“Please make sure your tray table is in its upright locked position” is the familiar request signaling it’s time to transition from runway to sky, and let the plane’s purring engines begin swallowing the miles separating us from Spain.
Taxiing into Barcelona from the airport we see in the distance what appear to be apartments snuggled into the slopes of Montjuic Hill, but driving closer we realize the only ones calling this home have long since departed. Before us is a city within a city known as the 57 acre Montjuïc Cemetery, said to contain the interments of over a million people!
Fortunately bustling Barcelona radiates a much livelier atmosphere, with spunky Spaniards socializing on the corners of pretty Jacaranda-lined ramblas and likely fantasizing over the future or chewing on the past while sipping coffee from tiny cups better sized to a hamster.
Putting our feet on the street and allowing the old Spanish city to introduce itself, wrinkles of concern form on our nose with a pungent aroma of an ‘eau-de-sewer’ wafting up from the ancient sewer system. Somehow it strikes us as odd that a city with such amazing architecture has yet to master the science of sewage.
Zany and unique creations of the long gone architect Gaudi abound, and with his flamboyant flair for the wacky, wavy, and whimsical it is easy to see how the oddball superstar of his day was responsible for spawning the English term ‘gaudy’. His crowning jewel, the colossal conglomeration of complexly carved concrete called the Sagrada Familia, has been under construction since 1882 and already taken ten times longer than it took to build the great pyramids of Egypt!
Barcelona is no stranger to construction folly, as back in 1888 Gustave Eiffel’s offer to build the Eiffel Tower in the city was rejected for fear of it becoming a skyline eyesore and offending city residents. The city’s loss turned into a windfall for Paris and it seems truly ironic it became iconic as one of the most loved structures on the planet!
The city’s labyrinthine network of streets and alleys fools our sense of direction at nearly every turn, and most of our time is spent getting lost, getting unlost, and then getting lost again. Walking past shop windows dangling hoofed haunches of ham on a timeworn alleyway we enter the Raval neighbourhood. Ay Caramba, before us stands a bronzed pussy of preposterous proportions! At 12’ long, 5’ tall, and a whopping 1.2 tons the monster mouser is non-other than the famous ‘Botero Cat’.
From lively Placa Catalunya Square we stroll beneath the towering trees lining the giant pedestrian boulevard called La Rambla. An abundance of human statues and other eccentrics do their best to loosen tourist Euros, and with pickpockets keen to accomplish the same damn thing we keep our possessions tight!
On the balcony of the ‘Erotic Museum’ a Marilyn Munroe look-alike model poses as a seductive prop to lure in customers. Feebly attempting to stop her white skirt from being blown up by a fan she’s a near-perfect takeoff on the famous subway grate scene in the movie ‘The Seven Year Itch’.
Manteros, mostly of African descent, clutter La Rambla’s sidewalks selling illegal and bogus merchandise from Asia. The charlatans are nicknamed ‘Blanket Men’ because their goods are spread out on blankets with a rope tied to each corner so they can instantly be gathered up to flee approaching police.
‘El Bosc de les Fades’ (Fairy Forest) is a bar so well hidden that a pack of bloodhounds would have trouble finding it wrapped in bacon! Finding the bizarre bar on a lumpy backstreet, we enter into a dimly lit faux-forest, and seated at a tree-trunk table sipping a glass of wine are surrounded by whimsical wonders including fairies, mannequins, a floating corpse, and demons lurking in the mirrors!
Montjuic Magic Fountain delights millions each year and many leave their hearts but I take it a step further and leave my sole. One of my sandal bottoms betrays me while climbing the colossal stairway and I trip over the separating rubber. Like the sole, I too become unglued, and am forced to hobble back to the hotel listening to a silly flippity-floppity melody courtesy of my newly acquired limb discrepancy.
After ten overpriced days in congested Barcelona Christine’s work project is finished and we nourish our spirits by hopping across the border into Portugal. If your main daily exercise is brushing your teeth then making your way to our lodging from the famous Rossio Square may not be your cup of tea. It requires humping the luggage up 200 stone stairs from the street, and then up another three flights of skinny interior stairs steep enough to cause a mountain goat angst!
Having just starred in our own version of ‘Stair Wars’ we are shown to a dispiriting room that even a gerbil would find claustrophobic. Unfortunately the building was crippled by the largest earthquake in history back in 1755, and never properly repaired, looks just a sneeze away from total collapse! Crafty owners requiring payment in advance means the calamitous room has to suffice as home, unsweet home, for the next three days.
