Barcelona | Andokides' Porch

After 13 nights on the boat, we pulled into the Harbor at Barcelona. Almost two weeks of being catered to, entertained, fed, pampered, now “Get off the boat!”

Pete and I wasted no time. We had three days in Barcelona, and Pete had big plans for them.

My memory is not entirely trustworthy at this point on all the details, but according to my best recollection (with the help of the photographic record), Pete and I made our way to the Plaça de la Porta de Pau (Square of the Gate of Peace) where there is a huge monument to Christopher Columbus, found the tourist information booth, and bought our 3-day Barcelona cards, which gave us three days of unlimited access to public transit and free or reduced entry to many museums and attractions. We then headed off to leave our luggage at our hotel and headed off toward the northwest side of the city and the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes. On our way, we passed through part of the University of Barcelona and the grounds of the Royal Palace, which was quite modest, really.

The Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Pedralbes was established in 1327 by Queen Elisenda de Montcada and is, still today, a home for nuns of the Poor Clare Order (the female branch of the Franciscans). There’s an extensive museum associated with the monastery, filled with religious art and artifacts, and there’s a beautiful cloister with a general design that was already beginning to feel familiar. At Santa Maria de Pedrables, we were able to tour a kitchen where food has been prepared since the 14th century. Much has been updated, but there are still large earthen sinks and beautiful tile work that date back hundreds of years.

After the monastery, we headed off toward Tibidabo Mountain, the tallest mountain in the Serra de Collserola range. We got most of the way up the mountain via funicular and hiked the distance from the funicular terminal to the peak. Atop Tibidabo Mountain sits an amusement park and a very large Roman Catholic church (declared a “minor basilica” in 1961 by Pope John XXIII), the Temple de Sagrat Cor. It’s an interesting juxtaposition. The Fabra Observatory, which we passed on the way up, is on a nearby hill. The church is actually two buildings, one built on top of the other, and is by the standards of Spain, a relatively new church, the lower building, “the crypt,” being built between 1903 and 1911, and the main church begun in 1915 and completed in 1951. The views of Barcelona from Tibidabo Mountain are spectacular.

When we had seen what we wanted to see on Tibidabo Mountain, we took a bus back down to the funicular terminal, the funicular back down to a transit station, and a train back to the Plaça de la Porta de Pau where we had begun our morning. We used our BCN Cards to take the elevator to the top of the Columbus Monument, 197 feet up, and got another birds-eye view of Barcelona.

It was getting close to sunset, and according to my activity monitor, we had walked about 10 miles (and trained and bused who knows how many more). We stopped and had a, not outstanding, but perfectly respectable paella at one of the many cafés on the plaza catering to tourists, stopped to shop at a couple of souvenir stands, then headed back to our hotel.

DAY 2

Our second day in Barcelona, we grabbed breakfast at a pastry shop on our way to the subway, then headed to the oldest section of Barcelona, the Gothic Quarter, for a guided tour..