Seraphiel´s blog: Spain

Spain has always been on my list of countries I wanted to visit for some reason. In my imagination each country evokes something else when I pronounce its name. With Spain, I can see the flamenco dancers, spanish guitar players cladded in black, I feel the hot blooded nature of this human species, their beautiful dark eyes and wide smile, and I can hear the language so incoherent to my ears yet so much animated. And above all, I see the broad beaches and small cozy houses with local tapas bars where they serve sangria, paella or eat chorizo by mouthfulls. This year I have decided to prowl the Spain of my dreams and bring it into reality. We have gone to Calella, which is a relatively big seaside resort one hour from Barcelona. It sits neatly on the coast of Costa Brava, respectively Costa del Maresme, where is the widest and longest stretch of beach I have ever seen. The arrival to Barcelona was quite eventless and the continuing connection by bus to Calella was also without any difficulties. The hotel Internacional is directly by the beach, eventhough you have to walk about five minutes on the local road, then underpass the train tracks and walk some more to the beach. It is quite busy area with many hotels and souvenir shops, I would even say, very commercial.
On the arrival, we were happy to check in and rest for a while, and later went for a little walk around the resort. The advertisment that showed empty beaches was not exactly correct, as the beaches were totally crowded with tourists. One minus for Calella, I thought. We had a full pension, so we could use the hotels´ canteen for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The meals proved to be more continental than Spanish, as there were plenty of Russian, German and Polish visitors. Our restort seemed to be "Internacional" indeed.
The swimming in the sea was the best part for me, as I love giant waves. Jaime didn´t like it so much, he preffered the quiet and waveless water of swimming pool. Among first bad impressions was a small elevator for only 4 people with no proper ventilation, so you nearly choked for several minutes, another one were the silly magnetic cards that we had to change about twenty times during the whole stay, as you could not carry the card next to any electronic devices (which we did most of the time), the smoking neighbours who didn´t respect the rules of no smoking, and very bad / NON existent internet connection.
Jaime was scared of getting burnt, so he purchased a beach umbrella and kept using it, while I sunbathed unprotected. We Europeans use as much of sun as we can, because one week by the sea is probably the only chance of getting some sun tan, until the next year. How sad.
On the fourth day of relative routine of having breakfast, going to the beach, having lunch, going to the beach, going for dinner, going to the town - there was a little change, a Flamenco night. The dancer was amazing and the Spanish guitar player even more so.
The day after we went with a paid tour operator to Barcelona. We were picked up near our hotel. The tour guide was a a nice gay guy who could speak fluently four languages. I never got to know his name, but I know our driver was Ramos. It took about one hour to Barcelona. Our first stop was Sagrada Familia. The city was bustling with cars and people, and it surprised me on what a small patch of land Sagrada Familia finds itself. It was almost impossible to take the building fully into the camera, as there were busy roads and pavements full of tourists, all squeezing firmly around its edges. It was extremely hot and all this buzz made my head spin and I wanted to leave as soon as possible. The building itself was a genius, a real beauty in the middle of not so beautiful surrounding. We found a little bit of relax in the park behind Sagrada, where was a little pond with trees. After this short visit, we continued by ourselves into the hubbub of the city, to have a look at Plaza de Toros monumental, which was a giant unused bull fight arena with grandeour blue tiles and splendid towers. Luckilly for Spaniards and the bulls, they banned the bull fights in 2010. Jaime was also tested on his Spanish when asking one old Catalan man for directions. When inquiring about the way to arena, the man with bag full of baguettes got up and said:"ehhh que te la topas en la nariz cuando cruces la calle" (translated literally as "ehh you bump on the nose when you cross the street"), probably meaning to say that the arena is just a stone throw away.
After seeing arena and a obelisk called Agbar tower, we went back to the park to wait for our bus. We saw a cute parrots among the pigeons, called pericos, whom I chased for a photo, unsuccessfully,as they got scared off each time I approached them with camera. Many people in Calella have little pericos or canaries, according to my observations.
The next stop was the Parc de la Ciutadella with its amazing fountain in Versailles style built by King Philip V. and its enclosing gardens with pond and palm trees. Before this, we saw enormous old ruins of former market in El Born Centre Cultural, which were very impressive. The further stop by bus was Las Ramblas boulevard, the most prominent shopping centre and marina, where we had two hours break for lunch and sightseeing. It was very hot, so we rushed to hide someplace where they served food and cold drinks. We stumbled across one nice al fresco style restaurant called Txikiteo Taverna Vasca with typical Basque cuisine on the not so busy side street close to Plaza Colón. Jaime ordered seafood Paella and I got the meatballs in Spanish sauce. From the plaza you could see the furnicular to the mountain Montjuic, going from the top of the tower behind marina, and continuing across the whole city up to the top of the mountain. Little red cabins swinging in the air had a busy day. After what we assembled by the bus stop, we then continued across the Placa de Espanya with its two Venetian towers and Arenas de Barcelona, a Moorish style bull ring converted now into the shopping mall. Only later did I discover, that the clip to Barcelona with Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballe was recorded right here, with the Venetian towers as a backdrop.
