- a 17th and 18th century fortress (Castell de Montjuic)
- a funicular railway
- a gondola lift
- the site of the 1929 World’s Fair
- the site of the 1992 Summer Olympic Games
- the former circuit of the Spanish Formula One Grand Prix
- Botanical Gardens
- numerous art galleries and museums
- and, much closer to my heart, La Caseta de Migdia …a bar.
Sunday evening I was sitting in this shady outdoor establishment, relaxing in a deck chair in the midst of a grove of pines and looking out over the cliff-top to the Mediterranean. Evening joggers and mountain-bikers trundled by, my beer was cold and my company was delightful.
It’s a bit of a walk to the bar it is set at the top of the high cliffs looking south from Montjuic - but it just makes the beer taste better when you get there. If you look down you can see the vast sprawl of Barcelona’s container port, but from our table this was invisible, and we looked across the grasses, the prickly pear and our fellow customers (and their dogs) to the blue horizon and watched the cruise ships glide in and out of Barcelona’s busy Port Vella. (http://www.lacaseta.org/ if you fancy going)
As the light faded we strolled away from the bar and toward Placa Espanya. It was alittle further than we thought as we wound our way along the paths and roads of Montjuic. Almost an hour (and some sore feet) later we wandered onto the terrace of Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya and gazed down the Avenue lined with fountains toward the plaza. In the middle of it all is the Font Magica (the Magic Fountain of Montjuic).
Having been to Barcelona a couple of times before, I had never made time for the Font Magica. From 9pm each night – every half hour - it spurts water in time to various musical medleys a concept I had always though, somewhat tacky but my friend Claudia was keen for a look. We arrived after 9pm and caught the end of the first performance. My initial fears seemed confirmed, as the stains of Celine Dion boomed in the distance and lights flashed red and green and blue. By the time we had made our way down from the Museu to the fountain itself all was quiet and we had to await the 9:30pm show.
We found a place to site on a wall overlooking the fountain. It is a large fountain. A very large fountain in fact. Basically circle shaped with only a couple of tiers, when not in use it is rather unassuming and appears oversized.
Promptly at 9:30pm the fountain bust forth. This time (most thankfully) to a classical theme. As Mozart and Beethoven rang from a hidden sound system, the water did some quite amazing things all in genuine sympathy to the music. I was enthralled. The engineering, artistry and sheer force of water is a thing of marvel.
All in all Font Magica remains a tacky thing (anything called the Magic Fountain must be!) - it would be perfectly at home in Las Vegas, but the crowds of tourists loved it, and so did I.
Every visit to Barcelona must be punctuated with some Gaudi. I returned to La Sagrada Familia to check on construction progress – there is a south wall now. I wandered around the paths of Parc Guell and admired the views over the city to the sea and the mastery with which Gaudi draw out of the scrubby hillside the remarkable landscape design that looks as much a part of the natural landscape as the plants and rocks themselves. I still fail to understand how a mind can imagine, grasp and transform its thought into reality in the way Antoni Gaudi’s did. He created monumental architecture of a type entirely unique and equally harmonious with both the natural and man-made world and in a way that presents shear enjoyment.
This time around the queues were short so, while on a Gaudi theme, I visited Casa Mila, an apartment building in the Eixample (‘eh-sham-pla’) district. It is built on the corner of a busy boulevard and offers a typically organic Gaudi façade to the street this time finished in relatively austere and rough cut, pale brown stone. The apartments were built for the wealth in the early 20th century and are large, airy and sinuous. They curve and twist around internal courtyards and the articulated external faced. Despite the wildness of the architectural appearance, the apartments appear as if they would be remarkably easy to live in. The internal colours are muted and constant. Ceiling and walls and doors all painted in a monochrome, pale green. There is little ornamentation. Even the walls and ceiling meet with a simple curve instead of a cornice, blurring the distinction between vertical and horizontal and giving the interiors a slight cave-like feel.
The gem is the roof space above, giving a lesson in the potential for elegance in structural engineering and slapping the face of any architect or structural engineer who fails to grasp the principals and the potential of the other discipline. The brick vaulted arches are amazingly beautiful and remarkably well finished for an area not meant to be seen by anyone bar the maintenance man. The roof-top offers a great view over the Eixample and a close-up of the building’s chimneys and vents of improbably design, while walking around a constantly undulating path. Odd, completely odd – fun though.
So, another weekend in Barcelona. That’s 3 now. The beach, the sun, the food, and the city… might be time to learn Spanish I think.
