Experience it and laugh out loud with joy. My goodness what a city.
The architecture, the people, the food, the climate, and general flamboyant joy of the city take your breath away.
Even when you arrive by bus at 6:00 a.m. having cancelled your hotel for the previous night because of the unexpected bus transfer. (See previous post). But our hotel keepers got us into our rooms by 9:00 a.m. (not 3:00 p.m. which was the advertised check in time) and after a shower and power nap….well, ok a two hour sleep… we were up and exploring.
We decided a hop on hop off bus was the best way to get oriented to this new-to-us city, hopped on, and hopped off at the first stop….La Rambla … and didn’t get back on the bus until the next day.
La Rambla assaults every sense. It’s colourful, and vibrant, with food, spices, perfume scents in an all-out attack on your senses. And People. PEOPLE. I loved it.
We took up the challenge of street’s name and rambled up and down, up and down, taking it all in as though we had been deprived of all the glories we were experiencing, which in fact we had been. Flowers. Spices, foods, art, street performers, hawkers, in a colourful constantly-moving kaleidoscope.
Think of a cacophony of sound and explode it to include all your senses and you get a sense of La Rambla.
Fans, jewelry, food, trinkets, blankets, clothes, castanets, living statues, colour swirls around you. And the noise of hundreds and hundreds of people talking, selling, singing, pitching. It’s a wonder of a street. And a delight to experience, even if you are a solitary introvert.
We took it all in, soaked it all up, revelled in all the experiences, then stepped back and went for dinner in a street restaurant and watched it pass us by. Paella? You betcha. Three different times, with sangria each time. And sometimes by itself — the sangria that is. In big A & W root beer-type mugs frosted and about 18 inches tall, with two foot straws. Yum.
I tried a black paella. Some menus say these contain squid ink. This one simply said black rice, so having had black rice in a dish in Edmonton, I thought that is what it was. One black tongue, two black lips, 20-odd black teeth, eight black fingers and two black thumbs later, (i was eating a seafood paella that contained shrimp and clams and mussels that had to be de-shelled I hasten to add in quick explanation of my messy visage) I realized i had had squid ink. Didn’t make the paella taste any different, but my various parts were certainly coloured by the experience. Took considerable rubbing with napkins to return these various parts to their usual colours. Lipstick was of course history. Of course I had to swish my mouth with further sangria liquids. LOL.
The only disappointment? Ken looked high and low for the much vaunted sardine meal, and failed to find it on any menus.
But the food generally was amazing. And the people friendly and charming. Barcelona is reputed to be the 15th safest city in the world. And we wandered, daylight and dark, without concern or any sense of threat. They do warn you about pick pockets though, so purse stayed home, and the only thing I carried was my camera.
It’s architecture is stunning. We were awed by the various buildings….and amazed how different gothic design in Barcelona is different from gothic design in Paris or Rome. Still the same family, still similarities, but very different. Softer, with rounder edges, she said from a solid platform of basic architectural ignorance.
Barcelona is most known for Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi cathedral. It’s of course still under construction, and will be for a few more years, so surrounded by scaffolding and cranes. We had intended to buy tickets in advance, on line, and of course forgot, and when we got there by our hop on hop off bus route, it was already sold out for the day, and barricaded closed (!) so we didn’t get to see the inside. But the outside is quite fantastic. It put me in mind of that early Mickey Mouse cartoon where he dons the wizard’s cloak and everything goes crazy.
Spoiler alert…I am not a fan of this cathedral. To me it was a tribute to gaudy (pun fully intended) excess. Gaudi, the major architect, went wild with fantastical swirls and spires and lah-de-bloody-dahs. It’s a tip of the hat to opulent excess. It looks to me, like a wedding cake with over-the-top icing. It slumps and swirls and curves serpentine-like with one part not necessarily matching any other part, so the whole doesn’t seem to have any common feature except for the swirling and twirling. The yet-to-be-completed design calls for 18 spires representing, in ascending order of height, the 12 apostles, the Virgin Mary, the four evangelists and the tallest of all, Jesus. Eight of the spires, built as of 2010 represent the four apostles at the nativity facade and four apostles at the passion facade. According to the literature that is. I didn’t get close enough to actually confirm or deny. Its portrayal of Christ, is gaunt and haunting. This I did see and can verify.
