Category: Barcelona

Tragically Hip

When I tell people I’m from New Mexico the most common response is some variant of “Oh, I love Santa Fe”. Of course, I am from Albuquerque. Santa Fe has the hip image, a distinctive architecture, an identity. Albquerque is more of a mixing pot with lots of things. It is also a much bigger city.

I am familiar with this kind of competition, growing up in Los Angeles where San Francisco was the hip city and LA was the sprawling, all-inclusive metropolis.

It seems that Madrid and Barcelona have a similar relationship. In the US, at least, Barcelona has a much hipper image than Madrid. It has legendary night life, good restaurants, the whole Gaudi thing going for it, the Ramblas. Madrid is the workmanlike big city.

We felt the same way and so we were surprised when we liked staying in Madrid much better than Barcelona. Barcelona seemed like the busier, more touristy city. Madrid was surprisingly calm, with lots of small streets. It seemed more walkable than Barcelona.

Of course, Madrid wins the art competition hands down with three world-class, wonderful museums.

And you never know what to expect in the Plaza Mayor:

(We took the above in a hurry with Charlie’s iPod Touch camera and it was starting to get dark so, too bad, it came out a little blurry.)

Paella and Sangria

Paella and sangria seem to be the main food and drink associated with Spain. In Barcelona, the Ramblas is probably the most touristy place in all of Spain. A big wide boulevard with cafes, stalls, human statues, etc. You walk down and every place offers paella on these signs that are all the same. You see people sitting at the cafes with large goblets of sangria.

I guess I am a bit of a tourist snob because I continue to be amazed that people would sit at a cafe along the Ramblas and order sangria and paella. You know they are going to be overpriced and of dubious quality.

We did, ourselves, order sangria at a tapas cafe in Toledo and it was pretty good actually. In another tapas bar ordered English cider. I don’t know where that places me.

In Cadaques we got some cheap sangria at a supermarket, which, by the way, are not that big in Spanish cities. A bit outside the cities they have supermarkets like we are used to. Anyway, we bought some oranges and plums and cut them up into little pieces and made sangria in our room a couple of nights and it was very nice.

We finally had some paella in the market in Madrid. We are less interested in rice dishes these days so that was an issue. We were sitting at the market and this young English couple was sitting across from us having paella and we got to talking. They said it was good so we had it the next night. It was pretty good, not great.

This English couple were very nice, we chatted a while. There were from outside London and in Madrid for four days. I think they said the round trip air fare was about 40 pounds (about $65 I think). They came for some nice weather. It was clear but pretty cold yesterday in Madrid so they were a bit disappointed.

Sagrada Familia

Berniece was saying that when she saw SF it had no roof. I was the same. When Logan and I went to Barcelona about 10 years ago the place was just a shell, no roof at all. The floor was dirt and had cement mixers and things in it. I guess after 10 years you get things done, if you have the money, because now it is a regular cathedral. Only about 10-20% of the stained glass is in but lots of progress.

When I saw it I thought it was a shame that it hadn’t been completed because it is a good example of a classical design done in a modern way.

People in Spain

We like to take pictures of the people we encounter. People love it when you ask to take their picture. Here is Hannah from our hotel in Toledo. She cleaned the rooms, made breakfast and checked us out when we left, she does it all.

Here is the woman running a coffee bar in the Madrid train station:

Here are the two chefs at the place in the Barcelona market where we ate twice because it was so good:

And our hard-working waitress, from the back unfortunately, she never stopped moving long enough so that we could ask her to pose for a picture:

 

Foreign Languages

Wynette and I are in a foreign country, and I don’t mean Spain. It is hard to understand the signs. The menus are especially hard since they seem to have a language of their own. You see a different national flag.

I am speaking, of course, of Catalonia and Catalan. Many signs are only in Catalan, which seems to be a mixture of Spanish, French, and Italian, and maybe some Basque, who knows. The words have lots of Xx and double Ls. Often there are cognates with Spanish but they seem to be far enough off to be hard to get. We learned the Spanish menu words but they are useless for Catalan and often the dishes are something like partridge Catalan anyway which doesn’t give you much information.

The desk clerk at the hotel in Barcelona said that the schools teach only in Catalan. English and Spanish are taught as foreign languages. She wants her son to be a native Spanish speaker so he can easily live anywhere in Spain, so she has to work extra with him in Spanish.

I still have some high-school French so sometimes I am better at guessing the words than Wynette with her Spanish.

Meditating in the Center of Barcelona

Post by Wynette: Our first night in Barcelona (April 3) we walked down to La Rambla and then, on the way back, through the Plaza Catalonya which is near our hotel.  Paz, who checked us into the hotel and gave us a long  and delightful introduction to the sites in Barcelona including how to get to them, told us Plaza Cataloyna is considered to be the center of Barcelona.  As we walked through the plaza we spotted a circle of young people who appeared to be meditating, sitting in the center of the circular plaza so, the very center of Barcelona.  As Charlie mentioned in an earlier post, the first day we arrived in Spain we encountered what they called the “Huelga General”, a country-wide strike, I think having to do with the terrible economic situation here in Spain.  It affected us because all the trains and 80% of buses and metro were shut down.  We saw a large peaceful demonstration in Toledo.  Paz told us that in Barcelona the protest turned violent and some of the violence was just outside our hotel — people were not able to leave the hotel for hours.  I think, perhaps, these young people meditating is part of all this.  But, emphasizing the peaceful part.  It was nice to see them.  We’ve heard that the unemployment among people younger than 24 in Spain is around 46%.

Gaudi

Post by Wynette: I haven’t posted any yet except for small comments on Charlie’s posts.  It’s overwhelming.  Hard to single in on one thing. But, we are in Barcelona so have to talk about Gaudi.  Or GaudI (accent on final syllable) as they pronounce it here.  Yesterday we toured the Sagrada Familia, the famous cathedral Gaudi started and didn’t get to finish.  But he left behind plans and the people here are slowly finishing it.  The cathedral now has a roof and much of the interior seems finished. Charlie said that when he was here 10 years ago the interior was filled with cement mixers, etc.  I knew Gaudi made beautiful and strange sculptural places but didn’t realize how well designed the places were with respect to light and comfort.  Our first day here we toured his Batllo (sp?) house.  So worth the 16 euro each admission.  Below is picture taken on the roof. Pointy things on the left are chimneys.  Roofline on the right is meant to look like a dragon’s back (St. George’s dragon). It looks like people are talking on cell phones but those are the audio guide phones. Even though this looks whimsical, everything is designed to be extremely functional as well.

Santa Caterina Market 2

They had whole booths for eggs:

The goose eggs (at the far left) were pretty big but then we ran across this one:

These are ostrich eggs, only 28 euro each.

The market is mostly fresh food but they had deli stuff also. We plan to make a picnic tomorrow from there. Today we ate at a little cafe in the market. It was very good. They say Barcelona is a foodie town, that seems to be true.

We sat right by the cooks, this guy was friendly and was making jokes with us and took the above picture. He was the grill cook; to the left was the station for the guy who did things in frying pans and pots.

Notice the writing above on the back of his shirt, menjar i beure.  Those of you who know some Spanish know that that is not Spanish. It is a good example of Catalan.  Google Translate tells us it means “food and drink”.