Barcelona Cathedral And The Gothic Quarter

We started with lunch on the pavement not far from La Sagrada Família and a very much needed beer after the amount of walking we’d done. Afterwards we headed off for some more foot-based punishment with camera in hand. The route we walked took us through the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona with us using the easily-spottable cathedral as a guide.

La Rambla

As we emerged onto La Rambla we made for a tapas place almost immediately as my brother had a thing in his mind about wanting to go in one while he was in Barcelona. It hadn’t been long since we’d eaten but we entertained his wish since he was so accommodating with my frequent stops to take photos of the Spanish city’s sights.

We then went for a short walk along a small part of La Rambla as we realised we were becoming a little pressed for time in order to make our bus back. I found La Rambla fascinating and could easily have spent a few hours on it just photographing all the people. The street was filled with various entertainers and stalls targeting tourists.

There are a huge number of side streets and alleyways off La Rambla and it would have been good to pop along them all to see what wonderful secrets they held but we restricted ourselves to just the one towards the top end: Carrer dels Tallers.

Plaça de Catalunya

From there we emerged onto Plaça de Catalunya, a large square in the centre of Barcelona with a number of sculptures and a large fountain display.

One of the roads off the square was our final destination. Down Passeig de Gràcia was where we were to meet the bus that would return us to the rest of our family waiting for us back at the hotel in Cap de Salou.

Although she doesn’t take many photos my wife was persuaded to use the spare camera and lens I’d asked her to carry during our trip to Barcelona and took some decent pictures of La Sagrada Família too. I particularly like the one shot through the overhanging leaves, creating a great pattern on the photograph.

The bright colours, twisting paths, and odd architecture in the park reminded me of a warped Portmeirion. The views over Barcelona were lovely and gave us a feel for just how far we would still have to go to take in the rest of the sights of the Spanish city. Park Güell is well worth a visit, especially if the weather holds off. We got lucky in that it was bright but just overcast enough to not leave us sweltering under the glare of the sun.

We didn’t have a huge amount of time in Barcelona so we knew we wouldn’t be able to see everything the city had to offer but our first point to stop at would be Park Güell. During our time in Spain we also saw Antoni Gaudí‘s home town of Reus so seeing some of his designs in the flesh in Barcelona was an obvious choice to make. We decided to walk the streets of Barcelona from where the bus dropped us off as the day was pleasant enough and it would give us a chance to observe and photograph some of the fascinating architectural styles of the city’s building as we got a bit of exercise.

The walk proved to be longer than we’d anticipated although the views of the stunning facades on the buildings we passed as we strode along the Barcelona’s streets snapping photos were wonderful.

There were some impressive, open courtyard areas as well as a few squares dotted around. The tall buildings that lined the often-twisting streets of Reus helped provide plenty of shade and made the place seem friendlier, more organic, less planned. We enjoyed our time there and the museum itself was a decent distraction (as well as a way to get out of the sun for a while). Back outside my eyes were constantly drawn to the different architectural styles although the very Mediterranean penchant for balconies on all the buildings was ever-present.

One of the nicer things about being an obvious tourist in places is that I find it easier to take photographs of people than I do back home. Probably due to the time of day that we were visiting there weren’t a huge number of people around in Reus but I fired off a few shots anyway, including one of my brother who phoned to let us know he and his wife would be joining us for some shopping and a drink at a bar after we’d been there for an hour.

I found some of the architecture of the buildings in Salou very appealing. There were elements of brutalism amongst the modernism that you come to expect in any hotel or apartment complexes raised in holiday destinations in the latter parts of the twentieth century. Getting under the buildings and looking up to their shaped balconies produced some pleasing angled photos against the sky.

Moving away from the shops took us through some more green and shaded spaces, looking beautifully welcoming against the scorching temperature we were feeling from the relentless sunshine pouring down on us from above.

We then came out on the main promenade separating the beach areas of the Salou from the beach. Everything seemed very clean, very bright, very wide, and incredibly photogenic which was good as I’m quite fond of taking advantage of photogenic things and taking photos of them, so that’s what I did before we started back along the coast to the hotel area once again.

A few spots along the Salou beachfront contained some interesting structures; a brick and concrete dome and a metal sculpture were two notable ones.

Living near the sea but with a beach that is simply pebbles it’s always nice to see clean, golden white sands and the beach at Salou didn’t disappoint. Under the blue sky wide angle photographs of the beach always look so inviting.

On a daily basis we would always spend some time in the streets of Cap de Salou simply because you had to in order to get anywhere; typically we would be venturing into Salou itself, possibly to then head further afield, but we make use of the beaches several times as in addition to the main beach of the area there were a fair number of sheltered coves with walkways down to them and provided a less busy, marginally more private place to expose our skin and frolic in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

Away from the beach areas the Spanish buildings were typical of the area, although there were a few interesting pieces of architecture here and there. There were a few areas with shops, a fairground that was dead during the week we were there, and a bar that we enjoyed a few evenings at.

While the rest of my family would mostly stay in the main beach area and the coves westwards towards Salou if they wanted to swim (when they weren’t back at the hotel) my wife and I were more into exploring and photographing what we found. On one of the days we headed to the main beach and then started clambering along the rocks of the shoreline since we’d seen other people doing so. That led to us finding a whole area of views and construction that the others with us missed. Although they probably weren’t that interested.

We’d gone all inclusive but on the first night when we arrived at the hotel it was pretty late so there was no food or drinks actually available; we ended up having to walk around until we found a bar. Many mojitos were consumed.

