Well, dear reader, when last we spoke I was going to sleep in the place that shitholes go to die, and clearly not having a good time. Before I went to sleep, I tried to find another hotel to move to. But anything inside the town was prohibitively expensive (especially considering my current concerns about money) and to get somewhere reasonable, I would have to go about 15 miles outside Barcelona. So I just have to tough it out. I do some research for tomorrow and find that a place called Books & Co apparently serves the best breakfast in Barcelona. It is also, happily, close to the shithole. That will at least start my day well and seeing as I have two of the big ticket tourist items scheduled for tomorrow, it will SURELY be a better day.

I sense you can see how this will go.

I do not get a good nights sleep. While the lack of windows means no noise from the street, the walls are remarkably thin. The sleazy receptionist has some friends that sit with him until about 11pm and have a very loud conversation which I can hear every word of – I just can’t understand what they’re saying. At 2am, I wake up convinced that there is someone in the room with me. It turns out that there is a bathroom adjacent to my room, and the plumbing is extremely noisy. I get back to sleep, but the the receptionists friends come back at 05:00.

I head out of my room before 07:00 to find reception devoid of anything approaching life and head into the shower. It’s one of those tiny cubicles with solid plastic walls that manage to remind me almost perfectly of a coffin. I struggle to get the door shut because the mould has it firmly locked in place. I then have the fun of trying to shower while trying not to touch the walls. As a result I keep bumping the tap and have an exciting freezing/scalding experience.

I head out just after 07:00. It’s going to get over 30 degrees today, but my concerns about security means I’m wearing jeans rather than shorts and all my documents are in my backpack. I have what can best be described as a death grip on it. Outside, it hasn’t heated up yet and Las Ramblas is a completely different place.

The crowds are gone and during my walk down it, I’m accompanied by street sweepers and the relatively few early-bird tourists. There are several courts off of Las Ramblas, and as I wander into one, I’m nearly mown down by two police officers on mopeds.

I wonder what criminal conspiracy they are investigating, so I follow them and then watch them waking up the rough sleepers and moving them on before the tourists arrive. Books & Co doesn’t open until 08:00, so I amuse myself by wandering around some of the back streets.

Eventually, 08:00 rolls around and I head for Books & Co. They have an excellent menu outside, so I head in and find two women behind the counter. The three of us then manage to confuse each other completely. They ask me what my room number is as they assume I’m staying at the hotel next door. I manage to explain that I’m not, so they sit me down and give me the breakfast menu. This turns out to be a fixed menu and so I end up with orange juice (elegantly dispensed from the carton), coffee (bitter and luke-warm) and a sándwich tostado de jamón y queso. Or, as you and I would say, a ham and cheese toastie. I’m not sure who rated this the “best breakfast in Barcelona”, but I can only assume that it was someone who has never previously eaten breakfast. Or possibly has been fed intravenously for the last twenty years so they have nothing to compare it to. I’m am highly unimpressed and Books & Co gets added to the list of things I don’t like about Barcelona.

But enough of such maudlin things – Sagrada Familia awaits and that can’t be disappointing can it? I head for the train station and pick up my pre-booked 48 hour bus/train ticket. I’ve planned my day – Sagrada Familia at 10:30, La Pedrera at 13:30. Should give me easily enough time to look around and get some lunch in between. I am, as you would expect, painfully early and so at 09:00 I find myself outside Gaudi’s masterpiece – which they still haven’t finished.

There are a lot of places that you visit and the expectation far exceeds the reality. Sagrada Familia is not one of those places and I walk around it astounded by the level of detail and more convinced than ever that Gaudi was probably bat-crap crazy. If the outside is like this, what must the interior be like? I head around to the entrance and check my e-ticket to see if I can get in early. It’s at this point, I find out that they’ve cancelled it. I was sent an email yesterday, but it’s OK, they can offer me a ticket in three days time.

And I lose it.

I hate this bastard city, the people in it and every smug SOB who has harped on about what a marvellous place this is. Everything about it is crap and I’m stuck here for another two days. I don’t often get close to tears, but I am now and I find somewhere to sit down while I try to work out what to do now. My tour of La Pedrera isn’t for another 3 1/2 hours. While I’m thinking, I go onto Facebook and make this succinct but heartfelt post.

Barcelona is S**T!

This gets some remarkably fast responses from people. Some are genuinely concerned, one alleged friend just wants to know why I’m being a drama queen. So let me explain: I’m on my own; I don’t speak the language (either of them); I don’t feel safe; I’m staying the shithole to end all shitholes and I just want to GO HOME! So thanks to all the people who checked I was OK.

I sit there for about half an hour as the heat climbs and go through a couple of bottles of water. I find some places nearby that I can go and look at, so I sort myself out and head off. As I do, I pass a stop with a parked sightseeing bus and I decide to ask if my 48 hour ticket would cover that. It turns out is doesn’t, but the lady selling tickets makes the mistake of asking if I’m alright. I end up pouring out my frustrations to this poor woman. She is the first nice person I’ve met in Barcelona and seems genuinely upset that I think little more of her city than I do of Swindon. I end up spending 30 euros on a ticket and climbing aboard. Either she was a nice person, or an excellent salesperson.

