Our journey from the Italian Alps around Turino to Milan was a two and a half hour drive. We had flown in and out of Malpense (Milan Airport) a couple of times in the past and we weren’t surprised by this day’s awkward process in getting ourselves on to an aeroplane. The simple task of getting our suitcases onto a ‘VULING’ flight reminded me of an episode of a poorly casted sitcom. For example, a gentleman in front of us decided he needed to be elsewhere and left the bag line for 10 minutes, reclaiming his spot well ahead of the end of the line. This immediately started an argument with the ageing couple in front of us who objected to his casual return. There was only one official running the bag process and not long after our first incident, another customer insisted that he would be taking his bag on board without it being weighed or inserted in the ‘bag-size device’ to ensure it was ‘carry-on’ size. He was eventually refused a boarding pass and he appeared to be quite shocked by the fact that the airline official didn’t recognise his personal importance
We eventually made it on to our flight to Barcelona’s EL PRAT airport and arrived safely, despite the chaos caused by bags again; many of the passengers insisted their bags be held in overhead lockers, not at their feet so they were inserted anywhere in the plane where a locker-gap could be discovered. This meant that as we descended into El Prat, these same passengers stood up and started roaming the aisle of the plane, desperately searching to regain their bag before the plane landed. This chaos should have warned us that getting from the airport to the centre of Barcelona was also not going to be easy. We decided we would catch a train from the airport and we were nearly at the centre of the city when our train mysteriously decided to reverse direction at the second last station.
We alighted before we were returned to the airport and we were very grateful for how a couple of locals helped us find a taxi. We were dropped at the main thoroughfare just down from the Barcelona Cathedral. This was good enough for us as we would be able to walk to our hotel which was apparently not far from the Cathedral. Again life wasn’t smooth on our travelling trail as when we arrived at our booked accommodation, the pipes in a section of the hotel had burst that day and we were kindly taken to a sister hotel around the corner…Hotel Catalonia Magdalenes, our home for the next two days.
We were very happy when we made it to our room in the hotel, realising that we could now concentrate on our visit to Barcelona. We were hungry and tired but keen to get into the night streets of Barcelona and find a dinner place. We headed into the narrow streets around our hotel and I was delighted to come across a raised garden just down from our hotel (see left). I remembered it from a 24 hour visit we had made to Barcelona to meet up with some friends back in 2014. The mosaics and the sculptures were just as impressive as they were 9 years before and these regular tiled image around the streets became a fond memory of our next two days.
We knew that if we walked back to the Barcelona Cathedral, we would be able to find our way through to La Rambla where we were confident we would find a restaurant. The next mosaic image I encountered on the wall of an alley was an image that depicted the second Wall of the original Roman Colony here and one of its main gates, the Porta del Bisbe. I hadn’t realised on the last time I visited Barcelona that the old centre of the city was basically where the old Roman colony of Barcino was located between the first and fourth centuries CE. This ancient part of the city is called the Gothic Quarter.
We arrived back at the Placa del Rei outside the Barcelona Cathedral. In 2014, the destination of our hotel took us regularly between these two ancient round towers that stood at one side of the Cathedral. What I didn’t realise back then was that these towers were remnants of the old Roman Gate, Porta del Bisbe.
Our meal that night on La Rambla was delicious (Paella!) and our stroll back to our hotel was great knowing that we had a full day tomorrow to get to know this complex city
FOGTRAVEL 