Barcelona (for the cactus enthusiast)

This week, Andy turned 30. Since this is apparently when life begins, we thought we ought to celebrate. So we took a little break from the climbing van dirtbag lifestyle and spent a few days staying in an apartment in Barcelona with family and friends. We'd specifically set aside a part of the trip budget for this as our joint birthday and Christmas presents to each other, but I did get Andy a magnetic lizard on the day too.

We spent a lovely few days eating too much and did a range of touristical things. We did well - in four days we sampled several varied sides of Barcelona: Las Ramblas, a castle, the gothic quarter, the Gaudi architecture and the seafront. However, when I looked back through my photos I found that most of them seem to be pictures of cacti. Anyway, here is what we got up to - where appropriate I've put in links to pictures of the sights of Barcelona taken by better photographers...

Day 1: we wandered up Las Ramblas, and had lunch while we waited for our party to become complete. Later we walked over to Barceloneta, and had seafood in a restaurant near the sea. We then walked back to Las Ramblas and stopped in a bar on the edge of the old town to order a beer. We got a bit more than we bargained for...

That's a half-size wine bottle, but still...

Day 2: a slow start due to the massive beers of the previous evening. We bravely headed out at about lunchtime to visit a fort in Parc de Montjuïcs that's on top of a hill looking out over the sea. There is a cable car that takes you up the hill, but one of our group refused because "I don't understand how they stay up", so we walked. This meant that we went through the botanical gardens, including one garden comprised entirely of lots of different types of cactus. This is where I took most of my photos.

Wild west...

Round cacti

Fuzzy cacti

These ones made cool shapes

These ones have flowers

At the top, we didn't go into the fort because it was expensive and there was a queue, but we did have some good views out over the sea (although mainly the cargo port). Again though, my photos mainly focus on cacti - we noticed an unusual type of graffiti where people had written their names on the leaves of the clifftop aloe vera plants.

The view...

...and the cactus graffiti

We then headed back down the hill and stopped for coffee at a quirky coffee shop with construction site themed decor. The walls were decorated with hazard tape, construction signs and toy tools and, most entertainingly, there was a skeleton in a hi-vis jacket installed at one of the tables reading a map! They did very nice pastries too (I forgot to check what the place was called but it was just down the road from Paral-lel metro station).

A long-term customer...?

Fueled by coffee and pastry, we caught the metro up to the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi. It's pretty impressive and weird, and I utterly failed to get any decent photos of it. Since it's pretty famous though, here's a link to some official ones.

We celebrated Andy's birthday that evening - a day early but some of the others had to leave the next day. We had some fancy cocktails (courtesy of Andy's mum - thank you!!), then dinner in the old part of town.

Day 3: Andy's actual birthday. We started off with a tapas lunch on La Rambla. The set menu at the restaurant we picked seemed surprisingly reasonably priced. The catch turned out to be that if you ordered a beer or sangria it came in a glass as big as your head and was very expensive! Slightly wobbly from all the sangria, we wandered over to look at Barcelona's other cathedral (the old gothic one), then went to Park Güell to look at some more Gaudi architecture.

More enormous drinks...

Day 4: we went to the beach. I dug a really deep hole! We then sent some time wandering along the seafront, and had ice cream.

Yay!!

Overall, it was a fun trip back to civilisation. We're in the van again now and have been easing ourselves back into climbing. We spent our first night back in the van near Cornudella de Montsant, about 2 hours inland from Barcelona. In the morning we went to the cafe and sat near some other climbers, then we went to the climbing shop - Andy got some new climbing shoes and I bought some awesome pink trousers! We then stood near some rocks in Siurana to have lunch - someone Andy knew was out with a group of friends so we stood and chatted for a bit and watched them climb. Finally, at about 5 pm, we arrived in our intended destination, Margalef, and I climbed some mini-routes (just over 10m long) until it got too dark to see the footholds.