Well I started the morning off with a nice and early 5:00am taxi to the Florence with Allison (Shulhof not FitzGerald), DeDe, and Laura. From there we caught the bus to Pisa and from there, the plane to Barcelona. Well, technically Girona and from there we got another hour-long bus to Barcelona. Then we walked to our hostel. As usual the flight was 2 hours long, but the door-to-door time was closer to 7 hours. Our hostel was called Gothic Point and it was located very centrally.
After checking into our room the first thing we did was head over to a restaurant we’d passed on the way to the hostel. It was called Princess 23 I believe and it had some really good food. We tried to start things off with a Spanish twist and got a selection of tapas, some paella, some nachos (not Spanish) and sangria. The meal was an excellent beginning and definitely made up for the so-so weather we’d had so far. Apparently Barcelona has 340 days of sun each year and we were not there for them. But it wasn’t that bad, just a bit drizzly so we headed out to explore the city. We stopped first by an old Cathedral that had parts from the Roman Empire in the 400s, but was otherwise Gothic. Unfortunately it was under construction and not as pretty as it could have been.
After that we walked up to Plaça de Catalunya, which was a big wet square with fountains and rather devoid of people due to the weather. From there we walked down La Ramblas, which is a touristy, little famous street.
Though it was touristy it was nice until about 8 o’clock when people came out and started pushing for their bars or clubs. It was super annoying to deter someone every four to five feet. “No we don’t want to go”, “Maybe later”, “We’re not hungry” and hissing like a cat were all forms of responses we used that night. But while it was still day we found a really nice food market off La Ramblas that had EVERYTHING. It had whole stands devoted to eggs, dried fruit, chocolate, and gummy candies not to mention fish, meat, vegetables, fruits and who knows what else.
We continued down La Ramblas and saw a memorial column thingy dedicated to Columbus, then we explored the marina and the beach, as it got darker and rainier. Eventually we headed back to the hostel to seek shelter.
We signed up to do a dinner/show thing with our hostel that included tapas and flamenco dancing. This was our first mistake. Perhaps it should have been obvious, but the food was not good and the flamenco arguably worse. The musicians had no rhythm or talent and I’m fairly certain the guitarist was drunk. The dancer was very pretty, but made this face the whole time like she had stepped in something nasty/was watching someone be murdered. Not great, but afterwards we headed to a bar and sat for a while. We had a couple drinks. I successfully took my first shot without choking or spilling it all over my face (Yes!) and we relaxed there for a while. Eventually we headed back to the hostel and then out to find some sort of club. We made our way into the basement of this one bar where people were dancing and it was alright.
Note about the Spanish. They are crazy. They don’t eat until 9 and they don’t go out until 1. I could not cope. I want to be coming back at 1 not getting started. Regardless I made a noble effort and we were out until about 2:45-3. I’m rather proud.
The next morning we began with a free walking tour of the city provided by our hostel that luckily turned out much better than the flamenco. We took the Gaudi tour, which basically led us around to all of Gaudi’s famous sites. For those unfamiliar, Antoni Gaudi was a Spanish Catalan architect around the turn of the twentieth century. He had a highly distinctive and individual style and worked largely in Barcelona. The first building on the tour was the Palau Guëll.
Guëll was a friend and commissioner of Gaudi’s work and therefore had a somewhat long lasting relationship with him. The palace is a renovated building that was made very nice with distinctive wrought iron gates and decorations. We next hopped on the metro and headed to Casa Batllò, which is a beautiful colorful house that Gaudi designed.
It’s covered in a full color spectrum of mosaic tiles and bone-like columns and balconies. Some think that he was inspired by the Venetian Carnival and that is why it is so colorful and has balconies shaped like skulls’ masks. The guide also said that the roof and chimney represent the story of St. George (a patron saint of Barcelona) and the Dragon with the chimney representing the hilt of a sword and the tiles of the roof standing in for scales. We then saw the nearby Casa Mila also called La Pedrera (cliff). Then we once again used the subway to ride up to Sagrada Familia, which is perhaps Barcelona’s most famous landmark.
Sagrada Familia is this giant cathedral with 3 different façades all representing different aspects of Jesus’ life. It is also the one of the longest continuous construction projects ever since it was begun in 1882 and is still not done. Gaudi spent the last years of his life trying to complete the designs once it became clear that construction would outlast him designed it. It is unique it its combination of Gothic and Art Nouveau forms. It makes use of many classic gothic features like it’s massive spires, arches and ornate statue-worked façades, but does them in a more updated and modern way. The three façades of the building represent the nativity, the gory, and the passion of Jesus. The Nativity façade was the first façade that was largely completed during Gaudi’s life.
It depicts many scenes from the Bible around the time of Jesus’ birth and is especially remarkable for the life-like statues of people and animals adorning the front. Apparently Gaudi used real animals to make molds. This entire side looks a bit like either a drip sandcastle or a building that a dragon started melting with it’s fire breath, but didn’t finish. It is highly intricate and ornate. It also faces the rising sun. The Passion façade, facing the setting sun, depicts scenes dealing with the Passion and tells the entire story from Last Supper to Resurrection.
It was done after Gaudi’s death during the 70s and 80s and was made with a much cleaner angular style. It is very rigid and almost like cubism in some ways. I actually liked this side best; I thought the style was very unique for a cathedral, but very dramatic and striking all the same. The final side, the Glory façade was only begun in 2002 so was not nearly ready for me to actually determine what it looked like. Overall I liked the church a lot if not just for it’s uniqueness.
