Days slip by and palsied fingers touch not the inviting keys of the computer.
I used the adjective advisedly because I have succumbed to the illness that smote Toni, aggravated it must be admitted by an excess of good food and bad liquor. The good food was perhaps a little of an overstatement as I am convinced that the quality of the food in the restaurant that we had was more than a mere contributory factor.
But, but but. The past days have been enlivened by the arrival of a quartet of friends, whose arrival emphasised their loss in a strange sort of way. This is a paradoxical arrangement that I’m sure will become clearer to me and will be well known already to those who live abroad.
Alison and Bryn had a fairly clear idea of the bones of what they wanted to do, though their ability to pack in as much as they would have liked was severely restricted by the dead hand of RENFE and the total disruption of the entire traffic system in our part of the Barcelona area. What was a short, efficient train ride into the centre of the city became something reminiscent of the worst excesses of the M25 – and we all know what that abomination (my favourite word of the moment) led to!
In spite of the machinations, the continuing machinations I should say, of RENFE and its entire works all five of us – Alison, Bryn, Paul 1 and Paul Squared – were able to pack into my car and set off for the city. Alison and Bryn set off for a little light shopping and a Gaudi house while the Pauls and I settled for the long, slow frustration of a City Tour.
I wonder if there is any decent city in the world (or at least in Europe) in which it is possible to take a City Tour without feeling that the sights run a poor second to the frustrations. Traffic in most cities now ensures that the speed of transportation is now lagging behind what it might have been in the days of the horse and cart. Add to those traffic light systems which seem entirely designed to restrict rather than facilitate traffic flow; unattended building works spilling into roads; road repairs without any repairers but with maximum inconvenience; tunnel sighted drivers and suicidal pedestrians –and you have the perfect mix for an agonizingly pedestrian (adjective and metaphor) tour. I think this is why Walking Tours have now become so popular in cities: it allows people to move at a real and acceptable speed, a speed indeed which is usually faster than the stationary traffic forming the metallic barrier to the walkways that the speedy pedestrians inhabit!
On my advice the Boys decided to take the Red Route bus ride which took us to the Casa Milla, Sagrada Familla and Camp Nou inter alia.
The more I see of Barcelona the more I am convinced of what a handsome city it is. So many buildings are not only interesting in their general shape but are also fascinating in the detail of their construction and ornamentation. It is said that Barcelona has the largest (and Catalans would fairly maintain, the finest) collection of Modernista buildings in Europe. I never fail to be amused by the irony of the British calling the Modernista movement Art Nouveau while the French call it Le Style Moderne. It is almost like admitting that since we Brits have not excelled in the plastic arts since the heyday of eighteenth and nineteenth century water colourists, so we don’t really have the right to give an English name to a movement in painting or architecture. Though thinking about it, didn’t Fry coin the name Post Impressionist for the London exhibition? There again, the term ‘post’ is hardly of English derivation and the term ‘Impressionist’ was used as an referential insult by a French newspaper critic about one of Monet’s paintings.
Enough!
The Boys were vaguely interested in everything they saw, but certainly did not evince the appropriate quantity of awe and respect for what they were viewing. They remained staunchly unimpressed by one of the great public spaces in the world in Parc Guell and they were bemused to the point of indifference by the Casa Milla.
They were impressed however by the strength of the sun.
For the first time for a long time I was able to view the Sagrada Familla from a closer viewpoint to that which I am usually accustomed. My difficulties with the building remain.
What from a distance looks imposing, strange and organic when seen close to resolves itself into its disparate parts. I think that the sculptures on the Passion façade are a grotesque, insulting and disastrous encrustation. The splayed pillars, which on Gaudi’s early drawings looked revolutionary now look gaudily commercial and cheap giving a tent like appearance to the entrance, with stones looking more like guy ropes than structural supports. The ‘Gothic’ windows look too much like their distant ancestors to be original and not well enough finished to be acceptable: it’s almost like a childish representation translated into stone and glass.
The towers still impress and the use of ceramics seems to me to be masterly. I still maintain that this is a building to be seen at a distance and, at a distance it ranks with the Kaufmann House and Ely Cathedral as one of my favourite buildings.
Our evening meal, this time taking in Toni who was back from work early, was one with poor results – hence my illness and my failure to take Alison and Bryn to the airport and to take the Pauls on a jaunt to Sitges.
Such an ending to a visit demands a return to make amends.
