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.