Training to the village of Sintra Christine and I check out Palace of Quinta da Regaleira then climb the Santa Maria Trail to the Palace of Pena before returning to Lisbon for a lunch of a cherry liqueur called Ginjinha, a glass of green wine, and an octopus salad pummeled to perfection.
After exploring the rabbit warren of alleyways in the Alfama and Mouraria districts we walk to Rua Nova do Carvalho. The once a notorious street was Lisbon’s former Red Light area where sailors swarmed the brothels and bars for a night of delight. Recently however, the scandalous old buildings and street underwent a revitalization process which seems to have got ‘lust in translation’.
Some Albert Swinestein decided to paint the main street a provocative pink and rename it ‘Pink Street’. What a bunch of hogwash, pigs look good in pink and streets do not! The tacky transition also includes a life-size plastic porker tethered upside down to an exterior wall of a former brothel!
After stops along the banks of Tagus River at the Monument to the Discoveries and Belem Tower, we train to Cascais. Renting bicycles, our first stop at a beach statue of a giant red right hand imbeds in our heads the ‘Peaky Blinders’ theme song as we cycle to Boca de Inferno and the sand dunes of Guincho Beach.
Signing the divorce papers with Lisbon, a short flight plunks us down in the uphill-downhill city of Porto; a city chockablock with charm with so many elderly granite buildings still standing proud. Crossing the bridge to Gaia for dinner, we find the old square-sailed ‘Rabelos’ boats used for transporting port as well as the port cellars themselves.
Ordering the Francesinha (little French woman) is not for those with a calorie phobia. The famous dish is a conglomeration of thick bread in a tomato and beer based gravy, topped with mountains of meats, and smothered with oceans of gooey cheese with an avalanche of fries on the side! As a safety precaution in the event of a jammer, the city’s culinary pride and joy should probably instead be served with a set of defibrillator paddles on the side!
It may be love at first bite, but with the artery-clogging carbo-bomb containing a scandalous 1000 calories per portion it’s likely to have weight watchers coming apart at the seams from their dietary infidelity. Christine and I share just one devilishly dilating dish between us and still waddle out of the restaurant fuller than a centipede’s sock drawer!
On our walk back a uniformed official, without asking, escorts us inside a cordoned off area hosting some sort of a Military exhibition. The Portuguese obviously have a lot of national pride but this meager display consists of only a couple of aged planes, a marine inflatable, and a geriatric tank. Still, I suppose it’s good to know they’re well equipped to defend themselves should Luxembourg ever decide to go rogue!
We pass a cute little pooch trained to beg holding a plastic cup in his mouth for spare change, while sitting beside him his busking owner is busy torturing a scuffed squeeze-box. Nearby a fellow plays mournful Fado music on his guitar while serenading an infatuated seagull sharing his wooden bench.
On the outskirts of town at a restaurant called Casa Teresa, our salmon and calamari dinners are served with zero greens, only nine potatoes and bread. Like most places in plumping Porto the scurvy-prone meals are a caloric catastrophe, and after just a week we need to extract ourselves before we too end up with an overabundance of flesh trying to make an escape for freedom from the confines of our clothes!
Breathing in the salty Portuguese air we cycle the coast road to the village of Miramar and the Chapel of the Lord of Stone. Completely surrounded by beach with high tide licking its base, the 17th century chapel looks like the sea could easily swallow it whole, yet still it somehow stands.
São Bento train station is beautifully adorned with 20,000 ceramic tiles and forms incredible murals depicting Portugal’s past with everything from weddings to war. A train takes us 120 km along the Douro River to the Pinhao Railway Station which features another 3,000 hand-painted azulejo tiles depicting the production of Port wine from harvesting to the transport to the cellars in Gaia.
Locals inform us that grapes used in the production of any wines worth worshipping are all stomped by foot. It seems the ‘toe-tally’ intensive process requires a team of arms-across-shoulders stompers, whose efforts crush the grapes but not the seeds or stems, thus reducing any bitter flavor from unwanted debris. Fortunately it’s always wine o’clock in this world class corkscrew country, and we choose a cozy little bar to indulge in a little Grape Therapy as our trip winds down.
Compared to the usual hullabaloo and energy we’re grown accustomed to in Asia, this year’s holiday could likely bore the bark off a tree, but it has served as a brief tide over until we can arrange for a more exotic destination to arouse our traveling spirits.
At the conclusion of our Lufthansa flight back to Canada, a little glitch in communication from our ‘English as a second language’ Captain results in his somewhat peculiar flight announcement; “Thanks for staying with us for the entire flight”.
W.T.F. – did ‘El Capitan’ think that perhaps we were contemplating jumping out somewhere over Iceland!
Mark Colegrave November 2017