Spain

[Drunk Monk]

The train to Barcelona was fraught with hassles at first.  We couldn't get meal changes and there was a mad dash for seating, even though it was all reserved.  But once on, the Renfro was smooth, comfortable and quiet.  It was a scenic ride, lots of quality graffiti which I attributed to the inundation of great art in every day life in Spain.  The train food was excellent - I would have been delighted to get such a meal in a restaurant in the States.  The Spanish eat well.  In fact, the whole rest of the world seems to eat better than the U.S.  Our food sucks.  We've sacrificed quality for quantity sadly.  Spain wrecked me for food.  Even now, three weeks after returning, American food still tastes like crap.  

Our new digs was an AirBnB right next to the Santa Maria del Pi cathedral and a short stroll to the La Seu cathedral in the heart of the the Barrio Gotic.  It was tight, on top of 91 steps in a claustrophobically narrow staircase, which grew very tiresome after a day of hiking about Barcelona.  But again, the location was strategic.  It put us at the same level as the cathedral bells.  Now I really enjoy hearing real bells chiming out the hour.  But it does get tiresome during the night hours.  

Before going, everyone I talked to raved about Barcelona, but we found it touristy and tawdry.  It was the only place we encountered anti-tourist sentiment - graffiti saying 'tourist go home', stickers declaring that tourists were the death of Barca (so not true, tourism is the life blood of that place), even the mayor was anti-tourist saying that he didn't want to see Barca spoiled by tourists like Venice.  Everywhere there were tourist hustlers and buskers.  At every square, there were annoying cosplayers trying to get you to take a photo of them for a euro (there was some of that in Madrid, but they weren't nearly as aggressive).  Food was really expensive.  Gaudy gift shops everywhere.  Money changers were all over, with lucrative exchange rates.  There was even a wax museum.  You only see wax museums in tourist locales.  Worthy of note, on top of the museum was Superman and C-3PO.  Who the heck makes C-3PO out of wax?  The whole point of using wax as a media is because it is flesh-like, so that just doesn't work for C-3PO.  I wound up with 4 different tourist maps (including one sponsored by McDonalds, which oddly has a green and yellow logo in Spain - I was told that the red and yellow were too close to Spain's flag) and had to keep all of them because tourist maps really only provide info on their sponsors.  We were there in the off-season and I imagine it's a lot more exciting when it's beach weather, but I live in a tourist beach town, so perhaps I'm hypersensitive to tourist scams.  

All that being said, we would have gladly swapped a day in Barcelona for another day in Toledo or Madrid (or Cadaques, but that gets ahead of my tale).  Barca was our least favorite city, but I'd much rather be there than here in Fremont.

After arriving in Barcelona, getting the feel of La Rambla and the Barrio Gotic, our first full day was actually Xmas eve.  We weren't sure how the holidays were going to affect our trip, but as we pay a huge tuition to have Tara in private school, we scheduled the trip then to save money and so she wouldn't miss school.  As it turned out, Xmas hardly affected us as Barca is so touristy that it doesn't stop.  Quite the opposite, the holidays are a feeding frenzy as it's a dose of tourists during the off season.  

So the first day, we decided to do something really touristy - a segway tour.  We reserved some seqways right down the street from the Palau Guell, not to be confused with the Parc Guell.  The Palau was the home of Gaudi's benefactor, who later sponsored the park.  It was good to see the Palau first because it's one of Gaudi's earlier works. You can see it is still held in the trappings of gothic architecture, but already starting to break out into Gaudi's signature colorful mosaics, melty objects and parabolic masterpieces.  I should say that I've never been a fan of Gaudi.  In fact, in High School, back when I was more focused on art, I thought the origin of the word gaudy came from Gaudi.  Nevertheless, Palau Guell was delightful, full architectural of surprises and offered a commanding view of the city from the rooftop.  It was also not very crowded as it's not considered a major Gaudi work and inexpensive as tours go.  As an extra bonus, the pipe organ plays every hour, and like in the cathedrals, the pipe organ is built into the building acoustics. Just gotta luv that.

The segway tour started out as some fun for Tara because she had grown very weary of crucifixions and was struggling to get through a day without seeing one (she didn't quite succeed as this day she thought she didn't but she just overlooked a few).  We got this cute Spanish tour guide to ourselves and she was great fun leading us and telling us about her city with pride.  We rode the waterfront for a spectacular sunset and the rise of the full moon over the ocean (my first view of the Mediterranean sea and it is as gorgeous and romantic as they say).  Then we made our way around the swanky hotels like the W (where you can drop like half a $K a night to sleep in the bed that Shakira slept in) and made our way to Parc de la Cuitadella, dodging 'little lakes (puddles)' as our guide called them and admiring the mamooooth.  It was a lovely evening and one of all of our fav experiences in Barcelona.  

After that, Stacy turned in for the night leaving Tara and I to do a major Barrio Gotic crawl.  We secured gourmet chocolates and a fresh baguette and found all sorts of magical stores and places, like the artist's hangout the 4 Gats and I should have shot more pix that night - a delightful father-daughter adventure that I will treasure forever. We wound up enjoying opera sung by street performers right outside La Seu, before heading back up those 91 steps to spend a night listening to bell chiming every hour and going nuts at midnight.