Beautiful Barcelona

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(Clover)

Off the Plane from Amsterdam where everyone speaks English into Spain. Thank god for Scott's Spanish. His Spanish was actually really helpful in Italy as well. It was incredibly helpful. Rarely will you run into anyone that speaks English in Spain and the further off the track you go the harder it is to find that person. But that is why we travel 😊

The first hurdle was to find the a bus or a subway to Barcelona. One that actually went where we needed to go lol. We had an address and a phone number. Easy? Woo whee not always the case.

We stumbled around the airport trying to make sense of signs and directions from the info desk that were in broken Spanish. Oh yah...broken Spanish. I only know a fractional amount of Spanish which is to say nothing. So the directions sound something like this "blah blah blah direction...blah blah blah road blah blah blah watermelon." (blank look...did that guy say watermelon?) With a lot more blah blahs in between. Of course is sounds much more exotic when they are speaking. I have never wanted to know another language more than I did in Spain. Listening to people speak and getting teasing little hints of what they were talking about was torture. "Mira, Mira!...blah blah blah." What does she want her friend to look at?

While wandering around the airport looking lost we heard a very loud "Ozzy ozzy ozzy!" behind us. We looked around stupidly and found that a very jovial large Australian had scoped us out for being Australian as well. We forgot both of us had bought Australian flag bag tags while Down Under. Then there was that awkward moment where we had to open our mouths and give our nationality away. Americans?! Too late didn't matter anymore we were now lost comrades. Our new friend was Dave a headhunter from Perth.

After some very confusing routing through the subway system and then a bus we finally made it to our street. Now we had to find a pay phone and call the only of the guest house we would be staying at for the next three nights. Sounds simple...no! Public phones on the road are never simple. Finding the phone was easy. Making it do what we wanted it to took the next twenty minute and humbly asking some friendly coffee drinkers at a near by outdoor patio. The magic number to start with was 10! Believe me there is always some flicking magic number that is never obvious and in only found after much tribulation. We avoided phones when at all possible. We also had to discover the first pay phone didn't actually work. It just liked to steal our money. Ahhhhhh. In total we spent 10 bucks American to call across the street. Comical in hind site but backpacker money is tallied in what "could" have been eaten for dinner or for the next few days. That's how my mind worked anyways lol.

We finally made it into our room. It was a private business run by a family. They had two extra rooms they had converted for travelers. Good price and good location. That always makes me forget certain things. Like no AC and being next to a noisy street. Our bags exploded in the room as they always do.

Barcelona, Spain...old, modern and everything in between. All the women saunter and the men have no shame. Machismo...and machisma lest I forget.

Dave ended up being our companion for the next couple days. He was staying down the road from us in youth hostel.

I wanted the city for Antoni Gaudi. Ever since I was a kid I had known of him. He was an architecture of the Art Nouveau peroid of the 1800's. His designs were incredibly unique and at first shunned. Over time his originality was revered. They often had a playful candy land appeal to them. Straight lines and corners didn't exist for him. Everything was very organic, smooth and flowing. Each last line flows from the last to the next. He was also a huge fan of decorating interior and exterior surfaces with elaborate mosaics.

Gaudi is known for designing many buildings both private and public as well as parks. Probably his most well known work is the church La Sagradad Familia. As a devout catholic its construction become an obsession in his later years. Its 18 delicate towering spires representing the 12 apostles, 4 evangelists and then one fore Mary and one for Jesus.

Gaudi was never to see the completion of the the church however. With his progressing years he become disenchanted with life and hid from the spot light. He often walked the street dressed as a pauper. At the age of 74 he was struck by a tram. Do to his poor attire no taxi would take him to a hospital. Eventually he was taken to a poor house hospital to be nursed. No one new he was. Not until a friend happened to spot him did Barcelona find out what had happened to their famed architect. He was buried on the grounds of his beloved church.

