Barcelona with Friends

 A Week With Old Friends in Barcelona

Warning : This probably should have been four different posts. It's rather lengthy and needs to be proofread. Dive in  at your own peril.

When I was seven, my dad applied for and was accepted to do a teacher exchange in England for a year through the Fulbright foundation. I spent second grade in northern England and it was an exceptional year that made a lasting positive impression. Despite being seven years old that year, my memories remain vivid and warm.  Even today, our family stays in touch with friends in the village where we lived, not far from the town of Matlock in Derbyshire.  It shaped our family in many ways and fulfilled the Fulbright' program's vision of building trust, affection, and mutual understanding between ordinary citizens of different nations.

I was similarly fortunate to attend high school in a community and a school system that placed a high value on foreign exchange programs and hosted a decent number of exchange students.  My high school also participated in a program called "A Better Chance" which brought academically talented students from disadvantaged urban areas to attend high school in the Midwest and excel in a place where they were removed from the social and economic pressures of their city environment. It all made for an impressive melting pot in what otherwise was a largely homogeneous population of upper middle class white kids.

During Lyn's senior year (my junior year) at Appleton East High School, Lyn became friends with a Swiss exchange student; her name name was Simone.  Following that year, Simone made one visit to the U.S. just after everyone finished college to attend a wedding.  Lyn and I were living in San Diego at the time and Simone managed to visit us there for a couple days during her whirlwind visit to California and the American west.  That was 1993.  

The next time we saw Simone was in 2009 when we were living in Naples, Italy.  I had attended a one week course at the NATO school in Oberammergau, Germany and was able to bring Lyn and the kids along to enjoy southern Bavaria while I was in class.  On the drive back to Italy, we managed to spend a night with Simone in Switzerland.  We met her husband and three children, who were very close in age to our own three kids.  During that brief visit we went up Titlis Peak to see a glacier, walked the famous bridge in Luzerne, and had a very memorable meal of Swiss cheese fondue at Simone's house.  It was a terrific visit but also too short.  However, it lives in our memory as a highlight of our two years in Italy. 

Lyn, Simone, and their mutual friend Tracie (also an Appleton East grad; go Patriots) have exchanged letters and e-mail updates every Christmas for as long as I can remember.  This again reflects the lasting power of exchange programs and the countless second order effects that promote peace, goodwill, and understanding between people of different nations.  Over the past 10 years, Lyn, Tracie and Simone have talked about getting together "somewhere sometime" for a reunion.  First, the demands of jobs and parenting made that a very difficult task to fulfill.  Then, the COVID pandemic put all planning on the back burner.  Finally, 2022 looked the the year that it might happen.  And it did.  In some ways, this reunion was the kernel around which we structured our entire four month travel plan.

Lyn, Tracie, and Simone successfully rendezvoused in Barcelona this past week.  Tracie's husband Tom and I were along for the ride...and what a terrific ride it was.  On top of visiting a world class city offering a bounty of sights and activities, we also had a great week just catching up and sharing our thoughts on parenting, work, the state of global relations, and the future we hope to see and shape for our kids. We learned a lot about language (German, Swiss German, Spanish, Catalan, and English).  We learned a lot about Barcelona and Catalonia.  And we learned (or re-learned) a lot about one another.  Three and a half decades after Simone's year in Appleton, that exchange program is still bearing fruit.

Five people means we had five cameras. Each night we all saved our shots to a shared album, so we ended up with A LOT of photographic documentation of the week.  

Our visit coincided with a weather system that put a slight overcast on top of Barcelona for most of our main sightseeing days.  We only had one day of rain (the first day) so it could have been worse, but the grey sky definitely skews the otherwise festive and visually appealing aspect of our adventures.

Five people also means a higher probability of someone getting sick.  Unfortunately, our group of five got whittled down to four the last couple days and Simone had to fight through some minor illness with sleep and quiet.  Thankfully, she bounced back by the end and was fit for travel.  She also enjoyed a few healthy days at the beginning, including our food tour day which was perhaps the highlight of our week.  

Barcelona is almost the kind of place where it's better just to put up photos to capture the mood of the city and of our visit and not go into details of our daily movements.  To be consistent with the rest of the blog, I will attempt to follow the chronology of our week.  Tom and Tracie arrived on Day 3 and left on Day 6.  Simone was on “light limited duty” (Navy term) for Days 5, 6, and 7. 

WARNING! WARNING!: We had a blast during our four hour food tour and took a bunch of photos that, in the absence of context, look like a bunch of over-privileged Americans (and one Swiss) making a scene in a foreign country.  However, I assure you this was a cultural experience of the highest order and we were doing our best to honor the Spanish love of good food, good drink, and good company.  

Day 1 (06 OCT) - RDVU with Simone at the Barcelona Air BnB 

Lyn and I drove from Cuenca to Barcelona and stopped at a grocery store outside Tarragona on the way.  We arrived to the Air BnB mid-afternoon amid rush hour traffic. We worked our way down crowded boulevards with 3-lane roundabouts and then snaked our way through the ‘last tactical mile’ in the Gracia neighborhood with very narrow streets, many of which are one way. It brought back memories of driving in Naples.  I dropped Lyn and the bags then returned to rental car to airport and took the train back to the Air BnB.  Simone flew into Barcelona about the same time and reached our Air BnB by taxi shortly after I returned from the airport.  The three of us had dinner at an outdoor cafe in Plaza del Sol near our Air BnB (which I will call "the apartment" from now on) and explored the Gracia neighborhood.  

