The visit of my cousin Judith to Barcelona was a case of “not only but also” in the best sense.
It has been quite a time since we last met and so it was both a pleasure and something of an irony that we finally came back together in a foreign country.
I relied on my in car navigator to get me to Judith’s hotel and it did – in a way. I have noticed that The Voice That Must Be Obeyed has a tendency to say things like, “Drive 50 yards to destination” and “Arriving at destination.” You have to take on faith the fact that you are there because there is nothing clearly visible in the surroundings to indicate that you have actually arrived at the place where you want to be.
In Spain, especially in a popular part of a large city like Barcelona there is nowhere to park and housing development fills every available space. In cases like this your destination may be hidden behind a block of flats and a strip of shops and not be immediately visible from the road, and certainly not from a moving car when you are seeing the place for the first time. Pausing to take stock of your situation is clearly out of the question when you are being followed extremely closely by drivers whose passionate intensity to get to a destination can only be justified by having their cars filled with pregnant persons about to give birth.
All of that was to explain why I missed my destination a few times before I finally got there.
In Barcelona “missing your destination” is a real threat. Once a place is passed you will find all sorts of obstacles in your way to getting back there. Because of the suicidal and homicidal intensity of traffic doing a u-turn is equivalent to falling on your sword. The numbers of ‘no entry’ or ‘no right turn’ or indeed ‘no left turn’ signs constantly frustrate any attempt to circle back on yourself without returning to your original destination and starting again. If you are able, through a combination of good luck, the grace of god and devil-may-care driving to find again your destination then you will inevitably be looking at it like Moses viewing the Promised Land: visible, but out of reach, usually the wrong way up a one way road.
Through a mixture of blind faith, appallingly inconsiderate driving on my part and sheer luck I did managed to approach my “destination” again from the other side of the road and lo! the different perspective revealed the hitherto hidden riches of the hotel. Parking the car was another story which I am not strong enough to relate at the present time.
Suffice to say I found my cousin who was surprised at my promptitude (as indeed was I) and we immediately made plans for lunch.
The hotel was near Camp Nou so we decided to throw caution to the winds and take a taxi to the centre and find somewhere nice to eat in the Old Town.
Our eventual choice was a busy looking restaurant in a square which was marked by a rather random looking assortment of subterranean classical rubble protected from the elements by a sheet of glass. We took our seats on a wooden terrace to watch the world go by and waited for the menus.
We had made a fundamental mistake. We were hoping for the menu del dia and we did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menus did not entitle us to an outside seat. When disabused of our assumption we moved inside and sat down. We did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menu did not entitle us to an inside seat in the spacious interior of the restaurant. We were ushered to a cramped area in the back of the restaurant and, at last, we were able to consider our choices of food.
It has to be said that we didn’t consider much as we talked constantly and had to be prompted a few times before we finally managed to give coherent instructions to the waiter.
The meal was average, though good value for money – though the thick black sauce which covered the hake had only to be tasted to be instantly rejected!
Our next foray after lunch was one of the reasons that visitors to your home city are worth their weight in gold. As Judith had said that she had attended some evening classes in the history of art I thought that a short visit to the Museu National d’Art de Catalunya would be a good choice. This decision was based on a previous visit to the cultural sights of Barcelona when, armed with a Culture Card I went through the museums like a dose of salts. The Museu National d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) while being very impressive had very few of the sorts of paintings that I actually wanted to see. Ignoring all the Romanesque and Classical stuff (!) the ‘interesting’ art only amounted to a couple of rooms. This, I thought, would be ideal for a short visit.
Well, I was wrong – in a good sense!
The museum building was constructed for the 1929 exhibition and is grandiose and impressive, but inside they have created an excitingly modern space working with the original elements of the building but developing them into dynamic areas which complement the art.
We were both astonished at the scale of the building and the unexpected vistas that it afforded. I had also underestimated the range and quality of the art on display. It appears that Judith and I both play the same game in art galleries – ‘Which one would you take home with you?’ For me, the most impressive painting was a small ‘Portrait of a negro’ by Flink (?) more information will have to be collected from the gallery itself as there is no illustration of information in the gallery guide (in Spanish, blame Judith!) which I bought at the end of our visit.
Taking Judith there has opened my eyes to what a treasure we have in Barcelona in this museum. When (if?) the trains start running normally, I will return! I must warn Hadyn now that this museum is going to be one of the stops on his cultural itinerary when he visits in December.
