Greetings TravelPickers! Hope this posting finds you all fine and dandy!
I promised I would write about our trip to Barcelona, and here it is! It's been quite busy since we got back, with having Christine to stay (fab time!) and school stuff, so as usual I am sorry it has taken so long to do this post.
We headed out to Barcelona on the morning of March 14th. Our flight was at 8am from Mahon airport on Clickair, a new lowcost airline that are linked with Iberia. We arrived at the airport in good time, parked the scooter in the long term car park (we had only my camera bag and a small back pack for the trip) and headed in. After checking in we headed into the departure area, to discover that the new section of Mahon airport had been opened! It is fabulous! They have done such a good job on the rebuilding. I remember 28 years ago when Mahon airport was just a small hut, and when you got off the place you had to stand there on their tarmac while they unloaded your bags. Then when all the bags were off, you had to claim yours and drag it to the terminal building yourself to clear customs! Now we have this new, super-swish terminal building to play in with bars, a large duty-free shop and some nice shops too. Quite posh!
Anyway, enough of the airport, we we boarded the plane and where on our way! We were making the trip for two reasons; to see Marc Almond in concert, one of my favourite singers, and too spend some time looking at buildings by the architect Gaudi, who is the subject of one of my independent studies whilst I am away. We were on a tight budget (as usual) so when we arrived in Barcelona we hopped on the bus and headed for the city. In line with the budget we had booked ourselves 2 beds in the Hostel Fernando, just off La Ramblas. We checked in an headed to our room. Those of you who have frequented hostels will know the feeling of trepidation that you are filled with when you check in, but things turned out to be fine. We had two beds in a 4 bed dormitory with a shared bathroom. The place was clean, the bathroom fine, so we packed stuff into our locker and headed outside. We wanted to walk to find the concert venue, so that we didn't have to rush around later in the evening. It was also time for lunch, so we grabbed a Doner Kebab each (Gyros in USA speak!) and put our best foot forward. After about 40 minutes of walking we found the venue. In typical Marc fashion it was a small building that used to be a theatre, but had now been turned into a nightclub. The box office was closed, so we would have to pick up our tickets before showtime that evening. It was to be open seating it seemed!
We wandered around a little, headed into some shops and just generally bummed around Barcelona for the rest of the afternoon. Then we decided to stop in a bar and have a small beer. After we had ordered I noticed a sign on the door saying that they were serving Calcots. I had recently written all about a Calcotada in a paper in my Honours Class last semester. For those of you who don't know, last semester I took a program in the Honours program on Bread and food around the world. For my final research paper I had written about Catalan Food and it's culture heritage and influences. A Calcotada is a special ceremony that is held each year in Catalunya when the Green Onion harvest starts. At the ceremony a fire is created and green onions are placed on roofing tiles, and grilled. The dish is then served with a special sauce and the Calcots, eaten straight from the roofing tile. I explained all of this to James, and we decided that it would be too good an oppotunity to miss, even though we had had lunch just a few hours earlier! They were delicious, and after a friendly local had shown us how to eat them, we tucked in. We couldn't resist it, and the photo attached to this post is the first of four. You can click through to the flickr account to see the rest!
After our gastronimic adventure we headed back to the Hostel for a quick snooze and then out for a drink and on to the concert! The concert was just fantastic. We got there an 1.5 hours before the start and joined the line to get in. After we picked up our tickets we rushed in to the auditorium and secured seats in the 5th row. Marc came on at 10pm and sung for 2 hours straight in one of the best concerts that I have ever been to. His performance was electrifying and to see him in such an intimate setting was astonishing. James was very impressed and enjoyed himself tremendously. Marc is such an amazing performer! After the concert we headed out to Bar La Concha, a seedy little bar in the Barrio Xino area, which is decorated as a homage to Sara Montiel, one of James' favourite spanish sirens from the 1960's. A quick drink with some other Marc Almond fans and we were off home to the hostel for bed.
So that was part one! I'll write more about the trip in the next day or two!
Luv you all!
D&J