Our Air BnB was street level and had a very spacious interior courtyard, which was one of the attractive features when we were picking the Air BnB.  What we (I) failed to realize was that two of the three bedrooms faced the narrow street in front of the apartment and were directly opposite a Peruvian bar/restaurant called "Leche del Tigre" (Milk of the Tiger).  This meant that people walking by on the narrow street and people stepping out from the Leche de Tigre to smoke a cigarette were all gong about their business within feet of where Tom, Tracie, and Simone were trying to sleep.  And, of course, this is Barcelona where life doesn't really get rolling until 9 pm and doesn't start winding down until 2 am.  Then you have the people who have places to go in the morning, starting around 6:30.  It doesn't make for a whole lot of quiet hours.  The front rooms also had the disadvantage of not having curtains or shutters to darken the room from the street lights or the sunlight.  In the spirit of utilitarianism (greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people), Lyn and I took the back bedroom since we were there all seven nights and slept great...but not without some guilt.  Actually, quite a lot of guilt.

Day 2 (07 OCT) - Brian, Lyn, and Simone learn some Catalonian history

The forecast had called for rain and it was fairly accurate.  Lyn, Simone, and I donned raincoats before leaving the apartment and set out for some adventure.  We took metro to the old port area in the heart of the city and spent three hours at the Catalonian Museum of History.  The weather was clearing after the museum so we took a walk along the beach in the Barceloneta neighborhood and had (somewhat disappointing) paella for lunch at an outdoor café (perhaps a bit too touristy).  We walked home via the Cristobal Colon statue, Las Ramblas, and Passeig de Gracia.  

Had a light supper in the apartment and went out for a short walk later in the evening.  Unfortunately, upon return we discover we were locked out of our apartment which, like the access to the front door, was an electronic keypad.  We tried our passcode several times to no avail.  We were able to reach the Air BnB host through the Air BnB app (thank goodness we had our phone) and eventually we got back into the apartment but only after a building supervisor had to come on his motor scooter and physically open the door.  You know those hotel rooms where you have to put the key card into the slot in order to turn on the lights as an energy conservation measure? Well, our apartment had one of those slots with a key that was already inserted at our arrival. What we learned is that not only does the apartment lose power when you pull out that card, but the electronic doorlock ALSO loses power and can't be used.  We thought we were being good stewards of the environment by pulling that card out when we left, but all we were actually doing was creating a huge crisis for no good reason.  I'm not sure what the carbon footprint is of the building supervisor having to ride his scooter over to unlock the door, but we definitely achieved a net negative impact on the environment.  On the bright side, we played charades on the landing outside the door and had the excitement of thinking we might have to sleep in the stairwell.  In our defense, nothing in the apartment's instructions warned us about this or told us to leave the key inserted in the slot.  Hard to believe this doesn't happen frequently.

This Catalonian history museum had a few interactive displays.  This was one of them and only serves the purpose of demonstrating how large a war horse was back in the day when cavalry was king.  The more striking lesson of this photo was that we saw several school groups at the museum and the kids were exceptionally well behaved.  Kids are kids, so I think the credit goes to the teachers and parents who were in charge of the field trip.  The kids were attentive and quiet, but they couldn't help enviously watching us take turns getting on the horse.  We felt bad because the group got marched off to their next exhibit and the kids weren't allowed a turn at sitting on the horse. At least the museum was interactive for the old folks.  

I took a couple other photos in the history museum but will include those separately below with some discussion about what we learned.

Lyn and Simone at the beach boardwalk in Barceloneta. It rained on and off during our walk around this neighborhood and the sun almost came out a couple of times.  Didn't dampen our spirits though.

The narrow streets of Barceloneta in the rain.  Most buildings in Barcelona are four stories similar to this scene.  This neighborhood has its own flag which looks very similar to the flag of Ukraine (same shades of blue and yellow).  You can see one in the upper right on a balcony railing.  We thought maybe they were showing an exceptionally high level of solidarity with Ukraine but it was just plain old civic pride. Barceloneta is a beach community so their blue and yellow likely represents the sky and sand, similar to Ukraine's flag representing the sky and fields of grain.

Christopher Columbus was, of course, Italian but he sailed under a Spanish flag and enjoys and apparently prominent place in Spanish history.  This statue is at a major intersection near the port and famously shows Christopher Columbus pointing THE WRONG WAY to the new world.  My navigation skills are atrophying by the day but I do believe I know which way West is in this photo.

This is one of those circular sign boards for advertising events.  They apparently don't remove the previous ads and eventually reaches critical mass for staying intact.  Reminds me of my desk drawer at work.  Oh wait, I turned that drawer over to the next guy.

Our apartment was only a few blocks from Casa Batllo, designed by Antonio Gaudi. We walked past it on the way home from downtown.  Very cool looking on the outside, especially considering it was created in 1905 in a world that we tend to picture in black and white.  More to follow on this amazing architecture on Day 4.

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Close-up shot of the facade.  Some say the balconies look like skulls.  Others say fish skeletons.  The overall them of the house is marine life so I tend to agree with the fish people.  It's art though so make your own judgment.

Casa Batllo at a distance.  This was once the home of a wealthy family who wanted to make a statement.  I think it worked.

Barcelona is a large urban area but it is also just a big collection of neighborhoods in which small businesses are alive and well.  This is not an atypcial scene but we thought this fruit shop was particularly charming.

After three hours in the Museum of Catalonian history, I walked away much more aware of Catalonia's identity and historical roots. That hardly makes me an expert but I did take a few photos that, to me, were notable datapoints for anyone trying to understand 2,000 years of history in 45 seconds.  For the sake of the reader, I moved my observations of the history museum to the BOTTOM of this blog. I wrote it more for myself because I wanted to synthesize in my head some of the themes and timelines from the museum.  

