Amazing Istanbul

Ayasofya Museum

There are a lot of good art museums, opera, theater, and cultural attractions in Istanbul, but for tourists with just a few days, there's only the the peninsula between Halic (the Golden Horn) and the Mediterranean.  It contains a large area of World Heritage sites. The Sultanahmet (Blue) Mosque, probably one of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and the Ayasofya (also known as the Hagia Sophia) an enormous church for over 900 years, then converted into a Mosque for more than 400 and which is now a museum, are the biggest draws. They sit opposite each other across a fountain. Gulhane is a large park with trees, flowers, walkways and lots of feral cats who are quite friendly. In the park is the world famous Istanbul Archaeological Museum which has a huge collection of Hittite, Sumerian, and Byzantine art. The most impressive part of the collection features sarcophagi from a cave site in Lebanon that was once the kingdom of Sidon, discovered in the late 1800s. The carved marble cases with deep bas-relief sculptures of battle scenes had remained untouched for 2500 years and look as if they were finished yesterday. The Romans built enormous cisterns to supply water to their city Byzantium which was then renamed Constantinople, and is now Istanbul. The Ottomans used the cisterns as well, and one is now a museum called Yerebatan Sarnici. And finally the Topkapi Palace was home to dozens of Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, and is a repository of Muslim religious relics such as Mohammed's cloak and sword.

The treasures of the Ottoman Empire, a reign of over 600 years, are on display, heavily guarded, and (to me) the most impressive of the tourist sights. Gold and jewel encrusted thrones, baby cradles, turban pins, boxes, knives, swords, and silk clothing with gold and silver thread are all part of the collection, in addition to portraits, miniatures, and rare tiles. An entire museum in the Harem section is dedicated to life in the palace featuring such oft used items as a marble birthing chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

Photography was not permitted inside the Palace, but was in the mosques and archeology museum. So, here are a few pictures for a visual taste of Istanbul. 

Ceiling in the Blue Mosque

Sunlight in the Ayasofya

Tile mosaics, detailed like paintings, plastered over
when the Ayasofya was converted into a Mosque, are now revealed. 

Inside the Ayasofya

Lamp in the Ayasofya

Single man praying in the Blue Mosque

Outside of every mosque, there is a
place with fountains for washing
feet, arms and face before going in.

Looking straight up a column in the Blue Mosque

Life in Istanbul

One of many reasons to travel is to challenge our own assumptions. My impression of Muslim countries is that women are subservient, kept in a "down" position with few rights, and are miserable creatures. Starting with the woman from Saudi Arabia that I met at the Alhambra, I can tell you that women may wear long dresses, scarves and even a covering over the mouth, but they are hardly weak or subservient.

Based on discussions with Pinar (my angel from the previous post), another woman I spent the day with named Waifa from Morocco, and some of Cheryl's Turkish friends, women are the foundation of the family and therefore of society. The power they wield is emotional and economic. But mostly emotional, and therefore the most powerful of all. Men may run the world, but women create the atmosphere they grow up in, where they form their values and ideas.

In the courtyard of a Mosque
near the spice market. Notice
the men washing behind me?

Walking through the spice market and the Grand Bazaar yesterday, it was apparent that men work and women buy. With few exceptions, women were not in the shops as owners or as workers. And the men work hard! They haul stuff, build things, and are always in a hurry to get places. They interact with a lot of energy with customers, very polite, but still pushing all the time, engaging and talking. Women purchase. And they are quite demanding, the men work very hard to please them.  Even though I speak no Turkish, body language is easy to read. Women's body language is one of confidence and control. I can see how the religion wants to cover them up, to subdue their sexual and emotional power. It oozes out from under their long dresses, flits off their hands, and flashes from their eyes.

Istanbul is a modern and enormous city of 17 million people. Women's dress is all over the map from mini-skirts and high heels, to fully covered up with black material, only eyes and hands showing. Waifa said that most people would claim to be Muslim but many do not practice, meaning they don't dress according to the Koran or pray publicly at a mosque. Men dress mostly in western style, but never shorts, and some wear beautiful long shirts that are called Kurtas in India. I even saw some men in the airport with long brilliant white suit coats, fitted and of very fine material, like a button down rain coat, only more stylish.

