Barcelona (Or, the Ed Sheeran Song)

Barcelona: 3/20/2017

The train ride to Barcelona was three hours long and entailed a ride up the coast along the water. It was very beautiful.  The weather in Barcelona continued to be perfect – 70 degrees and sunny – and the atmosphere in this town was more relaxed; more like that of a beach town than a city, the way Alicante and Valencia seemed.  I was alone for this leg of the trip, and so I got to spend the afternoon walking around alone, which was nice after the flurry of the past few days.

The beauty of traveling alone is that you can do whatever you please with no one to accommodate.  I was tired, so I went to back to the hostel early and took a shower for the first time in four (!) days.  I met some other American girls – one from Alaska, one from California – and we made plans to see Barcelona tomorrow.

 

Barcelona: 3/21/2017

The first thing I did in Barcelona was to take a walking tour. I do these in every city, since my sister and I discovered the value of the free walking tour in Berlin.  These tours are a great primer for what certain sights are, and give you an idea of what you want to go back to see better later. Also, this way you get some backstory into that ancient church or that giant sculpture, rather than breezing past and saying “oh, that’s pretty.”

I went on a “Gaudi” tour showing the works of Antoni Gaudi, the most well-known artist from Barcelona. He combined architecture and art and was one of the first to do so, at a time when such technology was not readily used by most other architects.  

The first stop was Palau Guell, a palace that Gaudi (if I remember right) build for his friend, Guell. He changed the façade two or three times because people liked it so much, and he couldn’t stand being well-liked; he wanted to be criticized. He changed it until it was ugly enough to silence the compliments.

The next stop was Casa Batllo, a beautiful little jewel of a house that Gaudi had created for a wealthy Catalonian family.  There is not a single straight line in the entire building; everything is gently rounded.  The rooftop is reminiscent of a dragon. According to Catalonian legend, St. George had slayed a dragon according to this story (although I’ve heard a few variations on the ending, I liked this one best):

A dragon was bothering the village, so the king offered his daughter to the dragon as the dragon’s sacrificial bride. St. George rescued the princess by slaying the dragon.  The dragon’s blood turned into roses as it flowed to the floor, and St. George took one and gave it to the princess, asking her to marry him. She declined and gave him a book to read instead.  Now, in April, the Catalonian version of Valentine’s Day entails men giving women roses, and women giving the men books.   

A+ feminist tale, in my opinion.

 

 Casa Batllo.

We also saw Casa Mila, another house down the street.  This building was so abhorred at the time that its owner drew up contracts with 20 families who were willing to live there, offering them permanent residence with no rent increase if the apartment stayed within that family. Three generations later, the inhabitants are living on the most popular avenue in Barcelona and paying 100 euros per month in rent. Wow!

After this we finished at the Sagrada Familia.  I knew nothing about the Sagrada Familia going into it, except that I needed to see it.  I was disappointed to see that it was under construction, but then learned that it has been a work in progress since the 1880s, and is now on its eighth architect, this one from Japan.

Antoni Gaudi died after he was hit by a tram walking toward the Sagrada Familia.  The driver left him on the street, thinking he was an old homeless man. Someone found him and took him to the poor hospital for the homeless, where he stayed for three days before his friends found him and exclaimed that this was no homeless man – it was the famous Antoni Gaudi! But Gaudi did not want to be moved to the nicer hospital; he wanted to die among the poor… and so he did.

At this point I met up with my new friends and we went inside the Sagrada Familia. I think that if you’ve seen the inside of one European cathedral, you’ve seen them all (with the exception of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London), but this one was unique.  It was much more modern inside, with bright stained glass and more contemporary stonework. Definitely unique and worth a trip inside.

After this, we checked out the beach, which was not as nice as the one in Alicante but as I learned is still quite popular. I learned that before 1992, Barcelona had no beach or palm trees! Palm trees were brought in after Barcelona won the bid to hold the 1992 olympics, and a beach was created soon after that to keep tourists’ interest. What do you know!

Everything in Barcelona is COVERED with graffiti (“street art”).

Was she, though???