For my Navy friends and submarine enthusiasts, I also wanted to share the exhibit about the world's first air-independent propulsion (AIP) being developed in Barcelona in 1859 by the Catalonian inventor Narcis Monturiol.  His purpose was more commercial than military but despite its initial success, it never became commercially viable.  He tried to build a second, improved submarine but that project ran out of money. Submarines are extremely expensive.

Day 3 (08 OCT) – Tom and Tracie arrive and hit the ground running, eating, and drinking.  If you don't like seeing people eat with their mouth open, skip this section.  See WARNING above! 

Tom and Tracie landed just before 0900 on a direct flight from Chicago and were stepping out of the taxi at our apartment by 0950 (U.S. airports could learn a few things on how to process arriving international flights).  Having flown overnight, they had two choices.  Nap or push forward.  They opted to push forward and did a great job keeping up with a demanding itinerary for the day.  

Our first objective was a food tour but first we had to make the two mile walk from our apartment. On the way, we saw Casa Batllo again, encountered a fall festival on the Las Ramblas, and walked through one of Barcelona's large food markets.

On our way to explore Barcelona.  This was the street our apartment was on, Carrer de Martinez de la Rosa.

Closeup of Casa Batllo. You'll see this place again.

We thought this random storefront sign captured the spirit of the reunion quite nicely.

This was a fall festival on Las Ramblas where passers by were handed flowers to place in the big basket and make a wish.

A happy food market.

Well. maybe not so happy for the seafood.

Neighborhood near our food tour starting point.

If you really want to experience a city, food tours are a great way to do it.  Lyn and I are not foodies (I like McDonalds, Bojangles, circus peanuts, bratwurst, and cheese curds too much to ever call myself a foodie), but we do enjoy exploring new foods and cultures.  We did a food tour in Hong Kong with the kids in 2012 and that was our introduction to a wonderful form of tourism. Some people might view TripAdvisor as the McDonalds of the travel industry, but in my personal experience, it’s a great place to find things to do in places where you otherwise have no idea where to start.  With just a little bit of searching online, TripAdvisor pointed us to a food tour that promised to be a great time and, WOW, did it deliver.  The tour company was called Uncorked Vines and our tour guide was named Nico (short for Nicolas).

The basic model of our food tour was to meet our tour guide at a designated time and place in the heart of Barcelona, but just off the beaten tourist path.  In our case, we met up outside the El Molino (think Moulon) theater on Paral-lil street.  From this starting point, we walked to a sequence of four different restaurants and had a unique eating and drinking experience at each one. Along the way, Nico regaled us with interesting facts and insights about Catalonia (the region), Barcelona (the city), the people, the history, the architecture, the culture, the wine making, and the food.  We covered a lot of ground in four hours and finished feeling deeply fulfilled mind, body, and spirit (to include alcoholic spirit). To be clear, a food tour hinges on the personality of tour guide and the chemistry of the group doing the tour.  Due to size restrictions at the restaurants we visited, this particular tour had a six person maximum so our group of five was perfect.  More importantly, it took us about 90 second to figure out that Nico was a going to be our Rufus on a most excellent adventure.  He was really terrific.

Nico was interestingly born in Venezuela but is of Basque descent (his grandfather emigrated to Venezuela) which apparently makes it much easier to obtain Spanish citizenship. Nico has been living in Barcelona for over 20 years. He is primarily an architect but has also dabbled in wine making, getting certified as a sommelier, and a variety of other jobs that have left him conversant in a wide range of subjects.  It was evident from his demeanor that Nico is a “people person” and that giving tours of Barcelona comes very naturally.  He was attentive to our questions and our perceptions and wanted us to have a great time, which we did.  I share this only to say that other people could do the same tour through the same company and have an entirely different experience.  Nico was the man, though, and it was a perfect way to start our reunion of friends in Barcelona.

We loved drinking Vermut Negre from a porron and learning about pintxos (pronounced peen-chose), which are basically tapas (snacks) on a stick presented in a glass case on the counter.  You get charged by the number of sticks on your plate at the end.

What is vermut, you say?  It’s theoretically the same thing as vermouth but it is NOT the stuff you mix into a martini.  Vermut (pronounced Vare-Moot) is basically a Spanish wine steeped with herbals which ends up tasting like something at the intersection of wine, cola, and liqueur.  It’s sweet, but not sickly sweet.  It is often served over ice making it very refreshing. It’s only 15% alcohol but it has an exotic element (probably the herbal infusion) that makes you feel like you are drinking a cocktail.  We became big fans, especially Tom and me.  Move over Rosé, I have a new favorite wine.

The other new drink we tried was cava, which is basically the Catalonian response to Champagne or Prosecco. If you like bubbly wine, you’ll love cava. 

Meeting Nico at the start of the food tour.

Stop #1: La Tasqueta de Bligh (on Bligh Street), featuring Pinxos with Cava (sparkling white wine)

Nico explained that Pinxos used to be self-serve but they had to put them behind glass during the pandemic and it's likely going to stay that way.

We each got to choose three pinxos.

Thinking hard about which one to eat first.

Nico also taught us how to toast in Catalan with the phrase "Salut i força al canut!"  The word "salut" is pronounced like "salut". The word "força" is pronounced like "forsa" and the work "canut" rhymes with "salut".  This basically translates to "Health and power (or prosperity) to your pocket".  We had some good practice saying this phrase the rest of the week.

One stop down. Three to go. We enjoyed the walks between the restaurants in a neighborhood that is somewhat off the beaten tourist path. At least off the beaten path by Barcelona standards which gets way too many tourists.

 

This is a photo of friends being together for the first time in 29 years and was taken after stop #1.  To be clear, Lyn is not stumbling in a drunken stupor through the streets of Barcelona. 