Turkey is a secular country, made that way by the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk. But clearly the conservatives are gaining power with their current president. Recently laws have been passed allowing 14 year old girls to marry (ie: be married off by their families) and to change the laws requiring school. Now parents can chose not to educate a child. Before, any parent who did not send a child to school would be thrown in jail or fined heavily. This is not a way to prepare a country for the future, it's a way to keep certain elements of society stupid and controllable.

Ataturk did a number of interesting things for Turkey besides making it secular. He changed the writing to the current alphabet, away from Arabic. I still haven't mastered all the sounds but can read words out loud and pronounce them reasonably well. (At least Pinar said it was pretty good!) And I've picked up a few really important words like "su" for water, and "sogol" (the g is silent) for thank-you. I'm sure a month in Cappadocia will give me more opportunity to improve and maybe get around a little easier. Plus many words are easy to recognize: Elektrik, kontrol, programme, koc ('coach', the 'c' with a squiggle is 'ch' sound).

Smoking is prevalent, even though it is banned in restaurants, public offices, and bars, and by the Muslim religion. People smoke constantly, men, women and many teenagers. Their concession to not smoking is to smoke at an open window where the breeze wafts the smoke into the room. Pinar said that in Europe, if you want to insult someone's bad habit, you tell them they "smoke like a Turk". Ditto for alcohol. It's not unusual to see drunk men playing the drums badly, or strumming helplessly on a oud while others dance like women thrusting their hips in a poor imitation of a belly dance. Waifa told me about a beverage that is about 50% alcohol, but doesn't taste like it has much. You're totally plastered after just one drink.

As for food, sweets are big! In search of breakfast (no bacon and eggs to be had) I went across the street to the same little restaurant Cheryl took me to the first night. Lovely people, but no English. So I looked over the photos of the food and picked something called Kunefe that looked like breaded cheese, toasted. The only thing I got correct was the cheese part. It was a stringy cheese, covered in some kind of super thin tiny noodle, then baked with lots of butter in a special pan, flipped over and baked on the other side with even more butter, then smothered in thick sugar syrup which was quickly absorbed by the noodles. No wonder the waiter had looked at me funny, I had just ordered a very rich dessert for breakfast.

The famous Turkish Delight isn't........ It's one of those things you love or you don't. After 5 different versions I've decided to quit trying. The baklava and variations on that theme of crispy wafers with nuts and honey is definitely superior. Turkish delight is a gooey jelly-like substance with nuts, cut into cubes and covered with powdered sugar or spiced powder. I even tried a white foamy looking concoction that was like eating an old rubbery marshmallow with pistachios stuck on the outside. The poor pistachios could not overwhelm the texture and make me appreciate it.

So life in Istanbul is very European, full of shopping malls and famous stores, sophisticated, with opportunities for lots of people from elsewhere in the world. On the buses I've talked with several people from Bosnia, Hungary, and Slavic countries who have moved here for jobs and a better life. Their English might not be great, but here they only need to speak Turkish!!

Kabab (shaved meats) and "hamburgers", meat
and sauce in a bun are very popular!

Kunefe, really good. Really weird. 

Waifa, my day-companion, met
her on the bus and we touristed together.

Another popular snack, dried fruits with nuts jammed inside.

A little bit of Texas in Istanbul.

Penniless & Clueless

Taksim Square
Photo taken the next day!

Tuesday was the day to fly from Barcelona to Istanbul. Simple. Get on a plane, land, get Turkish Lira from an ATM, get on the bus to Taksim Square, get a taxi to the AirBnB apartment, check in with Cheryl, the host.

Well, to start with Spain is having a serious economic crisis. Earlier in the week, the metro drivers went on strike, on the very day of the giant soccer match between Barcelona and Madrid. So nobody could take the metro to the game or anywhere else in the city. Buses were packed and the taxi drivers were making out like bandits. 50,000 people affected. Not a bad way to get your message across.