On a more positive note, the Familia has created its own economy, possibly with a GNP similar to that of a small country. Aside from the architects, engineers, and trades people actually working on the structure, a small village of services has sprung up at its feet. The street hums, thrums, throbs, vibrates. Street hawkers selling everything from blankets to castanets to key rings to religious bling (I wouldn’t be this irreverent if the Church was selling these items and using the money to run a school or something for the community and they may well at the official gift store inside….what i am referring to is trashy bling). You name it you can buy it and more besides. There’s a thriving food industry, and the people in costume charging you money to have your photo taken with them. Photos and china with cathedral images, postcards, you name it you can buy it in the one or two blocks around the circumference of the cathedral. Then there are the businesses in storefronts, and the people providing services to the people earning a living from the cathedral…..and so it goes. Its own micro-economy.
Gaudi houses and buildings are scattered throughout Barcelona. We weren’t able to get into any of them, because of time constraints but you could spot them from the street, with their undulating fronts and spectacular architecture. Many of his buildings are UNESCO sites now. The ornate walls and ceilings of one Gaudi mansion disguised small viewing windows near the ceiling, so the home owner could snoop on his guests.
Barcelona is a city of parks, they have 60 of them ranging from historic, to themed parks, and forests. Urban parks cover 10 per cent of the city!
The Parc de la Ciutadella was right across the street from our hotel. It’s an amazing park, built on the site of an old military citadel and includes the Parliament building for Catalonia, the zoo and several museums. The grounds are complete with an amazing gold multi-character monument. We wandered through this park, and discovered the beach blanket hawkers. They sell comforter sized cotton blankets of the most amazing colours…..a tree of life available as a black and white or a brilliant blaze of colours, mandellas, stained glass window designs, elephants, giraffes. And even one featuring the face of Bob Marley.
We encountered our first coconut hawkers here. They are really aggressive and don’t back off, especially a lone woman. But we escaped and continued walking. We walked through the park to the beach and had our first opportunity to wade in the Mediterranean. I made the mistake of turning my back on the sea as I walked back in to shore, having ventured to knee-deep, and was soaked to the waist by a rogue wave. The water was lovely and warm, and I was in a summer skirt, which dried quickly. My underwear not so much.
The water was wonderful. My dream is to swim in warm salt water. Some day I might have the courage to put this old body into a bathing suit and actually do something about fulfilling that dream. But not today. I don’t remember the last time I wore a bathing suit but it’s double digits and decades ago. I remember walking on a beach in France…the Atlantic, years ago and watching a 90 year old (if she was a day) woman, strut towards me. In her full glory, in a bathing suit, didn’t care that skin was old and wrinkled and jiggled. She was true majesty. Confident, sure, proud. And I envied her comfort in her own body and wished that I had that gift. One day maybe.
We had lunch in a beautiful seafood restaurant on the beach, eating outside. November and we are eating outside. Imagine. I think it was snowing that day in Edmonton. But we were in summer clothes, short sleeved-shirts and eating fresh seafood outside.
We finished our meals and headed in to use the facilities before heading off on our walk home and what an amazing interior. Turkish in flavour. To the left a wall about 30 or 40 feet long with four or five curtained alcoves….queen or king-sized beds, pillows and cushions, two steps up, shoes left on the steps. I don’t know quite how you would manage to eat lounging on these beds. Further in was an equally big room but more traditionally furnished with buddhas and statues. Even the bathroom was an experience. So another multi-sense experience.
As we wandered back to the hotel, we were treated to a street performer playing guitar and mouth harp, and singing one of my very favourite songs….Piano Man. Poor guy, the wind kept blowing his music away, but he did an amazing job of it in spite of that disadvantage. Then we passed another street performer who did all sorts of fantastic things inside the world’s biggest hula hoop. Well, certainly the biggest one I’ve ever seen. Inside, outside, upside down (the name of a children’s book I read to my girls) comes to mind. He balanced his feet on the inside of the rim and held on with his hands over his head and twisted, twirled and spun, went so low, he was almost parallel to the ground, and very low to the ground, then spun himself back up to upright. Amazing.
Then, yes there’s more, then we passed a block of some of the most incredible sand sculptures I’ve ever seen: taller than a person, several feet across, a variety of designs. Some of them, the artist had pitched a tent beside and was obviously living by his creation and investing several days in the design. One even had a drainage system and water was dripping out a pipe. Two or three others had ovens inside and had fires burning. I am beyond able to describe these.
I’ve always said Paris is my favourite European city. But boy, Barcelona is challenging that. I had researched this city before travelling here and had several file cards filled with information. I only got to use about three or four of these cards. We weren’t here nearly enough days. We still have cards to explore.
And we didn’t get to Monserrat. We didn’t find the chocolate museum, either. We have to find that and pay it a visit.
Barcelona, we’ll be back.