Stop #2: Denassus (also on Bligh street).  Nico explained that the name "Denassus" means "of the nose" and is used as a phrase to convey when something is "freaking awesome". I think it means that something is so good you can smell its essence in the moment. Maybe something like "not only did the Packers win but we grilled brats and they were denassus" 

Patiently listening to Nico explain the food we were about to eat.

This visit began with toasted bread that you use like a grater to smear garlic (first) and tomato (second) then enjoy the delicious.  The tomatoes were called "hanging tomatoes" which are apparently a special type Barcelonans use specifically for this purpose.  We also had a bottle of white wine that was unfiltered in the production process. Tasted about the same (my pallet is unrefined) but definitely cloudier.

Croquets.  Basically a gooet mixture of cheese and ham inside a fried ball.  Croquets are a stable of the Spanish tapas menu.

This was a leek salad.  Of all the things we ate on the tour, this dish was the one that tasted like it belonged in a Michelin star restaurant.  Complex explosion of flavors: fresh vegetables, vinegars, oil.  It was all there.

This was called "broken eggs" and was basically french fries covered in eggs with Iberian ham (jamon serrano). When they serve it, you have to mix up the eggs to spill the yoke onto the fries.  It's an awesome comfort food.

Stop #3: Celler Florida. This was at a store that focused on wines.  The headline event here was the the Vermut, which is dispensed from a glass jug with a long spout called a "porron".  In a social setting, the tradition is to pour it directly into your mouth and to see how far you can extend your arm. They well it by the liter from big casks.

The master and the students.  I did pretty well but did have a spill onto on of my favorite shirts (it came out just find in the wash)

The learning curve in action. From amateur to pro in minutes.

Lyn's turn.

We only got Tracie and Tom doing the porron on video. Hopefully it works. This (Google) blog site seems not to be format friendly to iPhone video.

More than just vermut, we also got a very nice assortment of cheeses.

Spirits running high.

During this stop, Nico shared with us the Catalan tradition of the "Pooping Log" which involves going into the wood in early December and finding a log that kids bring home, decorate with a face and put a blanket over its back end.  The idea is that kids feed the log every day during the holiday season and then on Christmas it magically poops out presents.  The message is "take care of the log and the log will take care of you" which is intended to cultivate compassion (if not greed) in the kids.  Nico's version of this was hilarious and included the song kids sing at the big reveal on Christmas morning. We were rolling out of our seats with laughter.  You can learn more by Googling "Catalan pooping log". 

On the way to the last stop, Nico stopped at an intersection and explained how the city had been planned with rounded off building at the intersections to create more space for vehicles.  This is where his architecture experience really came through.  We learned a lot besides just how to drink from a porron.

Stop #4: La Jabata.  This was our seafood stop.  We had croquets filled with ground squid and topped with a sauce. Also had steamed mussels. Then we had anchovies which Nico said to just "eat them like a cat"

Demonstrating the technique

Duplicating the technique

Simone claimed not to like fish and was reluctant to have the anchovie. I won's share the moment of ingestion but I will share the moment after and the positive review of the food.  They tasted nothing like anchovies on a pizza (not salty or desecated) and the olive oil makes everything go down smoother.

We gave this tour (and Nico) 5 stars.

After the food tour, we made our way back toward the main tourist area of Las Ramblas, stumbled on a fascinating temporary art exhibit by a French artists who combines her creativity with an impressive preservation of animal parts (she uses only dead animals), found the outside of the famous Barcelona Cathedral (construction began in the 13th century), and worked our way back home on foot up Via Laietana to Avenida Diagonal. We picked up some groceries on the way at the corner grocery story near our apartment.  Tracie went to bed at 8:30 and Tom made it to 10:00. They both admirably stayed awake and alert the entire day, despite the steady flow of cava, wine, and vermut during our tour.

A but whimsical? The bones are taken from a variety of different animals. The artists could not have been friendlier in explaining her technique.  She worked at a museum originally and is trained in preservation techniques.  She is French so some of her explanations got lost in translation but she basically starts with the carcass of a dead animal and buries the extracted bones for some period of time, then recovers them in a state of preservation.  She was emphatic that her goal is to honor nature and the animals through creating these sculptures.  I personally found her passion as interesting as the art itself.  

Our group posing with Eva the artist.

All roads lead to Cristobal Colon, still pointing the wrong way.

Barcelona Cathedral has an impressive history and is a very old church (most of the work was done in the 1300s).  We did not go inside because it closed at 5 but the plaza in front of it was its own point of interest.  In addition to the renovation scaffolding being shrouded by an advertisement for a Galaxy tablet, we also were interested in these adults doing smoe kind of traditional dance around a baby in the carriage.  Maybe that's part of the dance or maybe someone's sitter failed to show up?

Home sweet Air BnB.

Day 4 (09 OCT) - Park Guell and a return to the Old Port

We slept late and left the apartment around noon heading toward Park Guell with a plan for eating lunch on the way.  

Before the group's departure, Tom and I took a walk around our neighborhood near the intersection of Diagonal and Passeig de Gracia. If you look at an aerial view of Barcelona, the neighborhoods south of Avenida Diagonal are an impressively symmetric product of excellent city design and planning.  North of Diagonal, the streets and blocks get a little more confused.  During our week of walking around the city, we saw a lot of "street art" that ranged from beautiful and creative works to plain old graffiti (one might even say vandalism).  One recurring them was the words "Tourists go home" painted on doors and roller curtains, sometime quite nicely done and other times not so much.  From my personal perception, we only saw the "Tourist go home" message north of Av. Diagonal, which is where we were staying. Maybe that's observer bias or maybe our neighborhood was a bit more working class and the massive tourist population in Barcelona puts an unfair burden on the locals with the price of food, the availability of housing, and the constant presence of "strangers" wandering the streets taking pictures of everything.