Tuesday I got packed and out the door at a decent hour, air-kissed Dalila goodbye and rolled two blocks to the bus stop and waited. And waited. Several people collected around the stop and we all waited. Finally someone consulted an iPhone and said there was a strike.

Hailing a cab was a challenge. They were already full. Finally one stopped. I told him I had only 20 Euros. Would that be enough to go to the Airport? He agreed to do it. And that left me penniless.

No problem. I wouldn't need Euros until Italy, six weeks from now.

Lovely flight to Istanbul, excellent lunch of red wine, ground beef and lamb, potatoes, eggplant with other vegetables nicely spiced, tea and cake. Touched down and got in line to go through the passport check. It could hardly be called customs because our bags were still coming out of a carousel, somewhere else. Four planes landed close together so there were literally about 1000 people in the line and 25 ports open with staff checking passports. Thirty minutes later it was my turn and the guy said, "No way, no visa, no getting into Turkey". I thought we bought the visas when we checked through. Yes, but not from HIM. He didn't take money! I had to go to another office.

So, luckily (or maybe on purpose), outside that office was an ATM machine. To my horror, it could not, or would not, read my ATM card. Or my other ATM card. I could feel panic starting deep in my gut. What to do? Remembering there were some American dollars stashed away I dug around in the zippered pockets of the carry-on bag. $30. Signs said the Visa is $20 American, or $15 Euros, so I was able to purchase the stamp for the passport. Back through the line, much shorter now that four plane loads of people had been processed, I finally got into Turkey. My colorful luggage was sitting all by itself, way down at the end of carousel 11. It could easily have been stolen, but it wasn't.

The remaining $10 bill was traded for 17 Turkish Lira, which should be just enough to get to Cheryl's house. 10 Lira for the bus, 7 for the cab.

That was sure cutting it close, but there had to be an ATM somewhere that would take my card. If that didn't work, I could PayPal Cheryl and she could give me cash. It would work out. Somehow it would work out.

The giant bus was solidly packed and zipped off at highway speeds until it plunged into the bowels of the city where we crept along in massive chaotic traffic. I could feel panic rising again. This bus ran from Taksim Square to the airport and back. So once there, I should be able to find a cab. Cheryl's email said don't pay more than $6 Lira, so I figured she must live awfully close. She even sent a translation of what to say, but if he refused for whatever reason, what would I do?

Nobody spoke English except for an Italian woman behind me, so we had some stilted conversation. She didn't speak Turkish, but knew her way around, she'd been in Istanbul for three weeks already. The young woman with orthodontic braces, sitting next to me, didn't seem unfriendly, but never said anything either. I assumed she didn't speak English. Turns out she was listening all along, and understood that I was worried about getting to Profilo Mall, the area where Cheryl lives. When she finally started talking, she spoke perfect English, better than most Americans!! Her name is Pinar. She's a lawyer, just starting out, and studied at an English University in Amsterdam. We had a long and fun conversation about living in Istanbul, her plans for the future, her family (mother a nurse, dad a veterinarian who wanted her to become a doctor), and that she plans to move next week to an apartment a block away from Profilo Mall.

She promised to help me get to the Mall and when we got into the cab, she chattered away to the driver. Even clueless, I could tell he didn't want to go there for a set rate, the traffic was a nightmare and it would take a long time. So she agreed to pay the meter. I gave her my remaining 7 Lira to help with the cab, it was barely a third of the final amount.  She told me she would be getting out on the way because she lived closer. She would pay the driver, and he'd take me to the address. We continued talking and she never got out of the cab.

