Barcelona, Spain

Trip dates: June 17 - 19, 2011

Nothing exotic this time. A weekend in Barcelona.

Day 1:

We arrive in the morning, luckily our hotel room is ready and we can check in. We are staying in a part of town called Diagonal Mar. Everything seems new here, like the entire neighborhood was built during the last couple of years. Very close to the beach, but not very convenient for sight-seeing, as it is not walking distance to the city center. On the upside, our room has a view of the sea, of La Sagrada Familia and an interesting egg-shaped building we get very fascinated by.

There is a large shopping center across the road from the hotel, with a pleasant little outdoor plaza and a whole bunch of restaurants to choose from. My husband and daughter opt for the local specialty of fries mixed with scrambled eggs, while I have some sort of sandwich (I am not a big ham eater, but the local ham is delicious). We also have another local specialty, tomatoes rubbed on a baguette or bread and sprinkled with olive oil. What an excellent idea, I will use it in Paris to make day-old baguettes still edible.

After lunch we start sightseeing. We decide to start with the number one must-see sight, La Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's masterpiece. I have seen many pictures of the cathedral and I do expect bizarre. Still, as I get out of the taxi and set my sight on the bunches of brightly colored fruit on the top of the steeples, I can't help but react with an "Oh My God!".  Yes, definitely bizarre it is. And the super-tall construction cranes make it look even stranger. Something like out of a Batman movie. This cathedral has been under construction for more than 100 years now (some 15 more to go), and one can definitely see the different periods on the facade. The only one completed in Gaudi's lifetime was the Nativity facade, and it's a bit tacky for my taste.  The other facade is much more modern and simple.

We have plenty of time to study this, as the line to get in is very long (the website to get advanced tickets kept crashing on me, but now, standing in the line I regret I didn't try harder to get them online). Luckily it moves fast and we get in before we melt in the hot sun.

La Sagrada Familia (complete with giant construction cranes)

Even Dr. Seuss couldn't have come up with this

The older "Nativity" facade

The more modern facade

The inside is absolutely magnificent. I LOVE it! Yes, it is bizarre and all, but in a very beautiful way. We just sit there, admiring all the details. No two columns seem to be the same. Our favorite is the spot over the altar, where sun rays are coming in through, what I can only describe as a bent chimney on the top of the church. The effect is breathtaking. I am starting to understand why people like Gaudi.

Bizarre and beautiful - La Sagrada Familia Interior

The columns

We decide to walk to another of Gaudi's masterpieces, La Pedrera. On the map the distance seems short enough, but in reality we find it too long of a walk (perhaps because it's quite hot). La Pedrera was built by Gaudi for one of the rich Barcelonians caught up in the age-old competition of who has the biggest (and in this case also most interesting) house. The building is somehow a mix of simplicity and anything-but-simplicty. It is beige and with its curving walls seems almost like a natural rock formation. The iron balconies are plants and vines (a very common theme for Gaudi, we see metal plants everywhere). La Pedrera is interesting to look at and we do so while enjoing an ice-cream at a side walk cafe right in front of the building.

La Pedrera

One of the balconies of La Pedrera

We walk down the street to another of Gaudi's masterpieces, the Casa Batllo. He didn't build it, only dressed it up by redesigning the facade. If there is simplicity in La Pedrera, there is definitely none in Casa Batllo. The outrages forms, shapes, colors, the rooftop in shape of a dragon...everything is over the top about this building. Yet it somehow manages to look beautiful. And definitely fascinating.

Casa Batllo

One of the windows of Casa Batllo

Next door is the beautiful Casa Amatller by Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Let's face it, just not as interesting as Gaudi's crazy creation.

Casa Amatller and part of Casa Batllo

The Casa Lleo-Morera by Lluis Domenech i Montaner rounds out the list of interesting buildings on the "Block of Discord"of Barcelona (in other words the list of houses built to outdo the neighbors in strangeness).

We continue walking toward Placa de Catalunya. On a normal day this square might be a perfectly nice place to hang out, but we are in Barcelona during a time of numerous demonstrations (oh, those austerity measures). The square is basically a camp site set up by demonstrators. The entire place is covered with makeshift tents. Trees are not off limit either, and we see a number of interesting tree-houses (tree-tents?) there. The demonstrators must like recycling as most of these structures include pieces of metal barricades. I wonder how the police feel about that.

Camping in the middle of the town - with a bit of humor

The most sophisticated tree-tent I have ever seen, floor made entirely from police barricades

From there we walk toward La Rambla, Barcelona's main pedestrian street. Apparently, if you haven't been to La Rambla, you haven't been to Barcelona. Looking at it from Placa de Catalunya it looks very crowded, but once on it, it's actually a pleasant stroll. Its very long (it's a collection of 6 "ramblas"), so at some point we have enough of it and decide to take a detour.