Typical scene in our neighborhood.

Point to point bike rental stations are a common theme throughout Barcelona.  Plenty of availability early on a Sunday morning.

Among the more artistic invitations to depart the city.

Casa de les Punxes is an architecturally notable home designed in the modernist style.  It was only two blocks from our apartment.  

Memorial to the submarine pioneer Narcis Monturiol and his 1859 air-independent propulsion submarine the Ictineo. Also near our house along Av Diagonal. Barcelona has monuments and sculptures at just about every big intersection it seems.

Many restaurants were closed on Sunday and either opened later in the day or appeared to require reservations (or possibly had tables only for non-tourists?).  We found some swing dancing in a plaza on the way and eventually settled for a very simple and uninspiring lunch at a touristy restaurant a few blocks from Park Guell.  Nico would have been so disappointed in us.

Walking north on Carrer de Verdi toward Park Guell.

Street art.  We got a kick out of this one.

Swing dancing in the plaza.

This is a video of Tom and Tracie dancing away with the locals.  

Our chicken sandwiches were not worth photographing at lunch but the view from the back window of our rather drab cafe was gorgeous.  This is on the hillside just before Park Guell.

After lunch, we enjoyed walking around the park and seeing Gaudi’s works of art and architecture.  

We weren't the only ones visiting the park.

Overlooking the city and Sagrada Familia

A highly photographed spot in the world. Everyone was taking pictures.

Took the metro to Las Ramblas and walked around the Jewish Quarter. 

While trying to download the mobile phone app so we’d have an audioguide for our visit to Sagrada Familia, I was horrified to discover I had bought tickets for the wrong day to visit the Sagrada Familia.  I was off by a week when I bought the tickets and didn’t reconcile that “10/3” is October 3^rd, a full week earlier than our planned 10/10 visit.

We had two metro choices coming out Park Guell.  One was a longer walk downhill. The other was shorter but had a hill between us and it.  We opted for the climb.

On the walk to the metro to go downtown.  This is an example of the Catalonian separatist/independence symbols we saw frequently during the week. The history section at the bottom makes a poor attempt to explain this issue in more detail, but it's very difficult to grasp as an outside observer spending just a week in Barcelona as a tourist. And it's not like we don't have our own uncomfortable symbols in America that mean different things to different people.  The world is full of dirty laundry.

We vindicated ourselves from our failed lunch and found a nice pinxos cafe in the Gothic Quarter

Catalonian support for Ukraine.  In addition to the Ukraine crisis being a classic David vs Goliath and Good vs Evil conflict with shockingly stark human rights violations being committed by Russia every day, I also sense that Catalonia identifies with the "little guy" getting pushed around. 

Portion of the cathedral not under renovation

We arrived to the Cathedral after it closed to the public (again) but we found the adjacent cloister was still open for visitation.  This space include the "Well of the Geese" which was completed in 1448 and apparently maintains a population of 13 geese signifying the age at which St. Eulalia (patron saint of Barcelona) was martyred (I didn't know this at the time but Googled it afterward to find out the history and significance of what we saw.  Why geese and not flamingoes?  I have no clue.). 

Tracie and Simone talking in hushed tones.

Bubbles are the latest thing in public entertainment.  In several of Barcelona's plazas, we saw people buskering bubbles in return for a donation. Kids, dogs, and adults all were fascinated by them. 

Found another cool art studio off the plaza in front of the cathedral.

Setting sun illuminates the top floors of buildings

And a puppet shop among other things. Pop culture lives.

Stopped at another tapas place. Not as good as the pinxos but it was on a busy street and we had a nice little table for watching the activity and visiting.

Postre (dessert) after our tapas

We walked toward the beach area in Barceloneta, listened to a street performance of folksy Spanish music near the port, put our feet in the Mediterranean, then walked the boardwalk to the Ciutadella - Vila Olimpica metro stop. Metro'd home and got off at Verdeguer. Stopped for shwarma at a sidewalk restaurant a few blocks from the Air BnB.  

Street performers along the super-yacht lined harbor.

 

Found our way back to the Barceloneta beach front.  Not raining and with a full moon this time.  Big improvement.  We decided it was worth getting sandy feet to dip our toes in the Mediterranean.

How roantic.

How unromantic!!!

If you can't make bubbles for a buck, maybe try building a fire-breathing sand sculpture dragon and ask for donations. 

This must be a Chinese dragon. It clearly can't read the sign in Catalan, Spanish, or English.

Back at the apartment, while trying to download the mobile phone audio guide app for our upcoming visit to Sagrada Familia, I was horrified to discover I had bought our group tickets for the wrong day.  I was off by a week when I bought the tickets and didn’t reconcile that “10/3” is October 3^rd, a full week earlier than our planned 10/10 visit.  Need a new plan for Monday!

Day 5 (10 OCT) - Fun factor takes a big hit.  Casa Batllo without Simone and a trip up Montjuïc.

Being sick is not fun; being sick on vacation in a foreign country is exponentially not fun.  Adding to the unplanned developments, Simone woke up not feeling well and had to stay home.  The rest of the group had tickets to see Casa Batllo which we had bought the previous night when our Sagrada Familia plan fell apart. Fortunately, were able to get a refund for Simone’s ticket.  Had a very enjoyable visit to Casa Batllo and felt it lived up to its somewhat steep ticket price. 

