Barcelone

The day I arrived in Paris the weather was perfect. Then, fall came a bit late, but come it did and we are in what can only be described as hiver. That is to say yucky weather, and lots of it.

The sun comes up at 7h45 and sets at 17h30. (Oh yes, military time, just to make things exciting, the French like to switch back and forth.) In between it is mostly gray, cold, and pitifully damp. It's like the sky is so depressed it can't even be bothered to rain properly -- either that or it has a cold. It's OK, I keep telling myself, I was prepared for this, but honestly, I've been spending a lot more time on Facebook than I like to admit.

Anyway, my friend Pomegrenade (OK, the pseudonyms are getting a bit tiresome, but switching now would probably get confusing) and I were granted a reprieve from all that last weekend. We originally tried to go to Barcelona Halloween weekend, but with all the grèves, flights were cancelled. So, take two, we hoped on separate Ryanair flights de Paris à Barcelone and landed in the land of sunlight, strange architecture, and tapas.


First Impression of Spain

I arrived first, and found the hotel without trouble, pleasantly surprised to discover that Pomegrenade had wrangled a double room at the 3-star Hotel Gran Ducat for 3 nights for about 100 euro each. Nice. At first I was excited to get to speak the 10 words of Spanish I learned in my year at the Mexican restaurant, but once the concierge had established that he did not want queso with his quesadilla, we were kind of at an impasse. Eventually he just gave me a room key so I would leave him alone. The first thing I did was take a long nap. Then I found some dinner/lunch (it was only 7 p.m., after all) and walked around the square a bit.


First meal: egg and potato "tortilla," grilled veggies, and beef stuffed squid with a tomato sauce.

Our hotel had an awesome location, right next to the Plaça Catalunya, a square with a bunch of lovely statues and fountains, some great restaurants (which I'll get to in a bit) and a lot of young people, since it's near the Plaça Universitat. The square is also a block away from Las Ramblas, which seems to be the heart of Barcelona tourism with street performers, open-air pet shops, little restaurants, boutiques, etc.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Pomegrenade got in around 10:30 p.m. and we went down to the beach to check out Barcelona's famous nightlife, which did not disappoint. We asked some very friendly policemen where to go and they directed us down to the harbor, which turned out to be a gauntlet of doormen literally trying to pull you into their clubs/restaurants/bars. We made it to the end where we sat down for a coffee to recompose before heading back through it (the only way out). Clearly, this was not where we wanted to be. So we tucked our heads and limbs where they were not easily grab-able and dashed out. At the exit, a nice Algerian guy was handing out fliers and when he heard us speaking french, befriended us and escorted us (politely, not forcefully) to a real club, Carpe Diem, which played awesome music and had a cool South Asian vibe. Almost everyone we met that night was French. Strange.

The next day, we woke up early and hightailed it to La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's chef-d'oeuvre. Started in 1882, the massive cathedral is still under construction. (This is probably why it costs 12/10 euro for students just to get in.) The outside struck me as a little goofy, kind of like a real world construction of Whoville.


The inside, however, is mind-blowing. Walking into the clean, spacious, light-filled sanctuary, all I could think was, "Wow, how great that God outlived the Gothic period!" I don't have anything against the Gothic period, I've just seen A LOT of cathedrals in the last two months. But not like this one. It's beautiful. It is so beautiful. The stained glass, the columns, everything is so clean and un-oppressive. It has been my experience that there are two types of churches: traditional, dark-wood-marble-gold-cross churches and modern, white-walled, if-this-is-God's-house-then-he-moved-to-the-suburbs churches (more commonly "Houses of Worship"). The interior of Sagrada Familia managed to escape the stodgy, suffocating atmosphere of the first without falling into the soulless, painfully simplified style of the later.


















After that we headed over to a cute medieval Spanish town where there were a lot of artisans and awesome hot chocolate. I bought a scarf and some Christmas presents.

That night we got TAPAS!! Deep fried Camembert with red berry sauce. Mini-pan of paella. Stuffed mussels. Sangria. Catalan crème brulée and "Three textures of chocolate with extra virgin olive oil and sea salt" for dessert. We considered never leaving.


Friday, our last day in the city, we walked down Las Ramblas and scouted out Gaudí's Casa Milà, which is very famous for its wavy silhouette and crazy balconies. Leaving that, we stumbled upon his other private residence, Casa Batllo, which might be less famous, but is definitely more awesome.
Casa Batllo. Some people call it "The Dragon House" because the mosaics look kind of scaly and the balconies look like bones.

That night there was more tapas, some more dancing, and a lot of Spanish MTV before our 4 a.m. wake-up call and back to Paris.

One of the best things about Barcelona was all the random wacky art. Examples: