Ciao, Tutti!
I have just returned from Barcelona and I want to spill my guts to you all while the stories are fresh. The problem with that is that there is simply too much to say, and, as you'll see, I'll be using both photos and a few movies to tell the stories for me.
I left for Barcelona on Friday morning. First I had to take a bus to Pisa, which takes about an hour and half, and then fly over to Barcelona, which takes another hour and a half. When I got there, I was to call my friend Kat to tell her I was there and was ready to meet her and her friends. The problem was that my phone told me I couldn't make calls in Spain, and suddenly I was in a Spanish country (Oh, and it's not really Spanish that they speak there. It's something else with a name I forget) without a map, a contact, or a clue. I found my way to the free shuttle downtown, picked up a free street map from the airport, and plotted my way to the hostel, hoping to meet the rest of the group, and this is the first thing I saw:
I found out later it was the national palace, and despite still needing lunch and another four hours of sleep, I was already enjoying myself. I certainly enjoyed the spontaneity of the trip without the phone, and I was tempted to just walk up there and check it out, but I needed to get to the hostel, so I left the palace behind. Next time, maybe. I walked along the main street away from it, hoping I would find a cell phone store along the way. I was sure it would happen, but one was closed for Siesta and the other didn't actually exist, there was just a strange sign there that said "Motorola". I made it to the hostel, but the land line there couldn't connect to mobile phones, so I lost 3 Euros to a public phone, then trekked back to the store that had been closed which was now open, but didn't sell sim cards. I somehow made it to the train station that sold me a card, and I completed the 3 hour, 28 Euro call to my worried friend. We met up, I met her friends, and we went out in search of the main street and of dinner.
On the left is Amanda, a girl I know from the NYU scholars program. Next to her is Sheila, a girl with a great sense of rapping about oranges. More about that later. On the second to right is Hilary, a possible music major when she declares who liked to practice British accents. Actually, we all liked that. On the far right is Kat, who I knew from the first year in NYU, my contact in Barcelona, and the main planner of the trip. All of them live in homestays in NYU in Madrid, and they were just as puzzled by the Barcelona combination of Spanish and French languages.
We all went to the old market and bought smoothies, which was my 8:00 lunch, then went to a restaurant and had the best seafood paella I ever had, at least until the next day, which is another story altogether. Now, let's see if these movies work at all...
That was just about the end of the night for us. The girls had been on an 8-hour bus ride since 1:00 am to get there, and they were just as exhausted as I was, and we started planning the next day. It turns out Kat had been there before, so it was pretty easy to follow her planning, especially since she's a great planner in general. All I wanted to make sure of is that we would stop by the beach so I could swim (By the way, it was 60 degrees and sunny the entire time we were there) and make some time to stop in the pasterias so I could taste as much of Barcelona as possible. We went to sleep in the hostel room and I clutched my important documents to my chest all night.
Now I would like to compare this trip with the trip I took to Venice earlier, not just for the sake of rating the two places, but for the sake of rating two different styles of vacationing. In Venice there was no plan. There were the obvious major sights and then a lot of walking around to minor sights, whatever I seemed to want at the time. Barcelona left nothing up to the last minute. The spontaneous feeling I had when my phone wasn't working never rematerialized. I am still trying to absorb everything I was seeing, feeling, and thinking, while I had enough time in Venice to really spend whatever time I wanted wherever I wanted to, which was part of the reason the Vivaldi museum was such a success. It would have been no good to have less than 45 minutes in that museum for me.
In order to have the same kind of experiences in Barcelona that I had in Venice, I told my friends not to tell me anything about the sights we were seeing so I could be surprised by everything. I did no prior research about the place, and even though I knew it was one of the most beautiful of Spain's cities, I had no idea why, except that it was close to the coast, which was important to me. Unlike in Venice, which I had researched the week before and seen some of the sights from the slides in class and postcards around Florence's touristy center.
We awoke at 9:00, cooked a breakfast of eggs and fruit, and off we went.
First stop: Parc Guell. This reminded me of some strange combination of Central Park, but 3-D, and the Boboli garden's. The park was on a high hill overlooking the smoggy city like the grand vistas from Boboli, but it was an entirely artificial park like Central Park. Except, as I soon learned, the park was a creation of the famous Spanish architect Gaudi, who, I must say, did a much better job at designing the park than the planners of either Central Park or the Boboli Gardens. There were handmade grottos, somewhat like the one in Boboli, but more modern and functional rather than artistic. The picture of me at the top of the page is taken inside one. The paths all lead to the famous bench, which I thought at first must be some strange term for a new kind of building but turned out to actually be a bench. A bench that took nearly two centuries to build with all the tiles that had to be individually placed.
