Tibidabo

After visiting Park Güell, we continued our last whole day with the goal of going up for the Tibidabo, the highest mountain in the Greater Barcelona area that is visible through the whole city. Barcelona become higher and higher the further north you come, so we had to go southwards from Park Güell to capture a metro. We had to walk through hilly, winding streets towards the district of Gracia. After walking 5 long blocks, we reached Place de Lesseps and took the subway to the end station close to the foot of the more than 400 m high Tibidabo mountain, that can be seen from the whole city including our hotel. Today we used different kinds of transportation: Metro(subway), tram, funiculare and mini bus.

This is the view of Tibidabo not so far from it's foot. Tibidabo is situated outside the city borders of Barcelona.


After getting up to the ground from the metro's end station we discovered the beautiful modernista hospital Sant Gervasi.


Tramvia Blau, "the blue tram" is an old street car line that goes up towards the top of Montjüic.


The views of the city and some of the most luxurious villas in Greater Barcelona makes the tram trip worth the money.

The views from the tram's end station:

Overview of the luxurious residence area.


An exclusive restaurant is also situated there.


The Funiculare, a diagonal train, took us further to the top. As the first time for me
riding funicular, it was very exciting. When the funiculare has reached the top, we could
see the temple and the amusement park of Parc de Attractions.


Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor. This tempel by Enric Sagnier from 1911, can be seen from the whole city, including the balcony of our hotel. The statue of Jesus Christ on the top is very dramatic. The main tower and the terraces offers dizzying views, but we spared that for the much taller nearby Torre de Collserola. Tibidabo comes from the words tibi dabo "I give you". That aimes at the words the devil uttered when he tempted Jesus with giving him the amazing city below -the city of Barcelona!


Villas in the sky! Imaging having this view from your home. La Atalaya is an oldfashioned cableway that goes just above the streets at the residence areas at Tibidabo and offers 360 degree views of the city. It belongs to the amusement park.


Torre de Collserola, a 288m tall communication mast designed by the very famous British architect Norman Foster for the 1992 Olympics, was one of my favourite attractions of the whole Barcelona trip. However, it was very hard to find it, no real signs show there it is and there is no walkway from the funiculare to the tower. Even if it is tall in itself, the location at the top of a 560m high mountain doesn't make the views worse!


The cables that hold the tower are made of Kevlar. Looks a little bit unstabile, doesn´t it? After going through a metal detector, we reached the lobby that has large pictures of observation towers from all over the world. A woman took us in to the somewhat shaky and oldfashioned elevator. At first, the elevator go through an open space in the podium that the tower stands on. After that, the sky is just behind the hopefully properly closed glass doors, that offers views already from the elevator. After the short ride to the top, the glass doors opens and we walk right in a fully air conditioned circular observation deck.


The special thing about the observation deck, that makes me especially happy I am not afraid of heights, is the glass floor, were you can look right down to the ground about 200m below, or down to sea level, 590m down! In every direction, a name of a foreign city is written and the distance to it. In this case we are looking towards Oslo, as this was the only Scandinavian city represented.

On a clear day you can see 70km. away: Mallorca, Montserrat and the Pyrenees. It was somewhat hazy this day and
the windows are dirty (!) though, so we could only see the shapes of the mountains. This view is towards Montjüic.
This mountain looks very small when seen from Tibidabo…


Here you can see Camp Nou, Europe's largest football stadium.


Note the shadow of the tower seen on the forest.

Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor as seen from Torre de Collserola. To the right you can see Parc de Attractions, the only amusement park in Greater Barcelona. Sorry about the dirty windows, but it's not my fault! We went down with another -much more modern- funiculare, going to a totally another place and a crowded mini bus with no places to sit. It belonged to the local traffic, but offered an horrible short trip! As a summary, this was the most incredible day on our Barcelona trip! At least if you count the evening when we visited Placa d'Espana and the fantastic "magic fountain" after dark, that performed an incredible light and music show. More about that in the last thread!