Jardins del Palau de Pedralbes
Sundays are tricky when you don’t have a family to visit or someone you love is having a birthday but you’re 9 time zones away (Happy Birthday, Ori!). Most stores are closed, many restaurants and coffee shops have shorter hours, and you really get the sense that the city slows down to a crawl. So what do you do when you don’t know anyone and your hosts have gone for the weekend? You go to the park, of course!
I have made it customary now to check out a different neighbourhood park every few days and this one I remembered noticing when I took the bus to IKEA. Yes, I went to IKEA a couple of days ago, just to feel normal (i.e. not a tourist) and also to have some Swedish meatballs, which, by the way, tasted just like the ones in Richmond 😉 When I was on that bus, we went by the Zona Universitària, an area with a strange name (I thought), but apparently also the home of many universities, plural. There is the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Esade (private university), and a bunch of smaller schools. Also, the Royal Polo Club though I doubt much higher learning goes on there. What’s weird, though, is that there are more universities in other parts of the city so when you’re taking the metro you need to know if you’re going to Zona Universitària or just Universitat because they’re totally different places.
All in all, it is a very nice area, but the gates to a park caught my eye so I decided to spend the Sunday afternoon not taking a siesta but rather hanging out on a bench. The walk over wasn’t too bad, it was another glorious day: not too hot but hot enough. Armed with my water bottle, Kindle, and headphones, I ventured into the park. There were a few people there already, lounging on the grass or the many benches. I had done some research ahead of time and knew that there was a royal palace in the park. From a distance I noticed some buildings though they didn’t really seem very royal to me at all. In the city full of amazing structures, this was downright boring. Interestingly, my favourite architect had his hand in this one too! Antoni Gaudí was responsible for redesigning the palace way back in 1887, though his work is more visible in the gardens. This royal palace was not really a true residence of kings but rather the place the Spanish royal family used to stay when visiting Barcelona from 1919 until 1931. Unfortunately, it being Sunday and there being a pandemic on, this building, as many others in the city, was not available for viewing. So I found a little bench, took out my Kindle and headphones, and chilled while watching people walk by.
My quiet time was disrupted, however, by some noisy neighbours of the feathered kind. First I noticed this black and white dude hopping around on the grass near me. Then some very noisy parakeets joined in. I have mentioned them before but I did not have a chance to tell you how I came to notice them the first time. I was hanging out on my balcony the other day, when all of a sudden, I saw four green birds flying in perfect diamond formation, right down the middle of the road below me. I was like “what the heck was that? This isn’t a jungle … a concrete jungle, sure, but not a real jungle where green parrot-like birds should be flying around.” As Google confirmed moments later, I was not seeing things and these were not someone’s escaped pets. The green parakeet is actually the Monk Parrot, Myiopsitta monachus, (or Parakeet, I’m not sure what the difference is, if any), and it is very common in these parts. I also discovered, at Park Guëll, that they can be obnoxiously loud, especially when pestered by other birds. Now, in this other park, I quickly lost interest in the black and white dude (maybe Chris can help me identify it? Please, Chris? Photo in the Gallery) because the parakeets invaded my space in droves. First one, then two, then five … they’d fly down to the grass, up across the walkway to the trees, back to the grass again, all the while yelling at each other. They were, honestly, way more interesting than my book.
As the afternoon wore on, more and more families started to show up: the hour of the paseo had arrived. This was also my clue to start walking home, albeit the long way. On the map I saw that there was another Guëll-related building, Pavellons Güell, close by and I couldn’t let that go unvisited. Imagine my surprise when I saw this magnificent gate! I’ve always loved interesting wrought iron gates and fences but this one is probably the nicest one I have ever seen. Oh, to have such a barrier to my house one day! Goals! The building, unfortunately, is listed as a ruin now, but in its heyday it was a grand complex, built in the late 1880s, belonging to our old friend the Count Guëll who, now that I think of it, must have owned half the city at one point.