I had already been struck by how modern Barcelona is, and Kat and the others said that Madrid is the same way. I don't know why, but I expected the city to be hundreds of years old at the youngest points like Florence. Gaudi was working at the end of the 1800's, way ahead of his time, but there wasn't anything like the leftovers from the Renaissance you find in every corner of Florence. However, the youth of the city also meant wider sidewalks! Score!
Guadi also had a couple of his famous houses in the park, which leads me to my next video:
Next was a subway ride to the Sagrada Familia. I did not know what that was. Something about the family. Anyway, we get off the subway, and I ask when we know if we're there, and Kat says that we'll know. And we certainly did. "Oh," I said.
The last 16 years of Gaudi's life was spent on this church, and it's still not finished. You can see when they started construction again after the civil war. This is Barcelona's answer to the Duomo here in Florence, not ancient but indeed magnificent, and definitely dominant in the city sky. If you look at the vista from the park you should be able to see it through the haze. Cameras and words cannot contain this building. Please go there. We had sandwiches on the park across from the church, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, though it started to gt chilly and we realized we had to put a move on if we were to make it to the beach in time for me to enjoy my Mediterranean Sea.
As if we hadn't had enough of Gaudi, which we hadn't, we went to see the three spaced-out but easily walkable houses in the city center. I don't even know what to say about them, exactly. The lines were too long to go in, and we didn't really want to anyway. They were more interestingly from the outside, as far as we knew, and Kat knew since she's been there before. Gaudi seems to be the Dali of architecture. I've never seen anything like it.
House 3
House 4
House 5
Next stop was the "cable cars" as dubbed by those who haven't been to San Francisco and seen a real cable car before. This is more like a ski lift without the skis or the snow. Amanda is afraid of heights, so she let me use her camera to take the pictures, since, same old story, mine was screaming about having low battery. I'll post those pictures as soon as she gets back to Madrid and makes them available to me, as well as putting our rap video on YouTube. I anticipate myself. The cable cars climbed up a hill to the oldest part of the city I got to see: the palace that looked over the sea. We could see the World Trade Center, the big trading port which was kind of like Oakland's, and the same panoramic view of the city we got from the other park, just from a different angle. Problem was that now the fog was starting to come in and it was very hard to see much of anything, and I decided to save my battery. Sad to say, but it paled in comparison to the mighty Fort Belvedere, but it was very nice to have a seat for a few minutes after a day on my feet. 4:30 we went to another route of cable cars that was to bring us to Port Olympiad, the main boardwalk, just in time for me to get my swim in.
That was the plan, at least. Problem was that with the coming of the fog came the closing of the cable cars to the beach due to safety reasons, so we were forced to walk down the hill and catch a subway. We learned that every map of the Barcelona subway system says something different when we got off and our transfer train actually doesn't stop there. As we recuperated and tried to think of what to do as we raced the sun to the horizon, I saw that we were very close to the train station and thus very close to that original palace, and as luck would have it that palace was close to a subway station that had a line we could use. After stopping in the corner pasteria, we made our break for it. By the way, those pastries inspired hope in me. I bought some that were like dough nut holes but a million times better, and some custard filled balls that exploded in my mouth and made me promise to exercise more so I could eat as many as I want. They were, as we say in our fake British accents, quite good.
We made it to the boardwalk, but the sun had already beat us, and I could see my breath and I knew that there was no point in my wearing my swimsuit under my pants all day. We still made it to the beach, and even though we were very hungry, it was only 7:00 or so, and in Spain they usually eat dinner at 10:00 or so, so we decided to wait until 8:00 at least, and besides, it was very relaxing to sit by the sea. This was the last image of Barcelona my camera saw before the battery died:
That's when that rap thing I was alluding to happened. Apparently while I was listening to music the night before Sheila and Amanda and possibly Hilary, but I don't know, I wasn't paying attention, were spending a fair amount of time rapping about oranges. I don't know why, and neither do they. They just kept saying, "Naranjas," in some rhythm, and suddenly we were all doing it, with me beat boxing in the background. This madness ceased when we saw that Amanda had taped the whole thing with her camera, and we watched it, causing us to laugh so hard that it made us start to cry. We had to do another about Se Bon, Vale, and Prego, the French, Spanish, and Italian words that seem to be multi-purpose and, "You're welcome." It was ridiculous. We were out of control, and suddenly it was worth it not to swim because if I had made it, I wouldn't have been a part of that obnoxiously typical American spectacle.
