Barcelonaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

With the wife's exams finally over, it was time for holiday! The first trip of 2011 (hopefully the first of many) was going to be my first visit to Spain, in the city of the architect Gaudi: Barcelona.

It all started as a joke one boring Sunday afternoon when I was flipping through the RyanAir website and came across a return flight to Barca for £20. I could not not book and, 20 minutes later, I had booked the flights,coach to Stansted and a room in a central hotel in Barca. Come January 21st and we fled London to the Mediterranean early in the morning, very early actually.

Getting a 7am flight means waking up at 2am in order to get two buses to Victoria and a coach to Stansted at least 1.5 hours before departure. The waking up was painful but in no time we were on the bus stop. The first bus took us to Hyde Park Corner, all fine, but the second bus did not turn up and after a 2 minute moment of panic, we got a taxi to the Coach Station and started our journey to the airport, just in time. The flight was smooth for most of the time, except the last 15 minutes, during which I thought I was going to die at the foot of the Pyrenees (and that was not an exaggeration) and at 10am we landed in Girona and then boarded a coach which took us right to the city centre of the city which everyone has been visiting lately, Barcelona.

Although it was beautifully sunny and clear, the temperature was crisply cold (we later found out that it was one of the coldest weekends of this winter!) Finally rid of all luggage, the adventure began with a walk from the hotel in Placa Espanya to the Olympic Village but with one significant stop on the way: the Barcelona Pavilion. This 1929 Van der Rohe masterpiece is one of my favourite buildings in the world and to finally see it live, experience the spaces, the sleek lines, the reflections, light and shade play and the freshness of the design which is only 82 years young (it seems it was built only last year)...it is simply beyond words. The massive open spaces of the Olympic Arena are impressive, as is the Communications Tower of Calatrava and the stadiums and spaces.

The afternoon kicked off our Gaudi trail, with a visit to his Pavilion Guell and its mighty metal dragon gate and the curvy Porta Miralles. A trip to the Monastery at Pedralbes and then down to the Rambla and the Market concluded the afternoon. After dinner, we headed back to the Olympic Arena area in Montjuic to enjoy the spectacular aptly-named Magic Fountain.

After a massive breakfast, the Saturday started with exploring the Barrio Gotic or Gothic Quarter, its narrow streets (reminiscent of our own medieval streets in Mdina) and the amazing Barcelona Cathedral. Highly contrasting the old heart of the city was a visit to the modernist MACBA. Back on the Rambla, we paid tribute to the street performers and Gaudi's Palau Guell and then started some serious Gaudi study by visiting Casa Battlo. In no way do I not acknowledge the genius of Gaudi, for he paid unlimited attention to detail and design, but I am sure that the bloke was on some sort of hallucinogens whenever he was designing, for I cannot believe anyone of sound mind can come up with such surreal designs. His work is like a 3D Dali painting or a snapshot of a real-life cartoon world but, whatever was the inspiration for it or however you wish to describe it, the work of Gaudi is definitely unique. The two hours in Casa Battlo were simply mind-blowing. A visit to the Casa Amattler, Mila (or Pedrera) and Vincens concluded the day before dinner in an amazing Catalan restaurant literally round the corner from the Battlo.

The Sunday was entirely devoted to Gaudi, with first a visit to the Sagrada Familia church and then Park Guell and its surrounding areas. I shall not dare try to describe the emotions stimulated by the Sagrada but going past its threshold is like stepping out of this world and entering another world of huge stone and concrete trunks and twigs, closely and carefully mimicking the efficiency of nature's structural engineering but at the same time laden with beautiful decoration, sculpture, stained glass and abundance of natural light which all make the interior spaces magical and surreal. The trip up one of the spires was almost literally out of this world and the maze-like narrow spiralling corridors down were fun. The time in Park Guell concluded our Gaudi experience, with the compulsory pose with the mosaic dragon and a time of chilling in the Spanish sun.

I forgot to mention that in these 3 days we had walked almost 2 dozen kilometres which had one "minor" consequence: extensive blisters on 4 of my toes. It was, to say the least, uncomfortable, but, that aside, I think the weekend in Barca was amazing and, in the words of Freddie Mercury, "if God is willing we shall meet again someday!"

Happy new year!

2011 kicked off on the North Bank of the River Thames in London, spot on across the water from the London Eye which was the centrepiece for the first few minutes of the new year. As hinted earlier, on 31/12/10 we met up with the freshest newly weds from our Maltese circle of friends and by 8.45pm, we had occupied a prime location along Embankment where we awaited the first few "tocks" of the Big Ben signalling the start of 2011.

I must say it was a long wait of almost 3 hours till the real excitement began but the atmosphere was festive, the weather perfect (dry and not that cold) and by 11.45pm the action was gaining momentum. A massive countdown "clock" was projected onto the Shell building (10 or 15 floors high!) and as soon as the clock hit 12 the Eye set off with an incredible show of fireworks synchronised with the best of Brit music which lasted a full 10 minutes non-stop of colour and fire. As soon as it was all over, I witnessed the largest exodus of people ever; I later found out that 250,000 people were along the River Thames that night (that is more than half the population of Malta!) and all went seamlessly well with no accidents or confusion. Well, the tube stations were packed beyond their capacities and the journey home (which usually takes 20 minutes) took 2 hours, but once home we had champagne awaiting us and the night stretched till the early hours of 2011.

The next day was marked with a massive lunch at China Town and a farewell to our Maltese friends who flew back to Malta that night. And us? Well, it was still holiday time for me but my poor wife had to revise and study for the upcoming exams!