If you are ever in Barcelona and you find yourself tired of the hustle, bustle and noise, then I highly suggest you make your way to Sitges. Yes, that’s right, Sitges, pronounced like seatchiz. This quaint little town, apparently renowned for its night life and alternative lifestyle, is like something out of a movie. In fact, they also have a film festival every fall, something we happened upon while we were there. The festival caters to science fiction movies, and indie horror flicks.
The town was built way back in the day, which I believe was a Thursday. It’s tucked away into this little bay, which has an outcropping on the south side. On that little outcropping, is a cathedral, dating back to some time, from a galaxy far far away. What I do know for sure though, is that Sitges is considered one of the last bastions of counter-culturists and revolutionaries going back to the 1000’s. Ironically, they are so rebellious in this town that they have a history of rebelling against Catalonia, the guys who own the whole you-can’t-tell-us-what-to-do-cuz-we-grown card in Spain.
So yeah, they’re a bunch of weirdos out there. They speak Catalan, but they don’t have Catalan food. They want independence, but we were hard pressed to find a Catalan national flag. They don’t like the Spanish, but they have monuments dedicated to the Spanish in their victories over countries that otherwise would’ve assisted their bid for independence. They’re like that friend you have that always disagrees with you about everything, just for the sake of it, but still wants to hang out on weekends.
Never mind that the English were helping us win independence, lets celebrate the time we beat them!
Wow, the Sitges tourism board must’ve run out of slogans…
Not everyone’s a jerk though
Anyways, so if you want to go to Sitges, you can go to one of the big train stations in Barcelona: Sants, Passeige de Gràcia, or França. From there you can take a regional train directly out to Sitges. You can buy tickets from a little kiosk littered around the stations. It cost us about €16 round trip, which wasn’t too bad.
So once you get your tickets, you can hop on down to the platform. Don’t get too excited though, people might thing you’re weird. They might think that, at least until they see the zombies. “Zombies!?! Oh my!” You say? Don’t worry, the only killing these zombies are going to do is to kill their chances of finding a date. We had the fortunate experience to go to Sitges during the movie festival, which attracted throngs of revelers dressed like zombies, murderers, werewolves, and Japanese Anime characters. The horror!!!
Um, Miss, do you ned a bandaid?
Once you arrive you’ll be struck by the small town charm, starting with the train station. It’s an open building with a café and an information desk, and is designed in an old Mediterranean style because, well, its old and is in the Mediterranean.
I like to call this “Building in front of train track”
Go outside the train station, and feel free to immediately start becoming a tourist. Its ok, the people there know you’re not a local, so you might as well embrace it. Start taking an inordinate amount of pictures of all the little streets and café’s. You can show them in a slide show when you get home, or write a crappy blog.
Ooooh flags!
All the arches!
How did I end up in New York?
“What am I looking for?” You might ask. Well, you’re looking for the beach. Because once you get to the beach you can see everything and anything that’s going on in the town. So just keep heading down hill, until you see water. Once you’re there, to your right, you’ll see the cathedral, pushing out into the middle of a bay, splitting it in two. On either side of the outcropping are tons of shops and restaurants. On this particular occasion there were artists out, putting on creepy Halloween face-paint, making people look like zombies and vampires and newlyweds. Yes, newlyweds. That was a big theme at the event this year: zombie newlyweds. I guess they’re making a statement?
That’s one way to deal with cold feet
Mom! I told you I don’t wan’t to look like a Zombie!
Is this a makeup artist, or a dentist
From the cathedral you can walk left or right, doesn’t really matter. Or you can walk back into the center of town and explore all the creepy little alleyways. We happened to go out in the afternoon, and the sun was setting, so we trekked about a kilometer up the beach and found a nice place to watch the sunset. Awwww how romantic…
Ahhhh, the sky is on fire!
Cue next spot we visited… Thousand year old cemetery. Yep, that’s right. They have an ancient cemetery that’s still in use. We tried to go in, but were foiled by these things called “gates”. Apparently they don’t want tourists like us walking around in the dead of night among the graves. I’m assuming that’s because they don’t want us to end up as food for the Cullens, how considerate.
You can then walk back through the streets towards the train station. But you might want to stop and grab a bite to eat before you leave. Like I said earlier, some of their food is unique only to that town, so you could give it a shot. Or you can do what we did, and drink hot chocolate while eating funnel cake. You know, your choice. I will say, though, that Spanish hot chocolate is not like the stuff we drink in the States. Imagine that someone has taken a pound of Hershey’s chocolate, warmed it just so it’s melting, and then put it in a cup. That’s the stuff they serve as hot chocolate… Delicious.
After your meal, you’re pretty much ready to go. Unless you want to go out to one of their fancy clubs. Maybe one that is located on a cliff overlooking the ocean, because they have that. Don’t ask how it was, because we didn’t go. It was too fancy for us, or in reality, too expensive.
We thought about going in, but there were no prices on the menu.
Either way, at the end of the day you’re going to make your way back to the train station and back home. And then you can say you’ve been to Sitges.
The Northern Rover 