After this short encounter from a bus window, when our cameras were snapping frentically for pictures, we drove out of the city at the top of MontJuic, to see the Olympic stadium, where as I vividly remember, was a famous opening of Olympic games back in 1992, as the sound of Barcelona by Freddie played along and the man with arrow shot the tower to light the darkness up. It was the most memorable event that everyone remembers. After breathing in all the atmosphere and taking in all the glorious shine of this place, we headed back through Spanish placa towards home. This was the end of our tour.
As we slowly recovered from our trip back at the hotel, we also explored the older part of Calella, hidden to the eyes of a common beach goer. It has some cute little lanes with tiny tapas bars with open fire grills with rotating and sizzling chickens, or as I called it "Hamonshop", which in Spanish means really just a Jamoneria, a place where they sell excessive choice of hams, salami,olives and cheese. The famous jamon serrano usually hangs down from the ceiling. It´s almost an art in a way, legs of pigs hung next to each other, all looking like being waxed or exposed to sun for thousand years. In front of each jamoneria sit clusters of Spaniards, drinking their bulb glass full of dark red Sangria and chomping on some little apetizers. As a choice of evening, we ventured into the tapas bar La Fusta with several wooden tables and chairs and a tiny bar with display cabinet full of cheeses. We ordered traditional Sangria and chorizo, salami and jamon platter,which was extremely delicious. Of course, for that money, it better be! After this yet another thrilling experience, we decided to go for another trip two days later, this time to Girona.
I have to say that Spaniards do not keep the time or have only a distant and very vague concept of time, as opposed to the rest of the Europeans. The train station assistant was not very helpfull, when she was giving us the travel schedules for next day. Instead of telling us times for weekend, she gave us times for work days, which completely messed up our travelling. She also didn´t mention anything about having to make a transfer or needing to wait for one hour for our next connection in a searing heat of a midday. She also didn´t say we have to wait at the train station one more hour just to catch our first waggon. This lady would deserve a medal for her absolute inadeqacy. Despite these silly obstacles, we rode by a very decent train towards Girona, with transfer in some god-forgotten field, where were totally no signposts, information boards or toilets for that matter, which only made our standing situation lot worse to endure. I think I was cursing all Spanish by that point, and I´m deeply sorry if my curse has caused many incidents since then. The only comfort was the cool interior of a train and ocassionally beautiful sea view. As we landed in Girona, we walked through the hot city with much anticipation, yet seeing nothing much exciting at first. The common buildings didn´t look appealing at all, but behind all this suburban architecture, the town of Girona revealed its beauties in full power, as soon as we entered the first square and crossed the first bridge. The streets reminded me mainly of Venice, with their shattered and nostalgic feel, although this place was much more defined and less pompous than Venice. You had that prevailing feeling of finding yourself in times of Spanish inquisition, walking between the stone walls of the fortresses and churches. The most pompous building was the glorious Cathedral de Santa María de Gerona, which was standing tall above the whole city, with stairs leading to the top. After this excursion, we walked down the little cobbled lanes towards the promenade, where we tiredly sat in a shade of an arcade to eat some paella, only to be completed with the best ice cream in the world, just across the road in Tutti Frutto. This was to be the near end of our explorations and city explotations, without causing too much damage to its eternal beauty. I loved the old bridges leaning across the river Onyar.
The last day or two on the beach of Calella went smoothly, with jumping in the waves, watching paragliders or aeroplanes cruise the skies with advertisment billboards, it went quietly on, as we attended the last Mexican night full of promising and tasty foods.
The only spoiler of the holidays happened to be the Spanish airport service, which proved to be extremely chaotic, almost non-existent, when it came to informing the travellers that their flight to Prague has been cancelled, making two hundred people to panic and scatter in the corridors of airport to find some more information, only to be led once again through the security checks, and then discover that the flight has not been cancelled, only postponed. The airport attendants, who should be the first to obtain any fresh information didn´t have a clue which gate the new plane will come from, so we had to run from one gate to another like beheaded chickens and look for our connection. There were no announcements and there was a queue counting up to 400 people, who didn´t know which exit for a bus to take. Additionally, after two hours of waiting, we were let onto the bus, that took us to the plane, and the plane took off after another 10 planes cleared off. They apologized that this was due to a big traffic over Europe. Maybe it was due to the low cost budget airlines like SmartWings, that this all happened in the first place. But what the hell, our holidays were good and we came back alive, which is what counts.