so first a shower and a stroll around the city –  La Rambla, through parts of Barri Gothic.   Duram and doner in a restaurant near the Plaza and grab some beers to enjoy while we watch the Brazil-Columbia match.

Girona to Tossa de Mar

 A lot of food on this trip.  Last night's entry:

Tapas in Girona

This morning in Girona was clear and warm and we had a great view back to the Pyrenees that we’d ridden through previously.  One last ride over the bridge in Girona and we were off to the coast.

The Pyrenees from our hotel in Girona

Downhill all the way to Tossa de Mar

Our last night of camping is in a campground called Cala Llevado just outside of the seaside resort town of Tossa de Mar.  The ride from Girona was on a busy road for a little ways, but we soon enough turned onto the smaller departmental roads for the rest of the ride.  A short day, about 35 miles, but we climbed another 2,000 feet.

Tossa de Mar Castle

Tassa de Mar beach

Tossa is a very popular town.  It has a nice, sheltered bay and sandy beaches and is very, very busy this time of year.  There is a really cool castle on one end of the beach but after coffee we had another 10 km or so to go (all uphill) to the campground, around the next headland, so we decided to skip the castle and head to camp.

The campground is pretty amazing and is way different from what we expect in the US.  Here, camping is like being at Disneyland – pools, game rooms, restaurants, bars (numerous of them at this campground), and several beaches.

Our campground beach

We spent the afternoon at the non-nudie beach, though here “nudie” means that the bottoms are off.  At the regular non-nudist beaches most women don’t wear tops.  

There was a pretty big sea running and heavy surf but it was warm and the water was very warm.  We swam and then sat on the warm rocks and tried not to get fried.   Next, up the steep hill to the swimming pool for more R & R.  

 

 Dinner tonight is sea urchin and limpets.  

I like 'em barbecued

With beer...

Home for the night

A Day in Girona

Ahead of schedule, perfect weather and a fancy hotel that’s not very costly.  Why not stay another day in Girona?  We both really like this town and decided to relax for anther day.  We decided to go for a morning ride in the relative cool, then wander around town some more in the afternoon (after our siesta).

I found a good route on MapMyRide that said it was a favorite of the local pros (it mentioned that it was a certain Texan’s favorite training ride, but I’m not going there…).  We dumped to coordinates into the Garmin and headed out early.  After about 5 km on busy roads which were not too busy at our un-Spanish early departure time, we turned off and started heading up.  And up.  And up.  We climbed about 3,000 feet in short order on tiny roads and saw, as I recall, 1 car.  It was quiet and still and perfect, though the 11% grade was a leg waker-upper.  But with Das Bike naked with no bags it was a piece of cake.

The only car we saw all day

At the summit: a prayer for the descent?

 I was channeling my best Alberto Contador when reality struck: a guy from Garmin flew by us like we were standing still.  Ok, we were close to standing still but he spoiled my fun!  Then the guy from Sky pro cycling flew by trying to catch the Garmin guy.  Sheesh!  Have these guys no mercy?

Anyway, it was a super fun ride and it was great to ride without the burden of a month’s worth of stuff and camping gear.  We did meet a super nice French family atop the climb – from near Lyon, the parents and twin girls maybe 15 or so in age riding together from their home to Barcelona, then on the train back home.  We had a nice talk and they gave us good tips on finding places to stay for cheap.

Back to the hotel, we explored the old city some more.  Here’s a collection of photos of this wonderful city.

View from our Hotel Balcony

(The Catalan's are very active in seeking independence from Spain and are very proud of their heritage and independence.  Spainish Spring?)

This house makes us miss Tonye.  Check out the tile roof!

The city from the river.

And a few shots of the cool Hotel Historic in Girona, and our room (before all of our crap was festooned around it).  The Hotel has only 8 rooms on 4 floors.  It is worth a stay if you're in the neighborhood.

Lobby

Our Casa

The TV is for watching the World Cup (too bad, US...)

Tomorrow we're off to the coast again.  Best to all.