A good thirty minutes of creeping honking traffic, he dropped both of us in front of the mall as he had no idea where the address was. I had the impression from the email that Cheryl's building is pink and houses a burger restaurant named DoyDos. Nothing matching that description was anywhere near the place we were standing. Pinar used her cell to call the number Cheryl gave me. Cheryl was thrilled to finally hear from me as I was about 3 hours late. While we waited Pinar told me that she hadn't trusted the driver to take me to the right place and feared he might try to charge me more. Pinar was truly an angel who showed up at the right time and place. I am taking her to dinner on Friday night to say a proper thank you. Who knows what would have happened to me if she hadn't spoken up and taken over?

Barcelona Bits

I extended my stay in Barcelona by five days. Originally, I'd planned to cross Europe to Istanbul, but after looking into plane fares as well as how I might drag my large suitcase all over Europe by train, bus, and on foot, Barcelona looked awfully inviting.

My host Dalila and I had several excursions that were marvelous and gave me a taste of daily life in this city of 5 million people.

At Sta. Catarina market, a large area excavated
and exposed for public viewing.

As in most cities, places are defined by the neighborhood. The Born, where Dalila lives is one of the oldest. There was a saying among the sailors, "You will go around the world, only to come back to the Born." Beneath the Born is a Roman city, founded more than 2000 years ago. Archeologists have unearthed remains here and there, as buildings are torn down and others built up. At the market nearest the apartment, an entire room is devoted to the ruins underneath, where you can see preserved walls, inscriptions, and even crypts. Another old market building, Mercat Born, has been completely closed down and is being excavated inside the building's shell. It will reopen someday as a social center, never to be a market again. Walking past, the excavations are clearly visible through the windows.

One night, in search of tapas (you really don't have to search far!!) and some wine, we wandered all over Dalila's "hood".  On one side of Mercat Born, there is a wine school, shop, and warehouse. In a very large two-story room with wine cellars below, you can sample 16 different wines from a machine, the likes of which I'd never seen. It takes a prepaid card and deducts each glass of wine that it serves. The bottles are lined up with a hose and fittings in each bottle, the labels clearly displayed. You can select the amount you want and the price varies from 1 to 3 Euros per glass. There were no customers and the young man running the store was bored. Dalila is a striking woman, so the sommelier, smitten with her, gave us free samples, a tour of the store, and pointed out such things as a wine bottle with a round bottom that won't stand up by itself, a mere $155 Euros, and a bottle of WATER, for $250 Euros. It was a beautiful bottle, but still....

Around the corner, Dalila's artist friend has a studio with big glass doors that let in light and the occasional customer. He's quite good with his own impressionistic style. We stopped to visit with him and see his most recent paintings that will be featured shortly in a gallery opening. There were two I would have bought in a heartbeat, one was of the Mercat Born which is a beautiful building. In his painting, it was framed with trees and flowers, not the scaffolding it currently wears.

Dalila has several favorite shops for meats and cheese, vegies, fruits, and clothing. She teaches yoga and English, has only a bicycle for transportation, and lives up three flights of stairs. She stays in good shape. Across the major street Laietana, is a different neighborhood, Gotica. Home to an impressive stone cathedral and many buildings dating back a thousand years, it is filled with apartment buildings with stores on the ground floor. One is a pastry shop that had the most beautiful pastel hunks of "something" in the window. What else would you expect from a "pasteleria"? Of course I had to buy a piece. It's pure white sugar heated and whipped with artificial color and flavor to produce a sickly sweet stiff concoction that breaks up almost the moment you touch it. Dalila made a face when I showed it to her, not something she'd ever eat!

Dog, Duck, Man

Most of the people I met do not have "regular" jobs. I am amazed at the creative ways people stay afloat. Along the Ramblas, almost every neighborhood has a large walking street, people do all kinds of performance art. There are the usual musicians with a hat put out for coins. In addition, people dress up as characters and pose for pictures or act out scenes. One fellow dresses as Christopher Columbus on the Rambla that ends at the sea where there is a statue of Columbus atop a large monument. He's delightful. Other hawkers have a costume of sorts and sell street toys like the obnoxious mouth buzzers, spinning helicopter lights, and quacking ducks a kid can pull. Along the beach a lot of Asian women sell massages, which they do right there on the spot; back, neck and foot massages. Lovely! One fellow, who is essentially a beggar, sits all day with his large dog and a baby duck. People photograph them, and give some change.

