All Alone-a in Barcelona

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Barcelona Weekend Hola a Todos,

22 JUNE - Friday • Barcelona day... ugh. I went to Atocha, Madrid's southern train station (Chamartín is the northern one) to get my ticket for Barcelona, and not surprisingly, I stood in a huge line. But when I finally got to a clerk, she told me there were no trains running from here to there today because of "an accident on the line." Fishy. Realizing then that I'd have to take the bus, I had to visit two Atocha information desks in order to figure out which bus station - there are like five in Madrid - would have a bus to get me up there (Avenida América), and then I took the Metro up to the station to buy my tickets. The earliest one was the 1530 hrs, which would stop in Zaragoza and get me in at 2330 hrs. Kinda' late, but what choice did I have? None. So, the rest of the day was spent in a bus. Kill me.

I got into Barcelona on time and had to take the Metro to my hotel. For whatever it's worth, I prefer Madrid's Metro in all regards: cleanliness of stations & cars, ease of getting around the stations, better platform performers, etc. Anyways... I'd booked my hotel on a cheap-hotel website called venere.com. The room was 77€ a night, which was honestly the best I could find inside the city limits. It was sort of in a random location. A side street off a big avenue, whose saving grace (maybe) was a theater right around the corner hosting "We Will Rock You!", the Queen musical. I honestly was a little worried about getting mugged between the Metro station and my hotel, but nothing unsavory happened. A random dog, a bum peeing and fireworks going off in a nearby park, but nothing life-threatening. I've come to realize that if you walk fast and act like you know where you're going, you won't look like a target for muggers and the like. So, I finally get to the hotel and my room, which measured about 7 feet by 20 feet, including my private bathroom, had a window view of a brick wall. I was famished, so I went across the main street to a little bar for some dinner. Yeah, at midnight. While there, I struck up a conversation with a local regarding the neighborhood and the Saturday festivals honoring St. John (San Joan). He advised me to be careful and watch where I was going at all times, and also that I stay away from the beach (where huge bonfires and drunk youngsters would rule the night). Fair enough. We parted company and I speed-walked back to the hotel and hit the sack. It'd been a loooooong day.

23 JUNE - Saturday • I woke up, had a little breakfast from some treats I'd saved from the day before and headed up Montjuïc to the Fundació Joan Miró, a museum that was built in 1975 both to house many of his works and to serve as a sort of contemporary Catalan museum of art. He was born in Barcelona in 1893 and died in 1983, and crammed a lot of creative expression into his 90 years. He spent time in Paris, both as a young man and later with his wife and daughter, in Normandy, in Barcelona and on Mallorca (there's a sister museum there that I'll get to see one day).

The museum was fantastic. I could have spend a LOT of money in the shop, but I settled for just a couple of books and a poster. Miró is undoubtedly my favorite of the "big three" Spanish modernists of the 20th century. Sure, everyone loves Picasso and the closet-freaks love Dalí, but it takes a certain kind of cat to look at Miró's work and understand his representations of reality. That's me. I do enjoy Picasso a great deal, and Dalí... I find the oddity of most of his paintings... well, I'll quote Milhouse Van Houten and say, "I fear to look, yet I can not turn away." Miró, I get. Miró's usage of space and colors are magnificent. Lest you think he only painted, ohhhh no. He was a man for all media - paintings, sculptures, tapestries, drawings, ceramics, poetry, music... I think that we speak the same language. (No, not Spanish.)

Anyways, after about two hours at the Miró, I headed towards las Ramblas. I needed to take a bunch of photos of the waterfront, of the Monument to Columbus, of the Plaza Mayor and of the Boquería. I'm a big, big fan of open air markets. In the Boquería, I bought 2€ plastic containers of fruit (plastic fork included) at two different stands and just walked around the market, taking in the scene. It was neat to listen to the people doing their shopping - in Catalán, most of them - or to the American college kids being horrified by the butcher stands. I got some neat photos during my time in Barcelona. If you look up, you can find all kinds of architecturally interesting designs on simple things like street lamps, shop signs and building decorations. Dragons are a common theme. I'll try to post a few photos later.

