The second
day, me and Chris hoped to visit the Montserrat Hill Monastery. An ancient high
monastery commanding beautiful views of the city and reachable via a quaint old
hillside train. After much uphill walking, we found we couldn’t take the train
because the queue was massive.
Instead, we
decided to go to the nearby Science Museum. This turned out to be the best
decision of the weekend. For some reason they have a submarine in the middle of
the road on the way there.
The science
museum, the CosmoCaixa, boasts stunning modernist design, both outside and in.
When you
begin, you descend via a spiral walkway, journeying deep into the earth to explore
where life first began.
While all the
evolutionary exhibitions were interesting, the big attraction was the indoor
rainforest. It was almost 30 degrees outisde, so naturally we wanted to go somewhere hotter.
There was a
variety of tropical fish, of all shapes and sizes.
… A small
number of tropical birds and animals…
And a number
of creepy crawlies.
Then, to
really enliven the holiday, we went to see an exhibit about infectious
diseases. Apparently this is a glass representation of SARS.
After another
fine meal, it was time to go on a tour of old Barcelona, or Catalonia as the
locals like to call it.
They like
cathedrals in Barcelona; you can’t go through more than a few streets without
coming across another one.
Still, they do
know how to give them a bit of variety. This one, Cathedral of Santa Eulàlia, had a rather nice grove inside it.
But in another
recurring motif, this Cathedral took over a hundred years to complete, because
the money ran out. And like the Segrada, it ended up with several different
styles. In this case some of the features had been taken from another nearby
building when that had been refurbished, rather than let its features be wasted.
We were taken
to what was once the Catalan palace. The yard here is where executions would
take place. They were quite rigorous executions – one chap, an assassin no
less, had his skin boiled loose, and was then skinned, dragged around town by
horses and then disemboweled.
We then
finished the tour with another Cathedral. Then we were shown the memorial
for those who died defending the city in the years it was under seige and then
conquered by the Spanish. It was a good tour, lots of history; I even remember
some of it.
It was a very
busy, extremely educational, cultural day. There was almost no time for
silliness.
And sadly no
time for shopping either.
After one more
nice meal of tapas, the short break was over. I flew back the next day, with
almost no mishaps. My ticket didn’t say which terminal I was going from;
fortunately I guessed right. Then I couldn’t find my way to security, but I
followed some disabled people and found my way and it was all ok from there.
And when I got
back to Croydon it was a temperate 9 degrees – good old Britain.