In case you forgot what Casa Batllo (pronounced Bot-eee-oh) looks like, here is the front facade again.  Not the tower in the upper left corner, does it look kind of like a sword pointing down.  See the tiles on the roof to the right?  Does it look kind of like the scales of a dragon?  St. George is the patron saint of Catalonia and appears in a lot of places. Some say this design was inspired by the slaying of the dragon.  

Exquisite wood work throughout the house.

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Our audioguide tablets also incuded a Virtual Reality element that let's you hold up the tablet in an empty room and "see" the furniture that decorated it when the Batllo family lived there.  If they had furniture in every room, there's no way it could hand the large number of visitors that come every day.

Many elements of this house were inspired by Gaudi's love of nature and of the sea.  The wallpaper is intended to simulate a turtle shell.  This is a common theme in much of Gaudi's work.

View from the living room.

Back patio.

Gaudi's alphabet.  The doors of the house were not numbered but rather were lettered (a modernist innovation) in the same ornamental font as this drawing.

Lyn outside Door "i"

The inner atrium was designd to look like the sea in reverse with light blue at the bottom and dark blue at the top.  It creates the sense of descending into a fish tank. 

Upper hallway.  The shape of this arch is a signature element of Gaudi and looks similar to the stone arches at Park Guell

This was an art display by a contemporary artist. It was animated and basically morphed in brilliant colors using the design of the house's facade as a base image.

On the roof. Should have brought our sunglasses, too.

St. George slaying the dragon?  You be the judge.

Working out way down the stairs to the exit.

The tour ended with a room that had LED sreens on all sides, including the floors.  It was a wild experience and not recommended for people with vertigo or senstive to motion sicknesss.

After Casa Batllo, the four of us walked up Carrer Verdi in Gracia to see if Mondays were more welcoming than Sundays to hungry visitors.  We found a restaurant for lunch that turned out to be quite nice; only drawback was having to sit indoors (you get spoiled very qucikly with all the outdoor cafes in Barcelona).  They served Vermut so that was good enough for Tom and me.  

After lunch, we went back to visit with Simone for a bit and brought her some juice. We ate the chocolate mousse she had made the previous day using ingredients she brought from Switzerland. The mousse was especially good because our apartment had no electric appliances so whipping the cream into a mousse with just a fork had become something of a group effort.  We all appreciate the results just a little bit more.  Simone was still very tired so we left again and took the metro to visit Montjuïc using the funicular and the elevated cable car.  We enjoyed the view of the city from the cable car and the view of the port from the Castello on Montjuïc.  We walked around and missed the last cable car back down the mountain by less than two minutes.  

Funiculi Funicula. Heading up Mountjuïc.

View from the cable car going up Montjuïc

We didn't get a picture of the Castillo de Montjuïc, but we got a shot of its lovely moat and two pigeons on a wire. 

From the Castillo, we had a great view down onto the container port facility and spent a good 20 minutes watching the container operations as if it were an any colony.

Looking toward downtown, the ferry terminal, and the old port.

Barcelona and the Sagrada Familia

We came across a cafe at the back of bleachers in the diving venue used at the 1992 Summer Olympics. Enjoyed drinks and tapas while we watched the sun go down and the lights come up.

Radler and Vermut.  Salut i Forca al Canut

Took the metro back home but Simone was still sleeping so we went to a Galician street café in our neighborhood and had pizza for dinner at a nearby Galician restaurant.

Day 6 (11 OCT) - Sagrada Familia and a long walk home

Got bread and croissants in a local panaderia.  Simone stayed home again but the rest of the group left the apartment just before 1100 and walked to Sagrada Familia for an 1145 entry time.  This was our second attempt after realizing I had bought tickets for the wrong day and, as a result of the short notice, we were not able to get tickets for going up the towers.  The cathedral was plenty though. We enjoyed the audioguide and spent over two hours exploring the outside facades, the interior church, and the museum in the basement.  

Nico had explained to us that in the old days most furniture was moved into apartments via a lifting point built into the front of the building.  You can still see them on many buildings but the more common means of moving furniture is with a lift.  We passed one such operation in progress on our way to Sagrada Familia.

We approached Sagrada Familia from the west so our first impression was from seeing the Passion facade.  The Nativity facade is the oldest and most recognizable but is on the opposite side.  That is also where the controlled entrance occurs for visitors. The third facade will be the Glory facade but that is still under construction for at least five more years.

Part of the Passion facade.

Nativity facade.

I zoomed in on this part of the Nativity facade for all those who played bassoon in high school band and never got any respect.  No angelic orchestra is complete with the holy bassoon! 

On either side of the entrance of the Nativity Facade, the colums have a turtle at the bottom.  In classic Gaudi fashion, one is a sea turtle and the other is a land tortoise. Yes, that is my finger in the lower right. Sorry.

The interior of the church has a modernist feel and is totally different than the chaotic Nativity facade will all its intricate detail. The pillars of the earth are designed to look like trees with branches supporting the weight of the ceiling.  Its a stunning effect and creates the impression of being in a majestic forest.

Looking forward toward the altar and apse.

Straight up shot of the ceiling.

Looking toward the narthex (back of the church) with St George watching over and protecting,

Above the altar.

Highly detailed bronze door done by a Japanese artist Etsuo Sotoo. See closeup below.

Stained glass inside Sagrada Familia; it changes throughout the day and faces west to capture the sunset.  The east side is more blues and greens. The statue to the left is one of the four evangelists and is a replica of what will eventually be on the top of the four towers representing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Spiral Staircare.

Normal staircase.

This is a 16' (5m) tall bronze sculpture on the doors of what will eventually be Sagrada Familia's main entrance when the Glory Facade is completed. It features the Lord's Prayer in Catalan and the words "Give us this day our daily bread" in many, many languages surrounding it.  The English words are in the upper right corner, to the right of the words VOSTRA VOLUNTAT (THY WILL).