The tourist bus goes right past La Pedrera, so I won’t have to worry about that. Barcelona divides the tourist routes into blue and red (essentially north and south). My ticket gives me access to both and I can hop on and off. La Pedrera is one of the places where both lines meet, so I decide to do one line after another – after all, I have sod all else planned. It also has an audio guide and the definite advantage that the bus is air conditioned. I settle down to try and settle down (if you see what I mean).

The bus heads off and the tour starts to calm me down – until the audio guide goes through a warning about not carrying your valuables with you. All that does it get me stressed again and I’m very close to just locking myself in my room for 48 hours before getting the hell out of here.

The tour is good at pointing out the tourist spots and gives a brief description of the area and background to what we’re seeing (or, very often not seeing as I’d have to get off to actually see things properly). This continues until we get to Camp Neu when the audio guide waxes lyrical about bastard football. This does not help my mood.

We get to La Pedrera and I hop off. I’ve still got an hour and a half before my booking, so I get into the queue for the red route. I’m behind a group of women who are clearly on a hen party so I’m put off sitting on the top deck as that’s where they go. Probably just as well as the sun is relentless today and I would have ended up looking like a lobster despite the sun cream that I’ve been liberally applying.

The red route runs just like the blue one – including the audio guide rubbing it in about personal security. By the time the tour finished, I am thoroughly sick of the terms “modernista” and “UNESCO World Heritage Site” as every other building seems to be described that way. I get off at La Pedrera again. Which (like everything designed by Gaudi) is in the modernista style. (For those of us not artistically inclined, just think “fucking weird” and that will tell you what modernista is).

I have a ticket for La Pedrera which allows me to “avoid the queue”. So I join the queue. There’s only one, and you need an “avoid the queue” ticket for it. Despite all the signs telling people they have to buy their tickets before joining the queue, a refreshingly large number of people in front of me haven’t bought one. Some of them become quite cross with the woman guarding the door like Horatius guarding the bridge. I then also become quite cross with her when she won’t let me in – my ticket is for 13:30 and it’s only 13:20. Some people have far too much power!

I stand in the sun for 10 minutes and watch several other people being refused entry. One American man storms off across the street with this apologetic wife in tow. Eventually 13:30 comes around and I re-join the queue. By then, Cerberus has been replaced by a very friendly Golden Retriever and I am let in.

Now, I am not an expert in art. (I am an expert in many things, including cryptozoology and parapsychology, but not art). So when I tell you that La Pedrera is fucking weird, it is not an informed opinion. But it really is fucking weird.

Lots of the lines are very fluid gives a sense of dislocation that is made worse by an audio guide that seems to be being narrated by Ardal O’Hanlon. The guide itself is staggeringly pretentious. Just imagine the following being read by Father Dougal:

Look around you. What you see is not concrete but tree trunks. There you can see the shapes of animals in the curves. There they are: deer, snake, elephants. Oh look Ted, is that an axolotl?

The above does contain a measure of artistic licence (borrowed from the Published Author), but the whole thing made me hear Stephen Fry’s voice in my ear as he whispers “Pretension – by Fry and Laurie!”

La Pedrera is certainly impressive – especially when you consider that it has no internal supporting walls. Clever chap that Gaudi – bat-crap crazy, but clever. It does make me laugh when the audio guide waxes lyrical how Gaudi designed light into his buildings and how he said that the sun was always better than electric light. I laughed because the area I was in at the time, was all (of course) lit by electric light.

On the roof, he really went to town.

In case, you thought this had strayed from pretentious into downright weird, there are some information plaques around to drag you right back into pretentious.

This building was designed for people to live in, and I have to wonder what the people that it was built for thought about it.

“Look Maureen, I wanted a simple two-up, two-down with a patio and a conservatory and look what we got. I know he’s your cousin, but the O’Halloran brothers would have done it for half the price and the neighbours wouldn’t be moaning about it all the time.”

The tour takes me all around the building and then through not one, but two gift shops. The second has the required bookmark and I head out. While I was queueing, I had spotted a restaurant just down the road and I decide to give it a try. I’m not expecting much except over-inflated prices, but the Artespanol Paella and Tapas is a pleasant surprise and a damned good find.

I head in to find that the restaurant is well set up for dealing with tourists – menus are available in a variety of languages and several staff are multi-lingual. I’m sat down and on the table beside me, two ladies are tucking into their paellas – and they look incredible. Not the ladies, the paellas. Look, I’m sure they’re very nice people but the paella was more attractive!

Given my experiences so far, I’m waiting to be let down as I order a jug of Sangria and a paella.

Barcelona, all is forgiven. Well, not really, but this food goes a long way to shore up your reputation. The paella goes down very well – as does the sangria. I am then tempted into trying a pijama, which is apparently a traditional Catalan dessert made up of Catalan custard, ice cream, peach and sweetened cream. It’s delicious, though I’ve seen enough Masterchef to know that it needs some crunch with it.

This sets me up very nicely for a long stroll back to the shithole, pausing to snap a photo of a place that Roz would love.

On the way back, I pass an American family where the person that I would assume to be the eldest son was asking at the top of his voice the following: “How many street people do you think eat rats? I mean just grab one and eat ’em? Or maybe cook them?” Without wishing to make judgements, I suspect he may be a fuckwit.

I head back planning to have a nap for a couple of hours and then head out again. In the end, I buy some bottles of water on the way back and then barricade the door for the night.