La Rambla

We take a side street just because we think it looks cute, and end up on a pleasant little square, with a playground. Time to give our 7 year old a little break from sightseeing. Within 10 minutes she has 3 friends she is playing with. They don't speak English and she doesn't speak Spanish and who cares?  They have a lot of fun. Did I mention people in Barcelona are friendly? I guess they start with that quality in childhood.

We are quite exhausted at this point, but decide to see just one more sight. We cross to the other side of La Rambla, into the Gothic district and visit the Gothic Cathedral. It's beautiful, but let's face it, being in the same city as the Sagrada Familia, it just can't measure up in the interest-factor department.

The Gothic Cathedral (what is it with cranes and cathedrals in this city?)

Day 2:

Having done all the really tiring sightseeing yesterday, this should be a more relaxing day.

We start with the Park Guell, another of Gaudi's masterpieces. It was supposed to be an elite housing development, but the business plan failed, so the project was cancelled. Luckily not before Gaudi created the lovely grounds, which is now a public park with free entry. The taxi drops us at a side entrance, which is just as well, at least we get to enjoy the less crowded parts of the park first (most tourists seem to be stuck in the area around the main entrance).

We start at a part of the park which is absolutely breathtaking. I have read somewhere that in this park the artificial seems more natural than the natural, and I bet this is the part of the park they meant. Beautiful.

Artificial or natural?

Stone benches

Just beautiful (can you see the bird in the picture?)

Plenty of flowers

After a mandatory stop at the playground we climb a hill to a cross (or two crosses? hard to say, there are too many people), a popular lookout point in the park. The view is beautiful (as is from the whole park), but it's very crowded, so we don't stay too long.

We walk down the steps to the main plaza of the park. The entire space is surrounded by Gaudi's famous serpent bench, and there are entertainers and  a lot of tourists. Only later do I realize that the entire plaza is in the air, perched on some gigantic columns.

The main plaza with the serpent bench. Yes, it is held up by those columns

Serpent bench with Barcelona in background

From here we also get a good view at the two outrageous gate houses. If the cathedral is Batman, then this is Alice in Wonderland. Definitely.

Gate house

Other gate house

We take the mandatory photos with the famous lizard fountain by the main entrance. I am sure it's very interesting,  but there are so many people posing next to it that it's barely visible. Oh well, I will look at it on the postcards. Then, an ice-cream in the shadow of the gate house, a visit inside it (it's a souvenir shop - of course), and we head back to Diagonal Mar to rest.

Lizard peekaboo

The shopping mall  plaza across the street has a trampoline (the one with the rubber bands pulling you up and down), and of course our daughter has to go on it. The electricity goes out and they don't know how to bring her down from the ropes, so she ends up jumping for more than 30 minutes. That's too much even for a high energy 7 year old. Finally they free her, we have lunch and go back to the hotel for a nap. We are planning to stay up late tonight.

In the evening we meet a friend in a tapas bar called Tapa Tapa on Passeig de Gracia, right across Casa Batllo. The tapas are good and it's wonderful to catch up with an old friend. Then we sample some pastries in a local pastry shop, walk a little and when it starts getting dark we take a taxi to the Magic Fountain.

The fountain lives up to its name of Magic. In the evening there are 15 minute shows every half an hour, with music a lights. They all seem to be different, so we see a couple of them. They are absolutely beautiful! Being a teenager in the 80's, my favorite is of course the one with the 80's music.

Magical

Day 3:

Happy Father's Day!

A day of pure relaxation. We decide to walk to the beach. As soon as we step out of the hotel we are nearly ran over by a group of roller-bladers. There seems to be a big parade, and we stand there for quite a long time looking at them rolling by.

Roller-blade parade

Then we continue on to the beach. I have read that most beaches in Barcelona are artificial, that they get washed away every year and the city has to refill the sand every single year. They look good enough to me. The wind is cold, so we have no intention of actually bathing, but we take a pleasant stroll there (and we do get our feet wet a little bit). Even though for me it's not beach weather today, the beach is packed with people, and more and more are coming. Well, it is Sunday. One has to be careful when strolling on a beach here, as nudity is legal, so one could easily wonder into a nudist beach by mistake. In fact, we heard that one can run into a nude photo shoot in the middle of the town as well  (nothing like that happens to us though).

The beach

Then back to the hotel,  where my daughter and husband try the outdoor pool, while I very sensibly just relax at the poolside (the two of them are freezing).

What a wonderful town. I feel like I have to come back. It's interesting and lively yet clean, and the people are so friendly. And we haven't even seen the Picasso and Dali museums!

My biggest surprise of this trip is Gaudi. I arrived to Barcelona thinking his work was tacky, bizarre, perhaps even ugly. Definitely not my style. I leave Barcelona as a fan. I suppose one can't really appreciate his work just from pictures. They need to be seen in person, in 3-D, in the space and on the scale how he intended them to be seen.  I can't help but wonder:  if his buildings seem so futuristic now, in 2011, how they must have seemed in his time, more than a 100 years ago. Must come back to look at them some more...