Barcelona 2

The pension room was cold, the tile floor was cold, and the running water was cold. Although it tasted much better than Amsterdam's as it came from the mountains. The freshly painted window overlooked the stairwell. In the night I could hear the cough of the night clerk, the jingle of keys as he moved them in the cabinet, the doorbell sounding like a car beeper, the traffic in the street, talk from other rooms, conversations on the telephone. The bottom steps of the stairs were deeply worn from long years of use. Downstairs a ballet school operated.

The metro station at Fontana was deep in the bowels of the earth. At Plaça Catalunya I exited and headed towards La Rambla. This is a wide tree-lined pedestrian mall flanked by access roads on both sides. The ground bears a mosaic pattern, something I was to see all over Spain. It is one of several famous Barcelona destinations and gets crowded quickly hence my early start.

Flower stalls were setting up, magazine kiosks arranging their papers, waiters were unpacking chairs, street artists and caricaturists were anticipating audiences, and policemen were surveilling all. A itinerant pedlar tried to offer me a stemmed rose but this was flagged in the guide books as a sales tactic so I waved her away.

It was a dry cool morning at about 16C. Les Rambles (Catalan plural denoting a series of colinear streets) runs all the way to the port so the day had warmed up by the time I reached the end.

Past the bottom of Les Rambles is this government building, the Sector Naval de Catalunya indicating that it has a naval function. I made no notes on why I took this picture, so probably because it looked impressive that morning to impressionable me.

From there I walked to Barceloneta, the city beach of the old city. There was a sprinkling of locals on it, some playing volleyball with a small yellow ball. Old bathers were taking in the sun, cyclists pedaled past, and other people relaxed at tables.

The dark frame is Gehry's Peix d'Or sculpture for the Olympics, but from an unusual angle. I think I didn't realise what it was at the time, and was concentrating on the building in the background, which is the Hotel de las Artes, also built for the Olympics the year before.

From there I walked through La Vila Olímpica del Poblenou, accommodation built for the participants, and turned into apartments afterwards. It had all the modern features including, I noted, video cameras on the doorbells. All brick and concrete and unappealing to me. I hoped that the vegetation would flourish in time to make it look less of a concrete jungle.

At a visitor centre I watched a film about Nova Icaria, a nearby beach. This used to be the waterfront area of Barcelona and now given over to public use. I walked back past the Ciutadella (citadel) and Zoo and headed for the Museu Picasso.

The Arc de Triomf can be seen in the distance, at the start of Passeig de Sant Joan. Incidentally Joan is just the Catalan equivalent of John and not a woman's name.

I liked the watercolours in the Picasso museum. The oil paintings are better known. I watched part of a video on Picasso, including his lesser known days at A Coruña. At 175 minutes I couldn't stay for the entire video. Besides Picasso there was also an exhibition of works by Malevich.

These narrow shadowy streets in the old Barri Gòtic certainly looked the part.

After lunch of a bocadillo Serrano (Serrano ham sub) I took a siesta, to fit in with local customs. In the late afternoon I visited the Parc de l'Espanya Industrial near Sants station, built on the site of a former factory, hence the name. This is an open air park with modernist architecture. These watchtowers look like from a science fiction movie.

But in the nearby Parc Joan Miró was something more organic, Dona i Ocell, one of Miró's last works. The evening light doesn't do justice to the colourful mosaic.

Assorted observations: Anti-dog shit poster: Només li demanem que no embruti el carrer. The Catalonian flag has yellow and red stripes, common on bumper stickers. No lack of ATMs in the streets, indicated by Caixa. 24 hour pharmacies for emergencies, indicated by a green neon cross. The medicines were sold through a window. Confectionery shops were everywhere, with cakes, sweets, ice creams.

Les Rambles was noisy and busy when I took a dinner of merluza (hake) and calamares overlooking Plaça Catalunya. Merluza was the first fish named in my Spanish lessons so I've since thought of it as the quintessential Spanish fish. The half bottle of white from Navarra was a bit much so I was tipsy afterwards.

Núria, the name of the restaurant, is a common female name in Catalonia. It was also that of a fellow student I knew slightly when I was doing my studies in the US. After I had graduated and left, I received news that she had been killed in a car accident. So to me, Núria is a reminder of the fragility and preciousness of life.