Others engage in less than legal activities, selling knock-offs of Louis Vuitton handbags for instance, displayed on a sheet with ropes attached on all four corners for easy "lift off and run" scenarios. I saw five of them posted across a large sidewalk from one another. In addition to selling, they each had a direction they watched, on the lookout for the police. They were not too happy with me taking a photo of them.

In front of the cathedral, on weekends, a large antiques fair is held. People sell religious icons, hardware, books, dishes, and just about anything else you can imagine that's old. It's a popular destination for the locals looking to replace a door hinge in their three hundred year old apartment, or just looking for decorations.

Religious icons, nothing like covering all the bases!

Pedicabs and pedivans are a popular way to make ends meet. Several companies hire young men to peddle people around in futuristic versions of the rickshaw. For quick delivery of pizza or supplies, there are pedalvans, a bicycle fitted with a large rolling box behind, looking for all the world like a mini mini-van.

Christopher Columbus, in the flesh!

Most Beautiful City Has No Tides

Interesting piece, looks the same from
both sides. 

Today, Sunday, I stood in line for an hour at the Teleferico to ride the aerial tram across the port to Montejuic, an almost-mountain between the bulk of Barcelona and the sea. I thought (and I should quit thinking and read maps better!) that the teleferico went from the tower on the edge of the beach all the way up to the castle visible on the hill. Wrong. It only went across the water, the highway, and parked in about 10 minutes at the exit building on the other side. For that I paid $10 Euros and waited......and waited.

There was another teleferico with a starting point along the road near the middle of the mountain, but by that point I was a fed up, I just took a bus up the hill to the castle.

In line, however, I met a young German man who has been around the world a couple of times, once in each of his two adult decades. Nice man, thoughtful, introspective.  He said this is his fifth trip to Barcelona, just for the weekend and specifically to attend the hugely popular soccer playoff between Madrid and Barcelona. He also said that Barcelona is, in his opinion, the most beautiful city in all of Europe.

Bicing, a bike rental business with
stations all over the city.

It may well be true! Cleaning crews are always out picking up trash, dumping the trash receptacles, and sweeping machines wash the street. Everywhere I look there's yet another striking building, tree arched street, interesting sculpture, patterns in the plaster finishes, or carved lintels. Traffic seems to flow well, probably because most of the human traffic is on foot or underground in the Metro. Wheeled traffic is mostly bicycles, buses, taxis, and delivery trucks, with a few personal cars tossed in for good measure.

I almost got hit by one the other day, it was electric and made no noise whatsoever. I simply was walking on a pedestrian surface, that somehow became a driving surface and stepped right in front of a car. The driver never even honked but continued to rush up on me until I saw him and jumped out of the way.

Bicycles are everywhere, there are even businesses where you can take a bike and use it for a while. It's similar to a club, you buy a pass and use it at a bike station, ride the bike, then leave it at another station. If there are no bikes, or too many, a code on the post will let your cell phone locate the nearest one for you and you can ride or walk to that place. I see people whizzing around on them all the time. For those who don't want to pay the rather high "joining" fee (ie tourists) there are a number of just plain old-fashioned bike rental shops that also rent mopeds and Segways.

A common Barcelona street.

One of the more beautiful aspects of the city is the beach. It is almost entirely artificial, a creation back in the early 90s when Barcelona hosted the summer Olympics. Hugely popular, it is a series of scallops along the city's edge, each with it's own name and reputation. One is the nudist beach, some are more popular with families, another is where gay people tend to hang out though it's not exclusively a "gay" beach.

