I actually got a couple hours of sleep last night, but it has been raining all day, so I decided to take a stroll around Barcelona in the somewhat unusual weather. I had a couple shots left on my 35mm film camera and I wanted to finish off the roll by shooting Barcelona in the rain. Wet surfaces and reflections can give photos an interesting look, plus no one really sees many photos of the warm Mediterranean metropolis in the rain.  I also wanted to examine bike use during a sustained rain event, since this is the longest I have experienced while living here. 

Anyway, I left the apartment with no real destination. After a couple seconds of thought, I had a hunch that the beach might be pretty cool in the given situation. I assumed there would be no people and it would just be a quiet, wet scene. There were a lot less people on the streets already, due to the rain and it being 10 degrees Celsius. As soon as I rounded the corner around the last row of buildings alongside La Barceloneta, the wind and rain picked up substantially and most of the street trees on the beach looked like they may break in half. One already had before I got there. The waves were 10ft plus tall and there were a bunch of wind surfers taking advantage of the weather as well. There was so much rain, sand, leaves, wind and mist, but a surprising amount of people were present. It wasn’t crowded like a warm summer day, but I was still surprised.

Yesterday morning while viewing Tibidabo from a balcony in Gracia, I decided it was to be the day to climb up to the Cathedral. I went back to my apartment to meet Ian and grab the bikes, and then we quickly headed out. 

We took the L3 metro from the Parallel stop up to Penitents, located directly between Park Guell and Tibidabo. From there we climbed the narrow winding roads via bicycle towards the summit of Tibidabo. We reached a point where the road turned into a much steeper trail, so we locked up the bikes to a metal sign and continued on-foot. We ended up taking a shortcut and bushwhacking through thorn bushes until we reached the main road at the summit. 

Tibidabo is an amazing place. The view is even better than the mountain on the edge of Park Guell. It was a clear day so we could see the start of the Catalan Pyrenees to the Northeast, Montserrat to the Northwest, and many surrounding cities in addition to having an incredible view of Barcelona to the East.

The Cathedral was also very impressive, especially being at the summit of the highest point immediately surrounding Barcelona. In Latin, tibi is translated as “to you” and dabo is a present tense verb meaning “I give”. Therefore, Tibidabo means, “I give to you”, which were words said by Jesus, according to the Catholic faith.