By this point I had learned that Barcelona is considered to be part of the Catalonia region, which is trying to secede from Spain. Going into it, I had no idea that most people of Barcelona speak Catalan, not Spanish, which was an interesting surprise. I wonder what will happen with their next referendum… I really should have done some research in advance.

By now it was late afternoon, so we walked all the way to Montjuic (“Jewish Mountain”) which I later learned is a mass grave for the Jews that were executed during the Spanish Inquisition.  We climbed to the top, which had great views and a fortress near the top.  As sunset approached, we headed back down for dinner.

We had chocolate and churros for dessert. Churros in Spain are nothing like the dry, sugary ones you get from street fests in the US.  In Spain, they are deep-friend tubes of savory dough that you can then dip in a cup of liquid chocolate… and they are amazing.

We went on the hostel pub crawl after this and I could see Barcelona’s nightlife living up to its name. For being 1 am, they were just getting started…

Barcelona 3/22/2017

I did SO MUCH walking today.

I first went on a walking tour of the gothic quarter, an area full of old architecture and historic buildings. The streets were narrow and winding and mostly cobblestone, reminding me of Prague.  We saw the art school Picasso attended, the ruins of the first settlements in Barcelona from ~1500 years ago, the remnants of the wall separating and protecting the town, the Santa Maria del Mar cathedral, a playground built upon a mass grave from the Spanish civil war, and a children’s school that had been bombed during the war but was still functional today. We also saw the Cathedral of Barcelona. They were clearly super Catholic here.

 

Spray paint on the door of the school… fitting.

After this, I walked to Las Ramblas, the main touristy boulevard. I felt like I couldn’t NOT see it, even though I try not to do overly touristy things on trips. At the end of Las Ramblas, I went to La Boqueria, a large market similar to the one in Valencia. Obviously I had more than one empanada.

I went on another, more general, walking tour after lunch. We saw King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s palace (they were the rulers who sent Christopher Columbus to the Americas). Fun fact! Syphilis had not appeared in Europe until both the king and queen got it… and the only person who had been abroad was Christopher Columbus, who happened to be very infatuated with the Queen…..

We also saw spots where soldiers would sharpen their swords (!) on the walls of the cathedral in the 1400s, the world’s oldest operational synagogue, and a statue ten stories high commemorating the tallest human tower ever formed, which was awarded in Barcelona after several tries (and deaths).

Swordz were here

My final stop was Parc Guell, which several people had recommended to me. It turned out to be my favorite stop. 

Parc Guell is a large, magical park interspersed with artwork by Gaudi, and reminded me of something out of Harry Potter. I climbed to the top to find beautiful views. As I walked, I heard a man playing an acoustic guitar and singing Spanish love songs. Closer inspection revealed that this man had made songs out of Pablo Neruda’s poems (Neruda is famous for his love poems). The weather had cooled off a bit and I realized that the sun was about to set, so I stayed at the top to watch.

Then I headed back down for some empanadas (four for dinner, of course) and walked along Passeig 

de Gracia, a famous avenue reminiscent me of Michigan Avenue.

Barcelona: 3/23/2017

I had some time to spare before my train to Madrid, so I walked along Passeig de Gracia again and followed it to Casa Battlo to see the interior.  I am not necessarily interested in architecture per se, but Gaudi really was a master at combining it with art.  Every detail of the house had been done with purpose. Like I said before, there is no straight line in the entire mansion. The windows at the top of the house were smaller than the bottom ones, so that every room in the house had the same amount of light. The paint at the top of the light well was darker than at the bottom, because more light hits the top of the well.  The handles of all the windows and doors formed gently to the hand (trust me, I tried them). Slotted vents, the first of their kind, regulated room temperature. Everything evoked nature and earth, two of Gaudi’s favorite subjects.  Each mosaic tile in the roof had been painstakingly placed in the exact right position because Gaudi was a perfectionist. An altar that used to reside in the home is being preserved for use as the altar in the Sagrada Familia once it is finished.

I could not for the life of me get that Ed Sheeran song out of my head the whole time I was in Barcelona. I adore Ed Sheeran, but it's not even that good.

Las Ramblas
I'll meet you
We'll dance around la Sagrada Familia
Drinking sangria
Mi nia, te amo me cariňa.