Dalila asked her friend Tarik over for dinner. He's Egyptian, raised in the US and Canada, and has been living in Barcelona for about 20 years. He swims the ocean every day except the very coldest days of winter. So early yesterday morning, she and I met at his house, picked up bread, cheese, coffee and olives at the local market, and had a picnic breakfast on the beach. We waded and played, napped and finally left about 2:00 when the crowds got too thick, and I looked like a strawberry. At any point in time, during this trip I could have gotten food and gone to the beach but it never occurred to me, and certainly having a picnic alone would have left something to be desired. It was a wonderful "local" experience, brought about by using AirBnB as a lodging finder. Otherwise, it's unlikely I'd have met too many of the "locals" in a city this big.

This morning, I donned the swimsuit and went alone to the beach as the sun was coming up. Never saw Tarik out swimming, but I did join another fellow who was bobbing up and down in the water. It was cold, but not as cold as the unheated swimming pool in Madrid! I let the waves come as they would and eventually I was wet enough to dive in and enjoy the water. It's so clean and clear, I could look straight down and see the red paint on my toenails!

The nudist section of the beach?

More people were out and about than I expected so early in the morning, walking their dogs, letting them run like mad on the beach to splash in the water. Many were exercising, running, roller blading, or bicycling. Floating around in the waves was wonderful, I could always stand up. No one bothered my little pile of clothes. And the waves never reached them, even though the pile was only a foot or two above the edge of the drop-down in the sand. That's because the Mediterranean has no tide. Water comes in and goes out very consistently. A few waves are puny, a few higher but in general there is a maximum zone they reach and it never varies. Once the artificial beach reached some kind of equilibrium, it hasn't eroded or washed away.

The water doesn't rise above that drop-off, nor
go out much further than the breaking waves. 

So this begs a scientific question: At what point is a "lake" big enough to have tides? And since the Mediterranean is actually connected to the Atlantic, why isn't it affected by the tides in the Atlantic?

Along the beach walk.

Wonderful fish sculpture above the barrier wall
for a section of the beach.

Common scene, especially on Saturdays.

On a clear day......
you can see a cucumber. 

Art in Barcelona

Park Guell,
columns hold up a walkway above.

Where does one start to discover the art that is Barcelona? It was home to many famous and innovative people, Gaudi and Picasso are, of course, the most famous. There are museums for both here, and seven Gaudi architectural projects are now World Heritage Sites.

You can purchase a 7 museum ticket for 30 Euros. It's quite a cost savings. The Picasso museum is 11 Euros, and La Pedrera is 12, so in just two museums, you can almost pay the cost of the ticket. The ticket is available at any tourist kiosk or any one of the seven museums. In addition there are dozens more museums worth seeing. To make it easy to get around, the Metro seems to have stops every few blocks,  and a ten metro ride ticket is under 9 Euros.

I'm staying at an apartment I found through AirBnB, a website that matches travelers with people who have a spare room or two to rent. Some AirBnB places are a little sleazy, but most are very nice. My host is Dalila an Algerian by culture, raised in France, and British by occupation. She speaks several languages and is well traveled. The apartment is up three flights of stairs in a very old area called The Born. The streets are barely wide enough for a tiny European car to pass, and they wind all over in a non-grid pattern. Most buildings are four and five stories so there are "canyons" that never see direct sunlight. It's easy to get lost, but by traveling in one direction, it's possible to come out of the maze to a larger street that shows up on a map. And usually a Metro station is nearby. Our station is Jaume I. So no matter where I am in the city, if I can figure out how to get to Jaume I, I can make it home.

Two blocks from the apartment is the Picasso Museum. It was at one time, three separate mansions that have been purchased by the city and blended seamlessly into the museum. The works of art are Picasso's earliest and show the development toward his mature style. Some are childhood drawings which even then showed a real talent for observation and ability. He was painting excellent portraits in his teens.

Included too, are ceramics that he produced in his later years, not nearly as impressive as his paintings. His lifelong friend, who eventually became his personal secretary, Jaume Sebartes, donated his entire collection to create the museum, and then over the years, other friends and Picasso himself, gave pieces. What is on display is only a small portion of the total collection. I've read that Picasso created over 50,000 pieces of art in his very long lifetime. This museum is a very good introduction to his style and his ideology.