The construction of the Sagradad Familia started round abouts of 1884. Gaudi died in 1926. When the Spanish Civil War dominated the region his blueprints were destroyed by anarchists in 1938. Sagrada continues to be built to this day, but much of its construction is speculation. An optimistic completion date is set for 2026.

The line for the Sagradad Familia was insanely long. We all sweltered in the noon day heat praying for a sliver of shade and some lemonade. When we finally entered it was quite impressive and quite impossible to get a decent photo. I didn't think we would be able to but people were allowed to climb the winding stairs of the spires. The stairways were narrow and if you ran into someone coming the opposite way you had to get real cozy with them to get by.

Two other lesser known but still very popular buildings of Gaudi's that we saw were Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. Most of the townhouses that line the streets are lovely with their large windows. But Guadi's houses stand out form the rest like a glowing gem. We walked the streets with our little maps not always sure if we were going in the right direction and then we would suddenly spot his work and the photo snapping would start.

Casa Batllo was my favorite. It was built to be the home of a middle class family in a well to do neighborhood. The roof arched up like the back of some scaly reptile, the teal shaded ceramic roof tiles glinting. The large front windows yawned invitingly out to the street. The small balconies set under the windows somehow looked, to me, like the skulls of frogs. The description sounds odd and somewhat morbid but it was nothing of the sort. The entire facade was decorated in a lovely mosaic.

Spain is known for tapas. Restaurants with a menu consisting of only finger foods. Or rather hors d'oeuvres (blasted french spelling). When you walk in the restaurant you will see a large counter with trays of tapas. Each bit of food has a colored tooth pick stuck in it. You pick out what you want and then you're tally is rung up based on the colors of the tooth picks. The popular way to eat tapas is standing. the reason for this is if you sit down you have to pay more. Lol. Also if you stand at the bar you don't have to pay a tip. hence the reason for actually wanting to stand and eat. By the way it is really yummy especially with a cold cervesa.

Speaking of yummy...that describes the open market off the main tourist drag of Las Ramblas. It was a feast for the eyes and the tummy. It was a veritable vegetable cornucopia, and meat and seafood and fruit and cheese and everything else in between. Oh yah and the goat heads to. i won;t name what is laying next to the goat head in the photo provided. Ewww.

Back to Las Ramblas...it's a long drag full of street performers. Not your usual ones though. These ones each had elaborate costumes and ways of behaving. They all gave each other some space and had different themes. There were fairies, angels, demons, drag queens and many more. If there was a good one there would be a huge crowd of spectators there. Also also the drag were souvenir booths, flower booths and of all the things pets store booth? I found the pet ones to be a bit disturbing. They sold all the normal animals that you might think to see at a pet store and then went one step further and also had barn yard animals. Like full grown chickens and ducks as well as the babies. Not sure why anyone would want this as a pet and a am fairly certain they were not being sold as food. Each booth was tidy and the animals looked healthy but it just seemed wrong. In the evening when it was time to close up did they just stuff all the animals back into their folding booths, lock it up and walk home 😞 ?

I loved the street musicians in Barcelona. There was one I liked so much I had to get one of their CDs. Their music echoed down the street in a reggae/calypso/salsa mix. It was a perfect moment. The next time we walked down Las Ramblas there was a Native American band and a Peruvian pan pipe band dueling each other from opposing sides of the street. This was not a perfect moment. Native American music in Barcelona was not working for me. They even had dancers with the feather head dresses. And Peruvian pan pipe bands aren't too harsh on the ears but they want to take over the world and I just can't support that.

Beautiful Barcelona.

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Photos

Las Ramblas
Very cool street performers in Barcelona.

Segurdad Familia
One of the many stain glass windows of the church

Marcato
open market

goat head and uhh
Goat head...yummy just what I wanted for dinner. How did you know?

Comments

[AnnaAdventuring]

I really enjoyed reading your blog. I recently spent a month in Barcelona and it's great to see your photos of many of the places I remember. I even saw that same crazy street performer!