Travel Journal: Montjuic and the Olympic Park – Spain

Every two years or so, my organization holds a World Staff Conference (WSC), bringing together staff from all of our 15 offices that are located around the world. Our most recent WSC was this year in late August in Barcelona, Spain! For this trip, I also brought along my mom for a vacation after the conference was done and my friend Jodi, who was also attending the conference as a consultant, also joined us for a few extra days. As usual with my travel journals I have split up my blog posts in a way that made most sense to this particular trip. Enjoy!

Catch up on my other posts about this trip here:
Intro – Barcelona, Spain
Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Pals and Calella de Palafrugell, Catalonia, Spain
Palau de la Musica and the Arc de Triomf
Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
Gothic Quarter and the Mercat de la Boqueria
Doors of Spain
Park Güell
Montserrat

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Montjuic is prominent hill overlooking the Barcelona harbour, that has several points of interest including being home to the Olympic Park of the 1992 Summer Games. We went there once on a beautiful afternoon just to explore when Jodi was with us, and then Mom and I visited again on our last day when the Olympic Museum was open. Though we spent a good chunk of time there, we didn’t come close to covering the whole area or seeing everything there was to see.

This is the Catalonia National Art Museum (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) and was originally built to serve as the main pavilion for the 1929 International Fair. We opted to not go through the museum but it was still beautiful from the outside.

View of the city from the other direction.

Montjuic is also home to several botanical gardens and parks, so of course Mom and I, the horticulture and floral nerds couldn’t not stroll through a few of those. I loved that most of the plants, trees, etc., had little signs that told us what it was, its age and an interesting fact.

This is the plaza you see looking out from the Olympic Stadium, including the Torre Telefonica Communications Tower that was designed by a Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava to transmit the 92 games on TV.

I come from a big sports family so my Mom and I were pretty excited for this. The Barcelona Olympic Stadium (Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys) actually has a pretty interesting history. It was originally built in 1927 and was set to host the 1936 Games until they were canceled due to the Spanish Civil war. It was used for varies events and needs over the years, including hosting refugees, until it was renovated again in 1989 for the 1992 Summer Games.

Across the street from the Stadium leading up to the Museum are all of these plaques on the ground of the various torch bearers from 1992. Unfortunately, we were a bit underwhelmed by the Museum. It certainly did a great job of capturing the history of the 1992 games and did highlight the various sports events held at the Games and their evolution from the ancient games to the modern games. But it was pretty outdated. I think things were only updated up through the 2008 games in Beijing. But we still enjoyed it and were glad we circled back to visit it another day when it was closed the first time we walked by.

The main event of the day, and my main reason for wanting to visit Montjuic was to watch the Magic Fountain show on the Plaça Espanya. Several nights a week throughout the year there is a fountain water show with lots of colors, lights and all timed to music. It might be a little cheesy, but I really love this kind of stuff. We ended up getting there really early, because I was pretty HANGRY (owning this because Jodi and Mom deserve to be recognized for dealing with me) and everything nearby was closed for siesta. So, we ended up getting dinner at concessions stands that were right there at the fountains and just people watched for a while. But it was honestly a good thing we got there early because it got PACKED pretty early on.