Then there's the omnipresent Gaudi, whose influence is everywhere, in the pavers on the streets, the street lamps, the facades of buildings. All along Paseig de Gracia, there are concrete paving stones, shaped like the cell in a beehive, with marine inspired designs, and unknowingly trod upon by people going about their business.

Under the street level at Palau Guell.
This area housed the stables, the blueish
light comes down vents from the street.

So far, I have visited La Familia Sagrada on the outside, La Pedrera inside and on top, the outside of Casa Batllo, the mansion Palau Guell and Park Guell. Eusebi Guell was Antoni Gaudi's first and most ardent patron. Gaudi's first commission was a mansion for the industrialist, Palau Guell, and at the end of Guell's life, the Park Guell, a large property on a mountainside now filled with naturalistic structures and buildings including several homes.

Gaudi felt strongly that inspiration should come from nature, which has few straight lines, and should be entirely to the benefit of humans. The concrete benches that line the top of the plaza at Park Guell are the most comfortable concrete things I've ever sat upon. Clearly his philosophy at work.

Concrete bench design,
ergonomic and comfy!!

The following three photos show Gaudi's innovations for light. The interior center room of the palace rises almost four stories, allowing light and air into the house. Bedrooms had windows that opened into this space as well as stained glass walls that allowed light to come in from outside. The photo of that wall is taken from the attic. In the roof are windows allowing the light in. The last photo is on the roof, showing his styling of very functional fireplace chimneys, an innovation he continued to incorporate in buildings throughout his career, and the windows in the roof that let light come into the house.

Central hall of Palau Guell

Stained glass windows at the top of the central
hall, photo taken from inside the attic, which
also served as the servants quarters and
kitchen area (not open to the public). 

On the roof. The skylight windows above
the stained glass arches, and the artistic
treatment of the fireplace chimneys.

Nowdays, the area that Guell developed with Gaudi's designs is an internationally known park and major city attraction. It is free to the public and is frequently used by families in the evening, a great place for the kids to run around, burn off energy, and a good place to sit and talk. An enormous plaza was built with romanesque columns supporting it, surrounded by concrete benches, and underneath, decorated in classic Gaudi, fragments of glass and ceramic forming domes of decoration.

Under the plaza at Park Guell

The gatekeeper's house

Side of the gate at Park Guell

Gaudi's undisputed masterpiece, the church of the
Familia Sagrada, still under construction 100 years later.
Photo taken from Park Guell.

Tapas

My mother wanted to know about the tapas in Spain......

OMG. What a question!  I cannot answer it in any way except to say that anything can be tapas. Anything. Deep fried rabbit ribs, one each of ten different olives including those called muerto because they're all wrinkly and old-looking, a small bowl of tomato soup with a crouton floating on top, a slice of bread with cheese & ham, literally anything can be tapas.

It simply means "a little something to eat while you drink." Drinking is the operative word. Tapas would be just a snack if there were no glass of wine next to it.

The Spanish eat much like the Mexicans. They get up and have coffee, then sometime later in the morning a small sandwich called a bocadillo, a gofre, or a croissant with another cup of coffee. Much later, between 2:00 and 5:00 they eat a meal with vegetables, bread, meat, maybe some dessert. Much later still, between 7 and midnight, they drink wine, visit with friends and eat a tapas or two. (Tapas is both singular and plural.)  Beer figures into the equation as well. It's drunk like soda pop. A coffee shop is often a bar too, so coffee can come with all kinds of alcohol additives. Yesterday in the market, around 9:00, I had coffee and watched the man next to me drink three espressos with brandy in a row. For a country suffering from an economic crisis, this seemed an expensive breakfast.

So here are some pictures of tapas that I have enjoyed......so far.

Chicken in tomato sauce

"Pincho" of Spanish tortilla, made from
potatoes, onions and eggs.

Interesting ingredients stacked on slices of bread

Even a salad can be tapas

Skewered anything on bread is tapas

A bowl of olives is also tapas. Take your pick!!