We ate next, which was an adventure in itself. There was a long boardwalk filled with expensive restaurants, which we were exploring until a too-nice native asked us if we were looking for something to eat, which is always a red flag for me. He promised that if we didn't like anything we could come talk to him and get out without paying, which is another red flag to me, but Kat was all for it, and Sheila and Amanda seemed to agree. Hilary and I were very suspicious that they were going to charge us extra or that it was going to be bad, and the awkward waiter seemed to confirm this in the beginning when we asked for the menu of the day which was only 17.50 compared to the 40.00 Euro dishes or the 135.00 Euro lobster, which Hilary and I were convinced they were going to try and convince us to get.
It turns out that Kat was right, as she tends to be. As soon as the waiter learned that we all spoke Spanish (except my speech was coming out as Italian way too often) it became much easier to communicate, and we certainly got our money's worth. There were three courses, wine, and dessert shots included in the price that seemed to shrink with every five-star dish that arrived at the table. Right on the ocean, the seafood was phenomenal. I don't think I've ever tried muscles before, but now I think they're the greatest thing ever. I ate the specialty tapa of bread coated thinly by tomato, and a large plate of seafood paella that is indescribable. As is my answer for a lot of things: go there. It was simply freaking good. The place is called La Fonda, and the man who made the hard sell said his name was Marco Antonio, though I don't know if that's the truth or not, but if he tries to sell you the place, you can tell him you've heard of him. Unlike the food in Venice which shut my mind off, this food put the five of us in a festive mood, and we were celebrating the day of Barcelona for three hours, able to watch some people come and go and have their tables replaced before we were finished. I was in such a good mood that I was able to try a half of a shot, which Kat says was the best liquor she's ever tasted (and she had quite a bit...), and I must say I actually enjoyed it but knew better than to try another. It went with the chocolate mousse well.
We took the subway back to the hotel to prepare for our early wake-up the next day for our respective trips back, and I prepared myself for catching my early flight without knowing how to get to the airport, then doing the rest of my laundry list of homework on the flight and bus ride back. Luckily for me, the story ends there. Of course I could talk about our sixth roommate, a Cal State Longbeach student, or the girl who would not stop ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night at the hostel, or the lizard sculpture I didn't even really get to see except through my camera and on postcards. But if I was to go into those stories, there would be too much to say.
The last thing I would like to say about Barcelona is simply a thought. In Venice I feel like I saw less than I saw in Barcelona but in more time, and, while I loved the city much more, I didn't have as great a time as I did in Barcelona with the two "old" friends and two new ones. Barcelona, in all it's modernity, seemed more like a get together in a beautiful city, where Venice was a beautiful city where I traveled with another person mainly for the sake of making it cost-efficient. In the end, though, I feel like I've experienced Venice, where I've only seen Barcelona. You know what I mean? I got a real feel for Venetian culture and custom, where I was just having fun in Barcelona in ways I probably didn't have to leave Florence to do (except to visit my friends in the Spain program). But I had such a wonderful time in Barcelona, and I have to wonder what is more important, to see the sight and to really absorb them as best you can as well as the culture, or go and have a blast and forget about tomorrow? It was surprisingly nice to relax and simply let myself be an American tourist.
Perhaps I should leave the immersion to Florence, and do what I can when I visit other places. We didn't even get to the Picasso museum in Barcelona, nor the close-by Dali museum, which I will see before I die, so I can't even claim to have seen the area's main sights in their entirety like I have for Venice. Plus, Barcelona's just a ton bigger of a city. Doing a city in basically a day and a half, trying to cram in all I can, was quite an experience, and I'll have to think a lot harder before going traveling again about how I want to visit.
No music announcements or CD review today, but do listen to Fionn O Lochlainn. He's an acoustic rock singer who writes amazing lyrics, has a great voice, and sounds like Dylan both in his style and what he sings about. As far as the music announcements go, I won't know anything new until I check my email, so there's nothing new to report.
For all of you upset at me for not putting any pictures in last week's post, I hope this makes up for it. I took almost 200 and three movies while I was there, almost all in that one day. Whew. I want to sleep now.