Gaudi’s architecture in general came as a bit of a breath of fresh air after living and breathing traditional gothic and classical churches across Europe. I think we were all able to appreciate it for its uniqueness and the way it challenged convention.
After the tour our little group headed north to Parc Guëll, which is a neat little park on a hill with great views of the city. Gaudi also designed it also so there was a little bit of a fantasy feeling to the park. After hanging out in the park we headed back into the city and met up with Katherine, a friend from Duke who is studying in Madrid. We all rested in the hostel for a little while and then went back out to shop around for souvenirs etcetera. After a bit we met up with Karen who was also studying in Madrid and went to dinner and walked around some.
We planned to go out again that night, but going back to the hostel to change accidentally turned into lets take naps which then turned into let’s sleep.
So the next day Allison and DeDe left early to catch their flight out. Laura and I decided to stay to get an extra day in the city (and because we found a 7 Euro flight back early Monday morning, yes they do exist.) So Laura, Katherine and I got breakfast and then walked around and made plans. We even stopped at a museum of chocolate where the tickets were chocolate bars! It basically told the history of the Spanish and cholocate in South America, chocolate trivia, and the process of making chocolate and had a bunch of chocolate sculptures. Afterwards we met up with Karen for an early-ish lunch at the 4 Gats (4 Cats) a restaurant that was apparently frequented by Picasso during his early years. I ordered this cool little Spanishy ravioli type thing with truffle and vinegar sauces, and it was quite tasty. Then after lunch the four of us walked around Parc del Citudella and found this really pretty waterfall/fountain and a giant mammoth statue.
We then walked down toward the beach where we were treated to the only 15 minutes of perfect weather the whole trip complete with a rainbow over the ocean. From there we headed back into the city and split apart from Katherine and Karen who had to return to Madrid. Then Laura and I spent some time walking around the city. We stumbled upon the Santa Maria del Mare Cathedral, which was done in a light stone that made it look very Mediterranean and castle-like. After that we did some shopping and then went to see the Picasso Museum. I’m not the biggest fan of some of Picasso’s later work, but the museum actually showed a really long evolution of his work from childhood doodles to street art, to more typical portraits, landscapes, and sketches, to his signature style. I really liked a lot of his more impressionist-ish artwork and some of his sketches.
After that we needed to devise a plan. As I mentioned before Laura and I had a flight early Monday morning. The problem was, this flight was at 6 and the airport was over an hour outside of the city. Including arriving the necessary amount of time before the flight, all this all boiled down to the fact that we needed to leave the city on a bus at 3:30am. Naturally it would be silly to pay for another night at the hostel when we would hardly get to sleep, so we had to find a way to stay up late. We decided that we should go see a movie since that would suck 2+ hours out of our evening and make things easier.
So first we walked around for a good half hour scoping out dinner places (not including a brief sit in at a Mass in Santa Maria del Mare) and it was a good thing that we held off until 8:30 because we eventually we found this great restaurant. It was called Casa Delfin (which means Dolphin House) and we had our favorite Spanish meal there. We first split an appetizer of these fried artichoke hearts with a tasty sauce, then we got some sort of potatoes and then I think some meat and a half bottle of a Spanish wine. It was really good and we were glad to end our Spanish meals there. After that we made our way down to the theatre where they were playing movies in their original language (with subtitles) and bought tickets to see Tree of Life with Brad Pitt. The movie was very artistic and symbolic and told it’s story in an a-sequential way that was very strange. Though it is the story of a family in the 50s there were many shots of things like waterfalls, volcanoes, outer space, planets, dinosaurs, and microorganisms. When we left the theater we were like “uh….”, but after looking back I’ve kinda started to understand the symbolism and strange mechanisms of film and now I really like it. Regardless, it was a great way to fill over 2 hours of our rather long evening and we left the theatre after midnight.
From there we got back to the hostel and waited in the lobby of our hostel for a couple hours until it was time to leave. I believe I fell asleep a couple times during this portion (though it was a fitful anticipatory sleep) and when it was finally time we grabbed our things and walked to the bus station a few blocks away. We arrived at around 3:15 and boarded the bus. Then I once again fell asleep until we arrived at the airport. Once there we went through security and then sat at a table at McDonalds to wait for our flight where I once again fell asleep (Props to Laura for being awake and studying through all of this). One I woke up we had some McDonalds breakfast and then boarded our flight where I…you guessed it fell asleep. When we arrived a couple hours later we got on the train from Pisa back to Florence and I didn’t fall asleep and let Laura sleep instead. Then we caught the bus from Florence to our Villa and walked in a little after 10, just in time to get ready for my class at 11:30.
I think after navigating around the city the whole time I’m officially a pro map-reader, since I seem to always end up being the one in front with the map wherever we go. I really liked Barcelona even though it was my first city with less than ideal weather. I thought it was a very cool city and things like Gaudi and the Beach made it different from the other places I’ve been. Also it was interesting because while we were there I realized that I have picked up enough Spanish through osmosis throughout my life that I can actually manage to ask the important things and know some vocab. It was very exciting. It is important to note that they do speak Catalan, but I think everyone also speaks Spanish so we used that to communicate. Generally Laura knew enough Spanish to get us where we needed to be and when we met up with Katherine and Karen they were pros. But I was very proud of my minute amount of knowledge of Spanish. It was definitely less foreign than German.
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