Barcelona- Eight Days Were NOT Enough

I really wish I could post photos with this because it was a visual feast. You will just have to wait I am sorry to say.

Barcelona - Eight days was not enough

Part of a mural

I loved our time in Barcelona. Sitting here now in Greece, two weeks later, it feels very far way, a different life completely, from this little Greek beach town. Barcelona is a big city, one of the most visited in Europe. But as big and bustling as it is, it also have quiet and calm spots that were not hard to find. We had not been in a big city I really enjoyed since Santiago and that could not come close to the history, art, architecture and food Barcelona had to offer. (Although Santiago did have a lot of heart and spirit which makes up for other things.) All I know is I want to go back because we only saw a fraction of what this great city has to offer.

Skyline of Rambla

We flew from Buenos Aires to Barcelona. It was a long flight and we were tired when we got there. For the first time we did not stay in a hostel or hotel or even a regular rental unit. When I was looking for a place, and not feeling really excited by what I was finding, I posted on Thorntree, a section of the Lonely Planet web site where travelers can ask each other questions and give advice. One of my responses was try Air BnB, which I had never heard of. This is a web site where you can advertise a room in your house, your apartment or home to rent it to travelers. We connected to Cesar through the site and rented his apartment for about the same price as a hostel for three, but with a full kitchen, wifi, washing machine and outdoor terrace, all just for us. It felt very good to be in a home and he treated us as a host would. He stayed with his widowed mother for the week, who was happy to have him. We met his girl friend Laia. They are both math teachers and she has a side business running a writing school. They helped us figure out all kinds of things. They are hoping to take a year off to travel too so we had a lot to talk about. Apartment and friends in one!

The street our apartment was on.Its across the street from Dave.

The apartment was right around the corner from a metro stop so we were in the touristy parts of Barcelona in 15 minutes. Their public transportation is excellent, we could get anywhere we needed to go very easily including the airport. The metro runs every three minutes during the week and every five minutes on the weekend. They also have a system of bikes around town for locals to use. They pay a yearly fee and get a code. Then they can pick a bike up at one place and leave it at the next. Around Cesar's neighborhood, and throughout the city, there are many pedestrian only streets making it really good for walking and strolling. Why we don't have these in the US I don't know. We loved walking around the neighborhood where kids still play outside and everyone goes out and strolls around in the evenings. It was about a 20 minute walk to the beach and a beach front park. Within short waking distance there are every kind of shop you could want, bakery, fish, produce, deli, health food store and a big super market if you prefer that. There was also a covered outdoor market with booths selling everything, which we had experienced in Southern Spain on an earlier trip, ten years ago, when Anika was three and we had our first family trip to Europe. Now we were wondering why we had waited so long to come back. The place feels so civilized and easy to be.

Typical Rambla street. Notice the school class in the background. The town was over run with French school classes on field trips the entire time we were there.

Flower sellers St Jordi's day

After having a day to recover we headed to “the Rambla” the tourist area in the old part of the city. And we really just rambled. There was so much to see just walking down the streets; street performers, architecture (old and new), sculptures, shops selling all kinds of things, the central outdoor market with every part of every animal for sale, fresh squeezed juices by the cup, nuts, candy, peppers, olives, eggs, and ham of course. It was also Saint Jordi's day, a kind of Valentine's/Book Celebration day. The custom is for men to buy women roses and women to buy men a book. Book and flower sellers lined the streets and were doing a brisk business. Narrow streets branch off in all directions from the Rambla. As you wind around suddenly you are in front of an very old looking church, or a modern art museum or a shop selling nothing but knives and scissors. Or you are smelling pastry and coffee, or looking up at public art or stopping for tapas.

Old church in the Rambla area

Street performers. she looks like she came off the church behind her.

Vegetarian friends look away! One of the many interesting things for sale at the market.

Ah, tapas. We had really had it with the food in Argentina and Spain came to the rescue. The food was just our style. We love ordering lots of little plates and getting to try many things. They are meat eaters but it is not the featured item of every dish, seafood is also very popular. We love grilled sardines and anchovies, thinly sliced ham (there is an art to slicing it, we watched the artists at work), patron peppers with rock salt, little toasts with tomato and other treats piled on top. There are so many variations. To drink we would have a dry white wine or beer or a hearty red, or sangria. “Now how,” asked Dave, “ could Argentina not have food like this, this is what their ancestors came from!” Who knows. We also had a very memorable meal one day with Cesar and Laia. They took us to the village north of Barcelona, La Escala, that Laia comes from. We wanted to treat them but they ended up treating us to two styles of paella with seafood of every description. I have not liked muscles for a while but I decided to try them again. I am so glad I did because these, in a tomato based sauce, where so good, I could have eaten them all. I could go on and on about the food. We did not have one bad meal, the prices were moderate (like home or less) and shopping and cooking in the apartment with such fresh and varied ingredients was fun too. I don't have photos of tapas but here's more food form the market:

Dried fruits and nuts

Juice

Serrano Ham of course

Eggs of all varieties including Emu and Ostrich

Every day after our ramble through The Rambla we had another serving of eye candy. The city is full of art, museums, old churches and buildings and all styles of architecture. We went on a walking tour of Gaudi architecture. The guide was an art historian from Ireland. She had a wonderful voice and personality. We learned a lot about Gaudi and Barcelona. Barcelona is like a museum of Gaudi, most of his major works are here and many you can go inside. We spent the next two days seeing the inside of two of his famous buildings.

