19/09/2007
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Barcelona,
Spain and Canary Islands
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
We had a couple of days to go before the start of the festival so we opted to revisit the Prat de Llobregat nature reserve, next to the airport, in the hope of seeing Greater Flamingos and other marsh and passage birds. This reserve has never been that easy to get to and we've failed almost as often as we've succeeded. Before that though, we needed to work out some way of getting away from the hotel so we set off down the road in the direction of Montjuic and the Passeig de la Zona Franca. A short way along the road we passed a restaurant called La Vid. This spacious and bright café, mainly serving people working in the business park surrounding it became our regular breakfast haunt, offering excellent tortillas and hot sandwiches the were considerably more interesting than the choices on offer in the Travelodge. Probably not worth the long trip out from the city centre but if you decide that the Travelodge is right for you, become familiar with this place.
After breakfast we walked down to the Ildefons Cerda roundabout and found that there were two buses heading for Castelldefels, numbers 94 and 95. We jumped on the first one to arrive and realised that with the large amount of road building going on we did not recognise where to get off. Instead we stayed on to the centre of Castelldefels. We'd been here several years ago after similarly failing to find where to get off for the reserve and thought that the town was little more than a beachfront strip, so we were a little surprised to discover that there is a thriving town centre dominated by a rather nice castle on a hill, surrounded by gardens. The sun was shining so we decided to have a walk around the gardens and take some 'photos. We found a few birds around the castle, including our first Sardinian Warblers of the year, Lesser Kestrels, a Hoopoe, Serins and lots of passage Pied Flycatchers. There were a couple of Red Squirrels knocking about and plenty of butterflies and dragonflies too.
A quick lunch in a restaurant was followed by a return bus trip where we got of at a petrol station near Viladecans which we thought must be near to the reserve entrance. The first thing that we noticed when we got off the bus was the large number of hookers standing at the side of the road (which is near enough a motorway at this point) and the second thing we noticed was that we weren't where we thought we were.
We set off to walk in the general direction of the airport and sea, which is where we knew the reserve was but after several dead ends and barriers formed by road works we decided to give up and get the bus back to Barcelona.
Back in the city we took the mandatory saunter down La Ramblas, pausing to take some photos of some of the Gegants and Bestjes that we would see often during the festival, in the Palau de la Virreina, where we were also able to pick up copies of the Mercé programme, including a helpful insert in English picking out a few highlights.
Next we wandered around the Port Vell area for a while, inevitably feeding the remains of CCs breakfast baguette (a tortilla sandwich large enough to feed a small family) to the fish in the harbour and then grabbed a bus back to the hotel. We were due to meet some friends (John and Sarah) that evening. They had changed their holiday schedule to fit La Mercé in, so we showered and were back in the centre a couple of hours later were we met up at Taxidermista in Placa Reial, as fine a meeting spot as we can imagine. We had a couple of drinks together and caught up on how the Italian leg of their holiday had gone and then made the short trip to Bar Celta on Carrer de la Mercé to eat. This was Sarah's first experience of a Spanish tapas bar and fortunately she's not too timid about food and was soon sampling tiny octopuses and all sorts of other goodies. This is another rather excellent place to eat and drink. If you're on you own or a couple then the bar is the best place to sit, but any more than three people should try to find a table at the back. There's always a friendly buzz about the place and the food is pretty good too.
To top this off we headed down the same road towards Via Laietana, where we stopped in one of a run of rather pleasant bars selling Asturian Sidra (cider). Our favourite, probably because it was the first we tried is the one nearest Placa d'Antoni Lopez, La Succarena, but the others are pretty good too. The sidra is usually served in a slightly gimmicky way, poured from height into the glasses to get the liquid lively. They recommend that you knock it back in one and only "pour" small amounts at a time. It's much closer to an English scrumpy than say to Strongbow and a couple of bottles feels like a lot, even though it is only 6% alcohol by volume. Another speciality is Chorizo del Diablo - the excellent Spanish sausage flame cooked at your table in a strong alcohol. After a couple of bottles of Sidra, a plate of Chorizo and a few shots of Leche de Pantera you'll begin to wonder where you are and what you were doing in the first place. If you don't want to mince your brain, then the bars all sell a superb selection of cooked meats and sausages. Fuet and Cecina (beef prepared in the same way as Jamon Iberico, apparently) are worth trying.
