Barcelona

Barcelona was another incredible trip, much different from my other travels in Europe.  With a population of 5,000,000 (Metro area), Barcelona is much bigger than Sevilla (population 1,500,000). On Friday, Oct. 29th, Amber, Molly, Michael, and I flew in around 11 AM arriving with plenty of the day left.   We checked into our hostel, which was our first taste of the diversity. There was a group of Americans studying in Italy.  There was a guy at the front desk from Iran, fluent in Arabic, English, Spanish, and Persian.  There was a guy from California making his living refurnishing guitars to buy and redistribute weed... Finally, the cutest was a girl from Japan whom I was happy to impress with my one Japanese phrase “HARA HACHI BU”!!

Our first adventure, the walk down La Rambla, also had a lot of diversity.  The main touristy avenue, it was smeared with every type of person, mostly notably people in wild Halloween costumes peddling for money and the tourists gathered to take pictures of them. On this trip, we wore the same blinking, shiny “I’m-a-tourist” button on our chests, taking a mountain of pictures, frequently whipping out our maps, and talking in English.  I could pretend that we were speaking English because Molly’s boyfriend was with us. But in reality, we were there to enjoy ourselves, not study.

The Roman wall in the background

At the end of La Rambla, we came to a statue of Christopher Columbus at which point we could see the Balearic/Mediterranean Sea.  We strolled along the dock without any sense of hurry and Amber and I mused about how lucky we were to be there.  We eventually made our way to the Picasso Museum, interesting to me because you can see the changes of Picasso’s work throughout his life: the Blue Period, the Rose Period, the African-influenced Period, and Cubism.  Cubism was my favorite period, because of its surrealism.  It kept making me thing of how a kid would draw the world, yet obviously he painted masterfully and in a thought-provoking way.  We spent a long time in the museum and so tired, we did little more that night.  Amber and I did go together to see the Roman wall ruins, which I had really wanted to see. They were really cool but it seemed strange seeing them surrounded by tall buildings. Later that evening, we went out to eat, confusing Michael on the etiquette of tapa style eating: together you choose the tapas and share them so that everyone tries a little of everything.

 

The morning of the next day, Amber and I went to find food and turned down a random street.  As serendipity would have it, we stumbled onto the Open Air Market, or the Mercat de la Boqueria.  It ended up being one of the highlights of my trip, a humongous smorgasbord with the traditional salt treated whole pig legs, fruits and vegetables (the typical and the strange), fish, nuts, and crabs... At one stand, while staring at the crabs I realized with a start that they were moving.  After I yelled my discovery at Amber, a man at my side smiled and laughed at me.  Continuing on through the maze of booths, we were overwhelmed by the chocolate stand and the delicious fruit drink stands.  Around 20 distinct combination of fruits drinks, I chose Mango/Kiwi, but oohed at the combinations of pineapple, strawberry, blackberry, watermelon, coconut, dragon fruit, banana, peach, pear...

That day we also went to one of Spain’s top tourist attractions, La Sagrada Familia, the Basilica designed by Antoni Gaudi.  Although it began in 1882 it still is not finished, however anticipated to be completed between 2020-2040.   Of everything in Spain, this was the one thing that I knew while still in the U.S. that I wanted to see (Blame it on Jennie’s birthday present, the Basilica puzzle, that we put together this summer).  Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed with its extremely impressive towers that make a complete picture hard to take.

 

On Sunday, Amber and I had a very productive Gaudi-filled day. We first went to the Güell Park which is situated on a hill overlooking the city. Gaudi designed it and so it of course was full of interesting architecture and windy paths. Living in there for 20 years, he would walk everyday down to the Basilica to oversee the construction. After the park, we went to the Casa Batlló and Casa Mila also designed by Gaudi. While we just took a look at the outside of Casa Mila, we payed the 12 euros to go into the Casa Batlló which was certainly worth the hole it burned in my pocket. The house was almost completely made of curves, including the walls and ceilings. It had the feeling of aquatic life with different shades of blues and greens, shell shaped lights, and scale patterns on the wall. Using broken ceramic tiles, Gaudi created beautiful mosaics throughout the house which made every room, including the attic, very interesting.


Barcelona was a great trip. Two thumbs up.