(She also shared that she is one of two out of five in her flat that she shares with a job. There is 25% unemployment in Spain and worst hit are people in their 20s. Cesar and Laia had to take 20% pay cuts. When I think about how we complained and moaned in Santa Cruz about cutting 5-10 days off the school year I realize how lucky we have been. They are also in a big up roar here because they are going to have to start paying something for prescriptions. More on that later.)
Gaudi building exteriors:

The Sagrada Familia, Gauid's biggest project, is still a work in progress. they hope to finish it in 14 years!

Interior Ceiling Sagrada Familia Church

We also visited the Joan Miro Foundation which is a museum dedicated to this artist who was born and lived much of his life in Barcelona. I love his work and have used it in my art classes because I think he is very accessible for a modern artist whose work can be very abstract. I loved several things about the museum. One is, like the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam you can really get a feeling for his development as an artist over time. They even have a sketch he did when he was eight years old! Through his writings (which are shared with you via the audio tour) you can hear a bit of what he was thinking too. I also liked seeing his work in mediums other that painting or sculpture, things that are less famous but equally interesting. Last I loved that he had difficulty in his early drawing classes but he didn't let that stop him from pursuing what he loved to do. And his teacher advised him to feel the thing he was going to draw and then draw it without looking at it, just based on what his hands felt, well, I loved that advise too!

I didn't get any photos of Miro's work but this is a mural I liked. I don't know who the artist is.

You are probably all thinking well of course she was comfortable there, they speak Spanish and she was just working on that for four months. They do speak Spanish but they also speak Catalan which is like French, Spanish and Portuguese mixed up and reorganized into something else. Many signs are in Spanish and Catalan, some in English too if its a touristy area. There is a strong tradition of Catalan poetry and literature. The language was kept alive during the Franco dictatorship despite it being outlawed. As a matter of fact Catalonia was the last part of Spain to fall to Franco. Franco was the longest ruling dictator in European history. (See what you learn on a trip like this?!) We learned more details of the long history of this interesting and strongly independent, region during our stay. The strong attachment to socialism that has developed was the part that most attracted me.

View of La Escala where Cesar and Laia took us to lunch

On one of our last days we took the train to Figeres, north toward the boarder with France, to visit the Salvador Dali museum. Like the work of Dali, it is a trip. It is in an old theater that was partially destroyed during a war (I can't remember which one). He then turned it into a fantasy land of his art, with the intention of having more visitors than Picasso had at his museum in Barcelona. He was very competitive with Picasso. I think it worked because the place was packed almost to the point of making it not that enjoyable. But we did get to see many interesting, witty pieces and the design of the space is very unique. He was a great technician in many mediums and had an unusual visual vocabulary. But for me his work lacks some of the heart and spirit of someone like Miro. There might be more too it but there was no audio tour, or much written explanation, so you had to just go with your reaction to what you saw with no details of what he was thinking. There might be more to some of the pieces than optical tricks and bizarre combinations of images. There was a side gallery with jewelry he designed that was also very good.

Interior of largest gallery in Dali Museum

Anika and Dave in front of Dali museum

I mentioned the economic situation here earlier. Although Spain is in a terrible economic crisis and everyone is talking about it, as a tourist you don't feel it. Tourism in Barcelona is one of the biggest income generators. Many things are changing in Spain because they can not pay for all the services they have lived with for years now. And unemployment for the young is very high. If you are older you would not think of leaving your job, like I have, because it would be hard to get hired again. But the level and type of public services they enjoy are unlike what we have in the US where we are experiencing some of the same crisis. Universities are free. Medicine is socialized. Dave ran out of his thyroid medication. Cesar and Laia checked it out for us and told us where to get it and what doses it came in here. We went to the pharmacy and asked for the medicine, showing our empty bottle from the US. He turned to a shelf took down a box with fifty pills and asked for 3 euros, about 5$. Our mouths fell open, we thought it was a joke. Our co pay at home for the same medication is 20$. No prescription needed here either. They are talking about people here having to pay for medicine and it is coming as a shock to the public.

Protests in Barcelona after we left.

Michelle already asked what the color is for Barcelona. Red has to be one. But Miro adds yellow and black for me. Red, yellow and black, strong colors with flavor and fiery spirit. As for dogs in Spain its like Japan. They are well trained and cared for, no strays running about, and best of all, no poop to make walking a challenge. Why do people in some places pick up after their dogs and they don't in others? There's a question for future anthropological, sociological research .I felt in Barcelona like I did when I came to San Francisco the first time. I left and knew I had to comeback, I knew I would come back. I want to come back to Barcelona and see some of the things we didn't have time for like the Picasso Museum, Dali's home, Gaudi's home/museum, inside the churches the views from some of the hills to name a few. I want to eat more tapas. I want to learn more about the history of Spain and Catalonia. This is the best way to leave a place, wanting to come back for more.