I will keep the beds aired!
I used the adjective advisedly because I have succumbed to the illness that smote Toni, aggravated it must be admitted by an excess of good food and bad liquor. The good food was perhaps a little of an overstatement as I am convinced that the quality of the food in the restaurant that we had was more than a mere contributory factor.
But, but but. The past days have been enlivened by the arrival of a quartet of friends, whose arrival emphasised their loss in a strange sort of way. This is a paradoxical arrangement that I’m sure will become clearer to me and will be well known already to those who live abroad.
Alison and Bryn had a fairly clear idea of the bones of what they wanted to do, though their ability to pack in as much as they would have liked was severely restricted by the dead hand of RENFE and the total disruption of the entire traffic system in our part of the Barcelona area. What was a short, efficient train ride into the centre of the city became something reminiscent of the worst excesses of the M25 – and we all know what that abomination (my favourite word of the moment) led to!
In spite of the machinations, the continuing machinations I should say, of RENFE and its entire works all five of us – Alison, Bryn, Paul 1 and Paul Squared – were able to pack into my car and set off for the city. Alison and Bryn set off for a little light shopping and a Gaudi house while the Pauls and I settled for the long, slow frustration of a City Tour.
I wonder if there is any decent city in the world (or at least in Europe) in which it is possible to take a City Tour without feeling that the sights run a poor second to the frustrations. Traffic in most cities now ensures that the speed of transportation is now lagging behind what it might have been in the days of the horse and cart. Add to those traffic light systems which seem entirely designed to restrict rather than facilitate traffic flow; unattended building works spilling into roads; road repairs without any repairers but with maximum inconvenience; tunnel sighted drivers and suicidal pedestrians –and you have the perfect mix for an agonizingly pedestrian (adjective and metaphor) tour. I think this is why Walking Tours have now become so popular in cities: it allows people to move at a real and acceptable speed, a speed indeed which is usually faster than the stationary traffic forming the metallic barrier to the walkways that the speedy pedestrians inhabit!
On my advice the Boys decided to take the Red Route bus ride which took us to the Casa Milla, Sagrada Familla and Camp Nou inter alia.
The more I see of Barcelona the more I am convinced of what a handsome city it is. So many buildings are not only interesting in their general shape but are also fascinating in the detail of their construction and ornamentation. It is said that Barcelona has the largest (and Catalans would fairly maintain, the finest) collection of Modernista buildings in Europe. I never fail to be amused by the irony of the British calling the Modernista movement Art Nouveau while the French call it Le Style Moderne. It is almost like admitting that since we Brits have not excelled in the plastic arts since the heyday of eighteenth and nineteenth century water colourists, so we don’t really have the right to give an English name to a movement in painting or architecture. Though thinking about it, didn’t Fry coin the name Post Impressionist for the London exhibition? There again, the term ‘post’ is hardly of English derivation and the term ‘Impressionist’ was used as an referential insult by a French newspaper critic about one of Monet’s paintings.
Enough!
The Boys were vaguely interested in everything they saw, but certainly did not evince the appropriate quantity of awe and respect for what they were viewing. They remained staunchly unimpressed by one of the great public spaces in the world in Parc Guell and they were bemused to the point of indifference by the Casa Milla.
They were impressed however by the strength of the sun.
For the first time for a long time I was able to view the Sagrada Familla from a closer viewpoint to that which I am usually accustomed. My difficulties with the building remain.
What from a distance looks imposing, strange and organic when seen close to resolves itself into its disparate parts. I think that the sculptures on the Passion façade are a grotesque, insulting and disastrous encrustation. The splayed pillars, which on Gaudi’s early drawings looked revolutionary now look gaudily commercial and cheap giving a tent like appearance to the entrance, with stones looking more like guy ropes than structural supports. The ‘Gothic’ windows look too much like their distant ancestors to be original and not well enough finished to be acceptable: it’s almost like a childish representation translated into stone and glass.
The towers still impress and the use of ceramics seems to me to be masterly. I still maintain that this is a building to be seen at a distance and, at a distance it ranks with the Kaufmann House and Ely Cathedral as one of my favourite buildings.
Our evening meal, this time taking in Toni who was back from work early, was one with poor results – hence my illness and my failure to take Alison and Bryn to the airport and to take the Pauls on a jaunt to Sitges.
Such an ending to a visit demands a return to make amends.
I will keep the beds aired!
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