Sunny Spain lives up to its billing... Barcelona and Valencia

                    Barcelona... Gaudi or gaudy?     Will the Sagrada Familia catherdral ever be finished ?

Our first stop in Spain was at Mattaro and a great camp site aptly named Camping Barcelona. The site fee included a free shuttle bus into Barcelona about 30 mins away. This vibrant Catalan capital is a focus for millions of tourist like us and from that perspective was pretty much as expected... wall to wall people and gaudy Gaudi at every turn. Easter meant that there were even more people than normal including a lot of Americans... or do they just stand out more?

Barcelona is a fantastic city and walking around it for over 10 miles we got to see a lot of the outside attractions and loved every minute of it. After the UK winter the weather here seems too good to venture inside the museums so it was a walking tour.

La Rambla -  no sign of the recession here

Not sure if I (Den) personally get the Gaudi adoration thing going on here. For me it is an uncomfortable mix of infrastructural
architecture, defining structural requirements and religion - well for the glorification of God anyway. It's different, thought provoking, colourful and organic in form but the end result often has a childlike, over indulgent look and feel. I am all for bending the rules (any rule) but this seemed more an attempt to extrapolate the unwritten natural laws... which unfortunately, in my opinion, is only be done successfully by God or Disney and I am not a big fan of either ;)

L'Eixample fountains 

As much as Gaudi and the city planners have tried, Barcelona does not have that organic feel of truly great cities, battered by time, greed and the often pointless human endeavor over generations... is it all too perfect and pretty? I even had a nagging suspicion that the world famous La Rambla - some serious paseo (to walk) and people watching - is only there because the city planners had limited options when they sunk the main metro line shaft under the city... just feel those vibrations man!. More La Rumble than La Rambla.

We wear these even when no sun - just for you!

Now Valencia that's a real Spanish city - mad drivers, noisy, less obvious tourists, where even the best attempts of the city planners - beautiful squares, palms and the most fantastic Post Office building - can't hide the grit and confusion of a place where people continue to do what they having been doing forever. Ripping off the visitors... not true, we loved Valencia, it is a beautiful city to amble around in, drink coffee and eat Paella.

I was supposed to include a picture of us walking in shorts and T-shirts on the lovely sandy beach at Peniscola (yes you guessed it - knob joke coming up) but 'we' forgot my camera. I lied about the knob joke. The twin beaches of Peniscola and Benicarlo exactly halfway between Barcelona and Valencia made the perfect antidote for the two city stops.

Valencia old town wall / gate

In Valencia we stayed at a site right in the centre - 10 mins walk into town. OK it was close to a motorway slip road but the continuous drone lulls you to sleep after a while, assuming the fear of driving in the city has exhausted you to the point of collapse anyway :)

Valencia for us marked the critical point that occurs in any longish journey in a motorhome. 

That feeling when you know that you have done the heavy driving and you can begin to stop 

more, explore, relax and think “this would be a good place to live”. For us this feeling translates into a fruit buying binge.

Oranges everywhere... and the fragrance :)

Ever wondered how you keep 3kg of strawberries, 5kg of oranges, 6kg of water melon and a papaya in addition to the normal bags of bananas, apples and pears in tiny (hot) space with a fridge the size of a postage stamp… Yes, we are vegetarian but I personally will kill to avoid eating another piece of water melon and Jane has started flying around at night and roosting upside down in trees? (NB fruit bat reference – nothing to do with her revisited wine addiction)

Plazza de La Vergen, Valencia

Piece of strawberry flan anybody? While we are on the subject, to watch Jane cook cakes, flans and ‘normal’ meals in a cube that you reach out and touch all 6 surfaces without moving  (our kitchen) is a wonder to behold. For most people the motorhome oven remains unused as it’s BBQ’s, pizza etc or the local (cheap) bars and restaurants’.

Valencia is the home of paella so the oven had a holiday while we did paella verduras (vegetable :) in the Plazza de La Vergen (Virgin ;). Unlike the culinary experience in many tourist locations in big cities - they know you are never coming back - this meal was rather good. So we had a glass of wine and watched the children play, the police answer questions, the lovers cuddle and the pigeons clean up as the light faded and another day slid by. 

Did I mention that we were feeling relaxed?

Paella verduras in Plazza de La Vergen, Valencia

For the record;

French / Spanish border at Perpigana,  Figueres, Barcelona, Peniscola, Valencia

Next post is Denia where we have been looking at Villa’s - as you do after any “this would be a good place to live” feeling.

Hope you are all well… Rapid recovery Norm and Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday Kelsey and Chris (congratulations on the new job - good luck :) and Hi Sophie.

Cheers,   Den and Jane X

PS The next blog will include pictures and details... of the villa we are interested in buying in Els Poblets, near Denia on the sunny Costa Blanca... Sun, deep blue sky and 31C in the motorhome today!