He has been warned!
It has been quite a time since we last met and so it was both a pleasure and something of an irony that we finally came back together in a foreign country.
I relied on my in car navigator to get me to Judith’s hotel and it did – in a way. I have noticed that The Voice That Must Be Obeyed has a tendency to say things like, “Drive 50 yards to destination” and “Arriving at destination.” You have to take on faith the fact that you are there because there is nothing clearly visible in the surroundings to indicate that you have actually arrived at the place where you want to be.
In Spain, especially in a popular part of a large city like Barcelona there is nowhere to park and housing development fills every available space. In cases like this your destination may be hidden behind a block of flats and a strip of shops and not be immediately visible from the road, and certainly not from a moving car when you are seeing the place for the first time. Pausing to take stock of your situation is clearly out of the question when you are being followed extremely closely by drivers whose passionate intensity to get to a destination can only be justified by having their cars filled with pregnant persons about to give birth.
All of that was to explain why I missed my destination a few times before I finally got there.
In Barcelona “missing your destination” is a real threat. Once a place is passed you will find all sorts of obstacles in your way to getting back there. Because of the suicidal and homicidal intensity of traffic doing a u-turn is equivalent to falling on your sword. The numbers of ‘no entry’ or ‘no right turn’ or indeed ‘no left turn’ signs constantly frustrate any attempt to circle back on yourself without returning to your original destination and starting again. If you are able, through a combination of good luck, the grace of god and devil-may-care driving to find again your destination then you will inevitably be looking at it like Moses viewing the Promised Land: visible, but out of reach, usually the wrong way up a one way road.
Through a mixture of blind faith, appallingly inconsiderate driving on my part and sheer luck I did managed to approach my “destination” again from the other side of the road and lo! the different perspective revealed the hitherto hidden riches of the hotel. Parking the car was another story which I am not strong enough to relate at the present time.
Suffice to say I found my cousin who was surprised at my promptitude (as indeed was I) and we immediately made plans for lunch.
The hotel was near Camp Nou so we decided to throw caution to the winds and take a taxi to the centre and find somewhere nice to eat in the Old Town.
Our eventual choice was a busy looking restaurant in a square which was marked by a rather random looking assortment of subterranean classical rubble protected from the elements by a sheet of glass. We took our seats on a wooden terrace to watch the world go by and waited for the menus.
We had made a fundamental mistake. We were hoping for the menu del dia and we did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menus did not entitle us to an outside seat. When disabused of our assumption we moved inside and sat down. We did not realise that the choice of the cheaper menu did not entitle us to an inside seat in the spacious interior of the restaurant. We were ushered to a cramped area in the back of the restaurant and, at last, we were able to consider our choices of food.
It has to be said that we didn’t consider much as we talked constantly and had to be prompted a few times before we finally managed to give coherent instructions to the waiter.
The meal was average, though good value for money – though the thick black sauce which covered the hake had only to be tasted to be instantly rejected!
Our next foray after lunch was one of the reasons that visitors to your home city are worth their weight in gold. As Judith had said that she had attended some evening classes in the history of art I thought that a short visit to the Museu National d’Art de Catalunya would be a good choice. This decision was based on a previous visit to the cultural sights of Barcelona when, armed with a Culture Card I went through the museums like a dose of salts. The Museu National d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) while being very impressive had very few of the sorts of paintings that I actually wanted to see. Ignoring all the Romanesque and Classical stuff (!) the ‘interesting’ art only amounted to a couple of rooms. This, I thought, would be ideal for a short visit.
Well, I was wrong – in a good sense!
The museum building was constructed for the 1929 exhibition and is grandiose and impressive, but inside they have created an excitingly modern space working with the original elements of the building but developing them into dynamic areas which complement the art.
We were both astonished at the scale of the building and the unexpected vistas that it afforded. I had also underestimated the range and quality of the art on display. It appears that Judith and I both play the same game in art galleries – ‘Which one would you take home with you?’ For me, the most impressive painting was a small ‘Portrait of a negro’ by Flink (?) more information will have to be collected from the gallery itself as there is no illustration of information in the gallery guide (in Spanish, blame Judith!) which I bought at the end of our visit.
Taking Judith there has opened my eyes to what a treasure we have in Barcelona in this museum. When (if?) the trains start running normally, I will return! I must warn Hadyn now that this museum is going to be one of the stops on his cultural itinerary when he visits in December.
He has been warned!
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