The portion of Barcelona’s harbor to the north of Montjuīc, unlike the shipping-intensive portion to the south, is largely devoted to the personal enjoyment of tourists and private citizens. It’s called Port Vell (“old harbor” in Catalan), and has a number of small peninsulas jutting out into it. One of these peninsulas has a shopping mall, an IMAX theater and Europe’s largest aquarium on it. Another is the home of the Barcelona World Trade Center. Much of the harbor itself is a parking lot for people’s personal watercraft. The northern shore of Port Vell is a neighborhood known as La Barceloneta which features numerous restaurants and nightclubs. The ocean-facing side of the Barceloneta features a large, sandy beach which is considered one of the best in Europe.

But the northern harbor of Barcelona was once a very different place, as recently as the 1980’s. During that decade, none of the above-mentioned structures existed. Much of the waterfront was covered with run-down warehouses. The Barceloneta was home to a community of fishermen (they still have a diminished presence), and the beach was poorly maintained. But when Barcelona was awarded the 1992 Olympic Games, powerful forces were set into motion which continued through and beyond the games to make the Barcelona waterfront a popular tourist destination.

One often unjustly overlooked attraction of Barcelona’s waterfront is the Port Vell Aerial Tramway, a ride that carries bucket-shaped, cable-suspended gondolas all the way from Montjuīc to the Barceloneta (or vice-versa, depending). The Montjuīc station is located about 200 feet up the hill, and the Barceloneta station is at the top of a 280-foot tower called the Torre Sant Sebastiā. In the middle the tramway passes through a 350-foot tower called the Torre Jaume I, which is situated next to the World Trade Center. Since the tramway travels “as the crow flies” (almost literally), the length of the entire route is only about eight-tenths of a mile. But the view is amazing.

The tramway was plagued by problems from the beginning. It was first built for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition, but due to some overly rosy estimates as to degree of difficulty, it wasn’t completed until 1931. It saw poor business because of the worldwide Depression in progress at the time, and closed during the Spanish Civil War, during which the Torre Jaume I saw duty as a lookout station and machine gun post. The tramway eventually reopened in 1963 and saw some good years, but after some years of neglect it was closed again due to technical problems and inadequate ridership. In 1996 it was decided to reopen it as part of a project to include the construction of the World Trade Center, and it finally reopened in 2000, using two of the original 1931-vintage gondolas.

Returning to our narrative: As we walked down Montjuīc from the castle, we were thinking in terms of returning to La Rambla via the funicular and Metro, as we’d come. We paused at the Montjuīc station of the tramway, gazing out over the harbor.

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Nella and Harbor Med   Lrg   Xlg

On looking at the tramway itself, we decided it looked kind of cool (dangling hundreds of feet above the harbor in a Depression-era gondola … what could go wrong?), and it was approaching dinnertime, and there were supposed to be restaurants in the Barceloneta. Anyway, the pieces fit together for us, so we walked over to the ticket booth and purchased tickets for the last trip of the day. We walked down the steps to the boarding platform and entered the gondola (there was a sign saying it could fit 20 people; this seemed highly optimistic), and we were soon airborne and moving at a steady 10 feet per second.

The Ride Begins MP4-Sml   MP4-Med   WMV-HD

Torre Jaume I and World Trade Center Med   Lrg

As it turned out, our gondola only had a few other people in it, so we were pretty free to walk around and take pictures in different directions. Which we did. There was much to see, in the harbor itself and on the mainland. At one point we could see up the tree-covered La Rambla, easily identifiable by the large Columbus monument at the point where La Rambla hits the harbor.

Cruise Ship, Tower and Marina MP4-Sml   MP4-Med   WMV-HD	Customs House and Columbus Monument Med   Lrg
Customs House, Columbus Monument, Cathedral and Sagrada Família MP4-Sml   MP4-Med   WMV-HD	Marina and Maremagnum Mall Med   Lrg   Xlg
Columbus Monument and La Rambla Med   Lrg	Arrival at Torre Jaume I MP4-Sml   MP4-Med   WMV-HD
Montjuīc and Torre Jaume I Med   Lrg   Xlg	Torre Sant Sebastiā Med   Lrg   Xlg
Port Vell Med   Lrg   Xlg	Approaching Torre Sant Sebastiā Med   Lrg   Xlg

Eventually we reached the Torre Sant Sebastiā, where we got out of the gondola and had a nice view of the Barceloneta and its beach.

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Paddleball Players, Swimmers and Harbor MP4-Sml   MP4-Med   WMV-HD	Cable Mechanism, Torre Sant Sebastiā Med   Lrg   Xlg

We took the elevator down to ground level and headed toward the restaurants.

Boats, Port Vell Med   Lrg   Xlg

Port Vell, Torre Jaume I and Montjuīc Med   Lrg   Xlg

We found a restaurant and ate dinner, and then discovered that the Metro doesn’t go to the Barceloneta. But we found a bus stop that promised a bus that could take us as far as the end of La Rambla.

We’d really had enough walking for one day by this time, so we waited for the bus, took it to La Rambla, and returned to our hotel. We had another ambitious adventure planned for the next day: an excursion out of town to Montserrat.