Barcelona, yes you can put your mind at ease

Published on Thu 3 Jun 2010

Next day, after a lie in and some games of chess on the roof terrace, Mike, Chris and I decided to go on a hop on-hop off open top bus tour of the city. Emily had hurt her foot while kicking a bollard the previous night, so her and Dave stayed behind and did a bit of more localised exploring. I've not really done many of those tours before, but this one was great - not least because it was really hot and a bit of a breeze was very welcome. We didn't do a huge amount of sight-seeing last time, limiting ourselves to stuff that was walkable from our hostel (and La Sagrada Familia) so it was nice to see some of the other things - I hadn't realised how many ridiculous modernist buildings that look like they're melting there are dotted about.

They're pretty incredible. I wonder what people thought when they first started springing up. Watching the world go by from your balcony seems to be a national pastime in Spain. Which is probably a good way to be.

We didn't get off at La Sagrada Familia, having seen it last time, and went straight to Parc Güell which was apparently a failed attempt to make a modernist garden city. It doesn't look much like Welwyn, though actually they are both a bit creepy. Parc Güell looks a lot more like Disneyland than Welwyn's post apocalyptic wasteland. Here's the gatehouse - it reminds me of a snail.

We stopped for a very satisfying ice cream (why don't we get such good ice cream in England?) which I managed to mostly order in Spanish with the serving lady only resorting to English to say "thank you" at the end (and there was me thinking I'd convinced her I was a native) and then walked through the park, via Gaudí's house

and this viewing point, whose steps are slightly more terrifying than the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Worth it though.

We left through a different gate and followed our noses to the next bus stop, which turned out to involve an awful lot of hills. Unfortunately we didn't find the one that they've installed an escalator on in time for it to be useful.

We thought we had time for a look around this monastery, went up to the door, saw the price, I turned round to see what the others thought and when I turned back around they'd shut the door. Next time...

The bus took us back via the front of a big palace and the Nou Camp, but we were stuck downstairs for those. Slightly odd having a tourist bus with tiny tinted windows if you ask me. The Nou Camp didn't look as big as I expected from the outside - certainly seemed less imposing than Wembley or The Emirates. I bet it's very impressive inside. On the way back Chris noticed this shop, which can go in the same folder as the "waxing" sign from before the Daniel Johnston gig the other month.

That evening there was a pre-festival gig featuring First Aid Kit and Los Campesinos! at a club not far from our apartments, but the queue was already most of the way round the block and stationary by the time we got there, so we had a couple of drinks at a bar across the street, where it became clear that the festival goers this year seemed to have a very high moustache quotient. We decided to have a competition to see who could take photos of the most. I'll show you the results at a later date... We eventually gave up on the show and went to a bar in what seemed like a fairly trendy area behind the apartment which promised (and delivered) cheap cocktails. It was going along in a fairly standard fashion (except for the mojitos) until someone noticed that the guy who plays Ted from How I Met Your Mother was sitting at the table next to us. We spent the next hour trying to be sure that it was him, and, despite the beard he'd grown, I'm absolutely positive. Nobody was brave enough to go and say hello, but I'm not sure we were especially subtle. He looked quite "tired" so maybe he didn't notice. I wonder if famous people like to be recognised.

After a while we went in search of the place we found last time which plays loud rock music and then has headphones hanging from the bar that play the same song but 3 or 4 times louder, which is still an incredible, if slightly pointless, concept. It was exactly where we thought, and half of Cambridge was in there. I wasn't as surprised as I might have been.

It was a good day.