Day 9, Barcelona again
Tuesday, Market in Santa Sussana in the morning a huge market all along the main seafront road for about 2 miles, we took a couple of hours to browse our way through all the stall and purchased ourselves a camera bag each, similar to some that we had seen in Malgrat, but half the price, we both also stocked up with more undies, you can never have too many knickers !, at around 3pm we set off on the train again for Barcelona to catch some of the evening entertainment this time, also the last day of the Mercé Fest, we got off the train before we got into the city centre at Sant Andria de Bessos (at the bottom of the Diagonal) where we caught a tram having purchased our T10 ticket, which gives ten journeys on any public transport within Barcelona, we got off after a couple of stops as we had spotted an interesting looking park, we crossed over the road and entered the Park and WOW ! what a strange and interesting park it is, all sorts of tree sand shrubs, all themed differently, there is a peacefull area with dozens of weeping willows, a fragrant area with all sorts of flowering trees and shrubs with honey suckle trained and growing around the tree trunks in spirals "Modern"area with cacti and succulents growing in strange tall steel structures, very weird, an excersise area with static training machines and a couple of petanqe courts/pitches, and a basket ball court. we spent quite a time in there before resuming our jouney on the tram to the Olympic Village, one of our favourite parts of the City, where my favourite building the Torre Mare Nostrum is situated, the natural gas offices, a towering skyscraper with odd bits sticking out of it, and all mirrored, giving wonderfull reflections, we walked all along the beach front right up to the World Trade Centre, with it`s nudist beach below it. Why is it that all the nudist beaches are mainly populated by middle aged gay men?
On one of the beaches near the Olympic Village we spotted about 100 soldiers in camoflauge uniform lined up on beach, on closer inspection they were instilations made up from discardes beer and drinks cans a la Anthony Gormley`s people on the sands at Formby, very strange, not the sort of thing you expect. We continued down along the quayside of Port Vell as we had done on Sunday and stopped for a snack and drinks and then made our way up to Placa St. Jaume where we wanted to watch th prjections on the facade of the town hall, we walked up the Via Laetiana, one of the main roads of the city, which was closed to traffic, couldn`t have been for the fire run as that was on Sunday, we cut of to go to the square which was crowded when we arrived, we wondered whya as there was still more than an hour and a half to go before the first of the projections, but it was for the parade of the Giants and Big Heads, another odd Catalan tradition, some were very stange and odd whilst others although huge looked amazingly real and human, these belong to different parishes and organisations and are very important to them, being brought out for all sorts of religious and festive occasions, they are built over a wooden structure that is carried by one person, the carried being changed at regular intervals, they dance their way along never walking, always dancing and accompanied by their own pipe and drum bandsthere are some sort of reed pipes and are quite an unusual sound, but with the rhythm of the drums quite enjoyable to hear, the Parade ended with the "King and Queen of Barcelona dancing around the square to a traditional catalan band whilst all the other giants made their way home to their respective homes, it was quite moving really, happiness tinged with a sadness that this was it for another year.
We had about half an hour to wait before the projections began, so we found ourselves a good vantage place at the back of the square, which fortunately is on a slope giving it something of an amplitheatre look, with the slope running down to the town hall. Suddenly all the street lights went out and to crashing music the projections started, once again a wonderos spectacle, totaly different to the previous one that we have witnessed themed around a shipwreck a la Titanic, the show lasted for about 10/15 minutes and when it was over we started to make our way back to Placa Catalunya where we planned to watch a rock concert featuring a Catalan band, well it took us ages to get out of the square, with some people trying to leave and others trying to get in for the next showing, we were not able to leave by the exit we wanted to and just had to go with the flow out through an exit in the opposite direction to the one we wanted, we eventualy got out near to the Via Laitenia again so walked uo there all the way back to Catalunya, when we got there we checked the times for our last train back to Malgrat, which was leaving in 20 minutes, so the concert was was a no-no, it had taken us an hour and a half to take a journe that would normaly take about 10 minutes, we have never seen the crowds as bad as that before. We caught the train back and arrived at the hotel just after 12am. phew what a day !