Spain, Day Three: Barcelona

On our second day in the city we went to see some of the major tourist attractions. Barcelona is known for being the city of modernism and of Gaudi specifically, with lots of crazy buildings of a sort you don't see anywhere else.

You can't go there and not see Sagrada Familia. This church, begun in 1882, is almost complete: only eight years to go!

The main entrance is crazily ornate.

And the interior is completely unique.

Ben didn't like it. I liked it!

I especially like the stained glass. The colors are different around the perimeter, depending on when that side of the church gets the most direct sunlight.

Gaudi may not be to everyone's taste, but you have to respect someone who developed a completely original vision of the world, and somehow convinced other people to go along with it and give him money to build his creations.

This creepy Jesus (?) is above what will be the main entrance to the church once it's finished.

Above the altar.

You can take an elevator to the top of the towers for a nice view of the city, and also to get glimpses of the construction still in progress.

It's hard to tell but there were people in those scaffolding things putting together new fruit sculptures.

Then we had to descend an endless spiral staircase to get back to the bottom. At least you don't have to climb up, too.

The other side of the church is much different, sparse and stylized. It mainly reminded me of the bad guys in Lord of the Rings.

Here we are with a Japanese tour group.

After the church, we walked back through town, passing many ham shops.

We decided on the spur of the moment to go inside Casa Battlo, another Gaudi building. It's a giant apartment building but was built to be the home of a single family.

Every detail, inside an out, was quite thoroughly designed in a unified way.

The tile in the interior courtyard got darker toward the upper floors, since they get more light.

Even the roof was fancy.

Ben found an extra area to one side that nobody else had discovered. Here he is with his audio guide. After Sagrada Familia and Casa Battlo we decided getting the audio guides was stupid. This one did have an iPhone app you could hold up in the rooms to see them as originally furnished - it was pretty cool.

I did learn via the audio guide that the reason these buildings are decorated with broken mosaic pieces is because the irregular shapes and surfaces make it impossible to use regularly shaped tile.

We had 2pm tickets to Park Guell. The guidebooks act like it's not within walking distance but PSH! Everything is always within walking distance. We passed this neat building on the way, and I later discovered it's also a famous Gaudi place you can tour, Casa Mila.

The further north we walked, the less touristy it felt. We also discovered the last third was increasingly uphill. Maybe this is why they tell you not to walk.

At the end it started to rain and we had to walk up giant steep hills and at the end of the hills were these freaking STEPS. I hated my life looking at this, but we were in too deep to stop.

Finally we made it to Park Guell. Frankly, we were kind of puzzlingly underwhelmed at this park. There was some cool stuff, for sure, but the Gaudi-designed monuments area is small and was packed with people taking instagram selfies. Part of it was also closed off for construction.

Some fun little buildings.

Overall, I would not recommend paying to get into the park, unless you're super into Gaudi or want to support civic development or something like that.

After this we decided to walk for a little while and then get a taxi, but somehow we ended up walking the entire way back to the hotel, stopping for a late lunch (mostly ham) on the way. We also picked up some desserts at a bakery, and then ended up being too full to go out for dinner.

Spain, Day Two: Barcelona

The internet is very worked up about how Barcelona is 1) terribly overrun with tourism and 2) a hotbed of pickpockets and petty thievery. In the days leading up to our trip I even considered cancelling our hotel, which was on the very edge of the old city across the street from a park, and moving to somewhere farther from the center instead. Ben talked me down. 

Late November is a good time to be a tourist, no doubt, and I can see that parts of the city would probably be pretty crowded during the high season, but we experienced very little annoyance and certainly zero danger the entire time we were there. El Born, the less touristy half of the old city, is an absolute delight - entirely composed of twisty old streets, lined with shops and restaurants and apartment balconies above. 

The first morning, we set out just to wander around and get the lay of the land. This is before the shops opened, but I was already pretty pleased with the neighborhood.

Barcelona was, like most European cities, originally Roman. I don't know why this seemed surprising. Some of the Roman city walls still remain.

We went into an open church - very interesting to see this so closely on the heels of the intricately frescoed churches in Italy. Spanish churches are much more traditional European, heavy stone and gold and all that.

Poor children, burning in hell.

We didn't go inside the big main cathedral. There was always a (small) line, and you also had to pay, and even Rick Steves was not very effusive about this one. I'm sure it's quite nice.

Lots of Christmas lights all over the city!

We happened upon the Museum of Contemporary Art so popped in there. Later we learned this was in the neighborhood known as El Raval, which is supposedly a hotbed of crime and danger, but which seemed exactly the same as the rest of the perfectly safe city.

The contemporary art museum was really great. Lots of political art which is depressing in retrospect. Forty years, and here we still are.

This was about dead people or something.

Here's a view of the neighborhood skateboarders and pedestrians from the museum. You can see how dangerous they look.

My boss lived in Barcelona for several years, and sent me a list of his favorite restaurants. We decided to walk over to the nearest one (which turned out to be kind of a hike) and try it out.

Thumbs up to Cerveceria Catalana! We got a tapas sampler and this is what they brought. You can see a pile of bread on the right side in the back - the standard bread in Barcelona comes smeared with garlic and tomato and it is real good.

We decided to go check out the nearby Museum of Modernisme, but it was closed for siesta and we had some time to kill so I made Ben go into a bookstore. I love foreign bookstores even when the books aren't in English.

The modernisme museum was a bit of a letdown. I was hoping for an overview of the genre but it was mostly furniture.

Nice furniture, at least.

The Arc de Triomf was quite near our hotel.

We got to walk through this park area every time we headed back home from neighborhoods to the north.

We headed out for dinner at 9:00pm, feeling self-congratulatory that we actually waited until a semi-normal Spanish dinner time. It was Monday night, so almost all the restaurants were closed, but we managed to find a cozy little place that turned out to be fantastic.

The waiter was very friendly. He was from Chile and has lived in Barcelona for seven years. He told us some local places to check out but we forgot them immediately.

This is some kind of ceviche-d fish in spicy orange juice and it was just as fantastic as you're thinking it was.

First day: success!