Example of the changing colors inside the church as the light shifts throughout the day.

Lyna dn Tracie taking a break to admire the cathedral.

Obligatory SF selfie.

Back outside at the Passion Facade. The Roman soldiers look a lot like Stormtroopers from Star Wars.

Passion facade.

The photo on the left is an ingenious model Gaudi created to calculate the load bearing strength of the church. He hung weights in proportion to the expected weight each pillar would have to bear.  The result was an upside down suspended structure in which gravity was acting in the opposite direction but achieving the same effect.  Gaudi would then make adjustments and take measurements.  This model took year to build.  The photo on the right is simple an inversion of the left; the ceiling is at the bottom.

Tracie admring the stained glass

We left Sagrada Familia headed toward downtown on foot and eventually found a restaurant in a middle class neighborhood not too far from the Olympic Village and beach front.  After lunch, we walked to the nearby “Park Ciutadella” and found a large fountain that Gaudi had helped create as a young architect (you are never far from Gaudi in Barcelona). 

Public transportation works great in Barcelona. The city imposes restrictions on cars (kind of like even and odd based on stickers numbers) for smog control so public transit is essential.

We passed what looked like a bull fighting arena (Plaza de Toros) but Catalonia banned bull fighting in 2010.  This arena has been turned into a museum.  The other (newer) Plaza de Toros is now a shopping mall.

We never found out what this building is but it looks kind of like the one in London and definitely stands out in a landscape of mostly 5-story buildings.

Gaudi designed this fountain as a young architect.

We had fun watching the row boaters. The lady in white was getting professional photographs taken.  We are pretty sure she is not on the Spanish national crew team after watching he handle the oars.

There's one in every crowd that just HAS to be different.

Our walk home took us past Barcelona’s arc de triomf, which was built in 1888 as a gateway for visitors to the World’s Fair and not as a memorial to any particular military victory.   We walked Passeig de Sant Joan and enjoyed this very beautiful boulevard including a stop at a sidewalk café with a nice view of the arch and the people passing by.  

Barcelona's Arc di Trionf

Don't know the back story but this is one of many sculptures we saw during the week along the boulevard of a Barcelona street. If it's Red Riding Hood, the wolf seems unusually domesticated?

We got back to the apartment and visited with Simone who was feeling better while we ate from our grocery supply for an evening snack, , including some amazing cheeses and chocolates Simone had brought from Switzerland to share with the group for our reunion celebration.  

Simone went to bed early so we attempted to have a drink at the bar across the street from our apartment called Leche de Tigre (a Peruvian bar/restaurant) that had been keeping everyone awake at night (if you can't beat them, join them).  However, we did not have a reservation and had to leave so we went down the street and got ourselves a table at La Pepita, which was a popular bar on the corner that we had been repeatedly passing and admiring for the past couple of days.  

You could almost mistake Lyn and Tracie for locals, hanging out at La Pepita down the street from our apartment.

Our last hurrah with Tracie and Tom.

 Day 7 (12 OCT) - Tom and Tracie Depart on Spanish National Day.

211012 – Tom and Tracie departed the apartment at 0600 for a 0900 flight to Sevilla and a week of exploring in Andalusia.  Lyn and I took stock of which parts of Barcelona we had not covered and decided to visit Plaza Espana and the west-facing side of Montjuic near the Olympic Park and an assortment of museums and theaters.   We were aware that October 12^th is Spain’s National Day but were nonetheless surprised to come around the corner on Passeig de Gracia and discover the street was closed to traffic and loaded with people for a National Day celebration parade.  The parade included a number of groups who appeared to be of South American descent and were wearing traditional dress typical of the Andes. They were dancing and playing music in an apparent celebration of their cultural heritage.  We also so a large group of people parading with Spanish flags and banners that we assessed were expressing a pro-unity message.  The mood was very positive and the weather had turned clear and sunny again after three days of overcast.  

Lyn and I found a large sculpture by Joan Miro in a park next to the former “Plaza de Toros” which has been converted into a mall following Catalonia’s ban on bullfighting in 2010.  We found a nice restaurant for lunch after a fairly lengthy search (this was a common theme for the week) and then walked up the hill to look down on Plaza Espana and the “Magic Fountain”.  We took the metro back to apartment and spent the rest of the day in the apartment with Simone, made a nice salad for dinner, and worked on eating the various items in the fridge to minimize waste for our departure from the apartment the next day.

Joan Miro sculpture. Note the dog enjoying the water.

And now getting out of the water.

Backlit photo but this is the Plaza de Toros bullfighting ring that has been converted into a mall.

This is the center of the mall. From bulls being killed for sport  to children playing on an interactive floor.  Talk about change!

View of Sagrada Familia from the top of the mall.

Rooftop pool near the mall.

Some of the better urban art we saw.

Just the two of us.  We miss our liberty buddies. Olympic Village and Art Museum in the background.

Day 8 (12 OCT) - Simone Departs. Brian and Lyn travel to Valencia.

211013 – Simone departed at 0900 finally feeling better and ready to take on her flight back to Switzerland.  Lyn and I packed our bags and left around 1030 to catch a 1200 train for Valencia. 

We enjoyed Barcelona and our reunion with old friends.  Simone’s sickness was clearly a very unfortunate development, but we are grateful for having three days of good health and fun with her before she became ill. We are also grateful she was healthy enough to fly home on time and that she fully recovered once she got home to Switzerland. Being sick away from home is never a fun experience and we all wished we could have done more to make her more comfortable. 

Can't wait to do this reunion again.