Now, in general, I am opposed to most things "touristic." I try not to act like a tourist and I try to visit places that most tourists won't or don't go. That being said, I decided to bite the bullet that night and get on a double-decker bus. Here's my rationale: the night tour of Barcelona that I paid 15€ for would take me to a couple places I hadn't yet seen, it'd give me a better viewpoint for photos (assuming I was able to get up on the top deck of the bus) and it'd take up 2.5 hours of the evening. Since I wasn't going clubbing solo and I wanted to heed the advice of my friend from Friday night, I thought it was a good decision. Turns out, it was.

We left from the Plaça Catalunya, at the inland end of las Ramblas. Our guide started off by telling us that since it was San Joan's night, we needed to be aware of our surroundings because the slight chance existed that an errant firework could end up landing in the top of the bus. Right. Sign me up! The tour took us pact the AGBAR Tower - an office building that is lit up red and blue at night and sort of looks like... well, I'll put a photo up and YOU can tell ME what it looks like. ;-) We cruised through the Barri Gòtic and Ciutat Vella, the two oldest parts of town; through L'Example, the part of town with all the cool buildings done by Antoni Gaudí; up to Montjuïc, where we could look out on the city and see dozens of fireworks shooting across the sky at the same time in different parts of the city, and we also got some free time to leave the bus and go watch the dancing waters of the large fountain in front of the Catalunya Nacional Art Museum (MNAC)/National Palace which were lit up and shooting out in rhythm to different classical music (like the waters in front of the Bellaggio in Vegas, but 10 times better). We wrapped up the ride with a trip past the Sagrada Familia. Awesome. The Montjuïc part of the trip made it worthwhile. I only with the camera I had with me was better in low-light situations. Looking out over the city and seeing the fireworks exploding at different points of the vista was something I'll never forget.

After the bus ride, I walked back to the hotel and got an improvised escort from three dudes who walked me down a street that I didn't want to pass through alone. Basically, they were walking in the direction I was headed, and I just followed them close enough to make it seem like I was a silent fourth member of their party. They didn't care and I got to the hotel safely.

24 JUNE - Sunday • My bus was leaving at noon, so I got up at about 900 hrs. so I could go take some more photos. I went first to Parc Joan Miró to see what it looked like in the daytime. I was a little bummed, but got a good shot of the sculpture he created that sits in the park's fountain. Then I walked back to the boulevard in between Plaça Espanya and the MNAC. It was completely littered with detritus from the previous evening's festivities. Exploded fireworks, burned out plastic Coke bottles, empty boxes of matches, shredded paper and used food containers lay on the sidewalk and street like the fallen at Gettysburg. I was glad I wasn't part of the clean-up crew. I'm sure a couple hundred leaf blowers did the trick. I left that area and headed to Sagrada Familia again. When I was there with the kids, I'd hoped to get a photo of me in front of it. Well, being the perfectionist that I am, I didn't like the one I got then, so I needed to re-do it. That accomplished, I bustled down to the Arc de Triomf. I'm still not sure just what in history Catalunya has to be triumphant about, but the huge arch is pretty cool, architecturally. Plus, it is about 100 meters from the bus station. So I got a couple pics and split town.

The bus ride was uneventful from Barcelona to Zaragoza. I even had two seats all to myself. But in Z-town, a bunch of stoners got on the bus. Turns out the "Monsters of Rock" had descended upon Zaragoza the previous two days for a mega-hiper-super concert. Among the names I saw on the black t-shirts that boarded the bus were Ozzy Osbourne, Slipknot, Slayer, Megadeth and Motörhead. There were others, for sure, on more than one stage over the course of Friday night and all day Saturday. Spanish stoners are no different from American ones, I quickly determined, based upon how they funked up the bus. Long hair, piercings, sculpted facial hair, tattoos... I'm sure you're all familiar. Anyways, I sat in my assigned seat 46 now, just dreading the thought of who might come to take up seat 45 for the 4-hour trip to Madrid. Well, comically, I sat and sweated as people came on the bus and took other empty seats. It was getting pretty close to our scheduled departure time of 1600 hrs. when two final people were let on - one was a lanky stoner with a huge Adam's Apple and glasses, preceeded by a 20-something lady in a black and white sun dress talking on her mobile phone. They came down the aisle. I closed my eyes and turned my head. I felt my backrest shake slightly and I felt a nudge upon my left elbow as seat 45 became occupied. I looked up and then to my left to see... the girl seated next to me. I smiled at her and turned on my iPod. Ahhh...

Next update: MY LAST TWO DAYS IN MADRID

Thanks for reading - two updates left!!!
Love,
Kev

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