Barcelona

Every time I think of Barcelona, I get this vision and sound in my head of Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé singing together back in 1987 and I remember vividly the song being part of the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. Indeed, I can’t subvocalise the word Barcelona without actually hearing that chorus! (I know I’m odd.)

Our campsite was in a place called Mataro, which is on the coast about 14kms north of Barcelona. The campsite was good, it had a huge pool with stunning views out to sea as well as a laundry room, sizeable shop, cocktail bar (by the pool, only it wasn’t open when we were there in ‘winter’) and a restaurant which we did frequent over the 7 nights we were there. It wasn’t your run of the mill camp site restaurants as each table was decked with table runners, candles and a bottle of red wine tantalisingly placed on each table (of course it was the most expensive wine on the wine list but it’s amazing how many people fell for the marketing ploy).

I almost choked on my GnT when, not long after ordering our meal, the waitress came back out with an ‘amuse buoche’ to tickle our tastebuds, only it was a one inch square white bread sandwich which we think had salmon and sweetcorn as a filling (it wasn’t quite discernible). I only wish I had had my camera with me. We obligingly nibbled delicately at the tantalising taster and waited with bated breath for the main course. My OH had ordered what sounded like a pork cordon blue – pork stuffed with ham and cheese. What arrived looked like a Findus pancake circa 1970’s over cooked and dry as hell, with frozen chips (they had been cooked) it’s just that they weren’t the handcooked chips the menu led us to believe. I, on the other hand, had ordered a mushroom risotto which came shaped like a can of tuna in the middle of the plate with finely chopped basil scattered artistically around the plate, it actually tasted very nice. The whole thing wasn’t that expensive and gave us something to giggle about. The one thing they did get right according to my OH is the strawberry daiquiri, he had to sample more than one purely to check the consistency! As did I with the homemade citrus gin.

View from the campsite bar, with home made citrus gin

So, as you can guess we were treating the stop in Barcelona as a bit of the holiday as it was week 5 we felt we needed the rest. Also we’ve been to Barcelona a couple of times before and had done the Sagrada Familia, all things Gaudi, Picasso, Miro and any number of other museums so this time we thought we’d just enjoy the city, not forgetting to empty our wallets of anything worth stealing and wearing my backpack handbag on my chest at all times, which was a bit tiring (with a chest my size you really don’t need any more baggage) but everywhere we went we were advised to wear your bag on your front for ‘security reasons’. It is such a shame that Barcelona has such a bad reputation for pick-pocketing. We met up with an American guy who said he had he wallet on a chain attached to his trouser belt loop and had two attempts in the same number of days to relieve him of it, unsuccessfully he added smugly.

Its not Lanson but local Cava and very good it was too!

After visiting the Miro Institute, we walked along to find the cable car, took a ride to the top, had a wander and came back down. Half way down we found a terrace bar where we sat and I had bubbles and OH had an ice cream and a glass of rose (not together), we enjoyed the scenery and the sunshine then walked down to the harbour and up Las Ramblas (clutching my bag) where we stopped off for another cocktail, this time enormous cava sangria which beat me! The following day we took a day off from traipsing round and sat in the sunshine (and managed to get sunburn on my ankles) read our books and just relaxed.