Entertainment was a little lacking in the hotel in the evening but we discovered they didn’t really mind you popping next door to the Sunclub Salou hotel if you were buying drinks. And we were. My dad, being my dad, got roped up to take part in some balloon-based show.

Yes, Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom and therefore foreign, but they speak English, and many of them in an accent that’s actually comprehensible. Not my uncle Stephen, but that’s why his wife Sarah is always around to translate the lilting mumbles.

Ah! Mmmm mm mmm gh, ha ha! Hey! Mmm mmmm, mmng mmm.

He said he flipped the tractor over in the ditch last week.

I know they also speak some form of English in Canada, the USA, and those former colonies in the southern hemisphere, but you can reach Ireland by a reasonably short ferry ride so you can see why it’s foreign, but not really.

And, the fact my uncle’s Irish should also give you a big clue that one of my parents is as well, and that happens to be my mum. Ireland is a second home nation for me and my brother and so any trips there aren’t to foreign parts. That’s like a legal argument or something.

So, Ireland: not foreign. But Mallorca: very foreign.

Clearly, package holidays were becoming easier to book, perhaps through things like Ceefax and Teletext services on the television (I’ve got a vague memory of my parents watching the pages flip over and making notes), and clearly my parents were doing well enough to switch from nobody letting you pay for a thing across the Irish Sea to splashing the cash on flights, transfers, and hotel accommodation in the Mediterranean.

The hotel we stayed at was the Amapola and it appears to still be there in more-or-less a similar layout as my photos and memories attest to, although a little swankier these days. The area of Mallorca in which the Hotel Amapola was located was Alcudia, situated on the northeast coast of the island. The hotel was set around a hundred metres or so back from the beach and on the edge of a decent-sized lake on which it was possible to take out pedalos and pedal around. And we did.

The big draw for my dad, my brother, and me was the swimming pool. You don’t get outdoor swimming pools very often in the UK, or you don’t get many that you’d want to swim in anyway. That’s the sort of experience that really makes it a holiday. You’ll note that my mum wasn’t included in that list of people enjoying the pool. She never did learn to swim, but she still liked it beside the pool, if not in it. She could sunbathe, she could smoke, she could get drinks delivered to her (we were on an all-inclusive basis), she could flirt with the staff in a way that only just stopped from being full-on sexual harassment; she was happy.

My brother learnt to dive while we holidayed at the Hotel Amapola in Alcudia, and I learnt to surf on a lilo. I’m going to be honest with you here and point out that neither skill has really been used since but they say that lilo-surfing is like riding a bike, and once you learn it’s with you for life, so consider me prepared for whatever the world throws at me so long as there’s water around and an inflatable bed to hand.

The hotel guests were a mixture of British and German tourists for the most part. My understanding is that this is broadly true of Mallorca as a whole and that you’ll likely find certain hotels favour one nationality over another in order to simplify needing multiple languages for announcements, menus, entertainment, etc. While the Amapola was mixed during our stay, I believe that it caters more predominantly for Germans these days. But when are these days? I don’t know when you’re reading this. Check it out yourself before booking.

Activities were arranged at the hotel and clearly my dad took part in some of them as we have photographic evidence.

With our holiday being all-inclusive and my family wanting to take full advantage of it – plus we were all new to foreign travel; there weren’t blogs you could read or videos you could quickly call up – most of our time was spent at the hotel. However, we did venture out on occasion.

The lake at the back of the hotel had a path that could be walked around and I recall that we did that. I also remember people jogging along it. Jogging. On holiday. Madness.

As I’ve mentioned before, there was also a beach a short distance from the hotel. Getting to it and the assorted tourist shops, supermarkets, and restaurants that had sprung up to service the beach crowd involved a walk of just a few minutes but part of that was over what seemed to be an outlet for raw sewage. If I think about it then I can still smell it now. The mind’s a weird thing. After our first experience of crossing this stream of evil we took to sprinting across this stretch of road with hands over our mouths and noses.

The beach at Alcudia was amazing. Sand was amazing to people who’d lived in Portsmouth all of their lives and known only pebbles and shingles and saying “Ooh, ouch, ouch, fffuuu…dge!” while trying to get from towels into water. It was golden-white sand in a crescent-shaped bay with warm water. The water was warm partly because it was the Mediterranean in summer, and partly because the water was shallow. Really shallow. Walk out until the people are ants on the beach in order to get enough depth in which to swim sort of shallow. Even my non-swimming mum was able to brave the water, safe in the knowledge that drowning was going to take a lot of effort.

In addition to shops near the beach we also ventured slightly farther afield with trips to Can Picafort, a town just along the coastline, a visit to a nearby Water Park, and even an organised excursion to the Caves of Drach. No pictures of these, though, for some reason, and not much memory of them either. While I’ve considered my parents unadventurous when it comes to holidays in latter years – Greek Islands and the Canaries on firm rotation, it’s seemed – it’s clear from thinking back that they did try to break up the monotony of simply being at a hotel with occasional forays outside. I guess it can’t have been easy to juggle the strange newness of everything, having two children, and ensuring boredom didn’t set in.

In addition to activities in and around the pool each day, Hotel Amapola provided entertainment every evening too. Music was common, but I remember my dad took part in a Mister Amapola contest (likely pushed up to enter by my mum, and he didn’t win), and it looks like everyone enjoyed the drag show.

And please ignore my red nose. I’m half Irish. Sunshine does strange things to us.

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