IF YOU DON"T LIKE HISTORY, START SCROLLING UNTIL YOU SEE THE WORDS "STOP SCROLLING"

The Phoenicians and Greeks had contact with Iberia in pre-Roman times but it was the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage that made the Iberian Peninsula strategically significant for settlement and control. This map and the associated description really drove home that the Iberian peninsula was  key terrain in the "Great Power Competition" of the Roman age. 

My world history class in high school spent about 10 minutes talking about the barbarian invasions and the fall of the Roman Empire but it was entirely from the perspective of Rome.  As the empire collapsed, its possessions also became vulnerable to barbarian invasions.  The Vandals came from central Europe and the Visigoths came from the region that is modern day Ukraine.  The Visigoths ruled from their capital in Toledo and spent nearly four centuries in Spain, which is long enough to make a lasting impression on culture, race, language, and identity.  To many Spanish, the Visigoth and Vandal periods are part of their identity and heritage. 

I failed to take a picture of the map showing the Moorish conquest of Spain and how the Moorish empire ebbed and flowed along the northern frontier.  The Moors only ruled Barcelona for about a hundred years before being turned back by the Franks. Barcelona subsequently became a buffer zone to insulate the Frankish Carolingian Empire from the Moorish dynasty ruling from Cordoba.  This gave the Counts of Barcelona a high degree of autonomy and contributed to the development of the Catalonian identity.

The Moors remained in southern Spain for another 600 years and made their own lasting impacts on cultural, architecture, and language.  However, the were eventually expelled  from the Iberian peninsula in 1492(or forced to convert to Christianity and assimilate); this was around the same time that Ferdinand and Isabella married to unite Aragon and Castile, creating the foundation of modern Spain.  In the early 1500s, Spain then came under the control of the Habsburgs Empire which was Spain's high water mark as an empire.  Barcelona during this time was an economic powerhouse, largely because trade was still focused more in the Mediterranean and less in the New World, and still retained its distinct autonomy. However, Barcelona suffered setbacks including a massive population decline; the city had a 39% decline in population due to the Black Death between 1350 and 1500 and then lost half its population in 1650-54 during the Great Plague.

Catalonia experienced a major setback when the not-so-capable Charles II died in 1700 without leaving an heir. This resulted in the War of Spanish Succession which led to Spain shifting from the Habsburg dynasty to the Bourbon dynasty.

Let me pause and say that I regret going down this rabbit hole because it gets deep and twisty very quickly.  I'm in way over my head and have probably managed to offend all kinds of people with my Jackson Pollack version of Catalonian history.  To make everyone's life easier, let me just say that to most people in Catalonia, the War of Spanish Succession was the moment in history when the modern nation state concept squashed many aspects of their autonomy (laws, government, taxation, etc).  Three quotes from Wikipedia sum it up pretty well:

"Over the next few centuries [1519 to 1715], the Principality of Catalonia was generally on the losing side of a series of wars that led steadily to an increased centralization of power in Spain."

"The fall of Barcelona on 11 September 1714 to the Bourbon king Philip V militarily ended the Habsburg claim to the Spanish Crown, which became legal fact in the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip felt that he had been betrayed by the Catalan Courts, as it had initially sworn its loyalty to him when he had presided over it in 1701. In retaliation for the betrayal, and inspired by the French absolutist style of government, the first Bourbon king introduced the Nueva Planta decrees, that incorporated the realms of the Crown of Aragon, including the Principality of Catalonia, as province of the Crown of Castile in 1716, terminating their separate institutions, laws and rights, as well as their pactist politics, within a united kingdom of Spain."

"After the War of the Spanish Succession, the assimilation of the Crown of Aragon by the Castilian Crown through the Nueva Planta Decrees, was the first step in the creation of the Spanish nation state. And like other European nation-states in formation,^[43] it was not on a uniform ethnic basis, but by imposing the political and cultural characteristics of the capital, in this case Madrid and Central Spain, on those of the other areas, whose inhabitants would become national minorities to be assimilated through nationalist policies.^[44][45] These nationalist policies, sometimes very aggressive, ^{[46][47][48][49]}  and still in force,^[50][51][52] have been and are the seed of repeated territorial conflicts within the state."

  

If you think 300 years is enough time for Catalonians to get over feeling screwed because they backed the wrong side in the War of Spanish Succession, you need to walk around Barcelona and see all of the flags, banners, graffiti, and historical placards that seek to reverse the course of history and restore autonomy, control, taxation authority, and cultural identity to Catalonia.  One problem Catalonia is that population growth and migration within Spain have reduced the proportion of people who identify as Catalonian.  

I am NOT going to attempt to talk about the Spanish Civil War because it is truly and enigma wrapped in a riddle surrounded by a mystery to anyone who is a casual observer from the outside.  In my simpleton mind, the Spanish Civil War was actually several wars all happening at once with all kinds of overlaps, conflicts of interest, and competing priorities.  We like to make it clean by saying it was a war of ideology between fascists and communists, but it was so much more than that, including an element of the Separatist movement to restore the loss of historical autonomy.

As far as Barcelona is concerned, what they remember most is the Italian air force dropping bombs on them at the request of the Republican forces (who ultimately won the war). The museum had a particularly good exhibit showing film footage of the bombings (including dead civilians) along with an aerial photo of the city showing the bomb damage.

The final room of the history museum celebrated Barcelona's economic success and its renaissance since the end of the Franco era as Spain has integrated into the European and global economies.  The message of this exhibit reflects pride and optimism but I thought the last lines of the summary below also belie the undercurrent of distrust and/or distaste for the strong central control of Catalonian affairs by those outside Catalonia.  

 

"STOP SCROLLING". This concludes the Catalonian history rabbit hole.