¡Listo!

Well, now that I've edited all my photos from this past weekend, I can blog about it.  (I don't generally like my photos unless I get to edit them.)  So I'll try my best to sum this past weekend up pithily and not have you spend an incredible amount of time reading about it.

One thing I would like to mention straight away: flights around Europe can be expensive or dirt cheap, depending on the company.  It's amazing how cheap, too.  Meagan was looking for a flight from Milan to Rome the other day, and depending on the day, you could get a flight for 7.99 euro (without any outstanding fees such as the credit card charge).  7.99!  That's ridiculous!  (We ended up having to choose one that was slightly more expensive because we were looking at the wrong day, but still.)  This is with the company Ryanair, a probably-very-weaselly corporation that makes its money by offering the cheapest price around, even if that means cutting costs and jobs and itineraries and other corners in order to do so.  I'm not really complaining, though, since we got to Barcelona and back for a really cheap rate as well.  If only we had a cheap airline in the States...

Anyway, our flight with Ryanair left the (unbelievably tiny) airport of Sevilla in the mid-afternoon to go to Barcelona.  (Really, though, the Sevilla airport is tiny.  Think one or two "mini-"terminals with no walkways extending from the gates to the planes.)  The flight was actually quite pleasant (except for the landing, but we were fine) and we ended up getting there about 5 minutes early, which I guess is common for Ryanair, according to them.  (Of course, that can be arranged by making your anticipated arrival time on the schedule later than the actual arrival time, but whatever.  Again, not complaining.)  The view from the plane was great, too, overlooking a great stretch of the Mediterranean.  At one point, we saw what we thought might have been one of the Balearic Islands, but it was awfully small and quite close, too, so we weren't sure.  Anyway, it was great.

We landed at Barcelona and made our way through the public transportation system to go to the hostel.  It was a group of 7 of us (which was going to be 8, but one person didn't end up coming with us), and we were split between two different hostels.  My group's was actually located near the center-ish of the city, and it was actually located on Barcelona's 5th avenue, right in the same area as the Louis Vuitton and Valentino stores.  Needless to say for a hostel, it was really nice.  (There was even a glass-window "lift" in the center of the lobby!)

We didn't have much time to do anything that day because our flight got in in the evening, so we just walked around for awhile, towards Plaça Catalunya, a very big hang-out spot in the middle of a big intersection, complete with two fountains, several more statues, pigeons, and lots of children running around.  We found somewhere to eat, where we were kind of met with disdain by the staff (probably for being American), and where the food was good but served in small portions.  That was okay, though, because it was good.

Let me elaborate on the "met with disdain" comment.  It's not that we were disapproved of; rather, we were just obviously foreigners.  For some background info: Barcelona is located in the autonomous community of Catalunya, of which it is the capital city.  Catalunya has always had a past history with Spain of being rebellious, as has the Basque Country and other provinces of the north.  This is partially because Catalunyans have their own language, Catalan.  It is not a dialect, nor is it a variation on Spanish.  If it's a dialect of anything, it's a dialect of Latin.  In fact, even though it looks very similar to Spanish (except for the weird double-consonant pairs or vowel-consonant pairs like ix, tx, tg, or ig), it sounds more like a mix between Portuguese and Italian.  Catalunyans are very proud of their language and of their own representative culture, whatever that may be -- it's hard to tell in Barcelona which is a very cosmopolitan city in its own right.  Going off of this, Catalunya developed along with Spain, but very much apart from Spain too.  It's right on the Spanish-French border, along with the small country of Andorra, so it's somewhat distant from the central capital of Madrid.  Catalunya was the center of a lot of industrial activity during the Industrial Revolution and it's probably the most valuable province to Spain economically and technologically.  Madrid may be bigger, but Catalunya is more progressive.  All this is to illustrate that when Spain was under Franco and heavily advocated for centralization galore, Catalunya, which had previously been given even more power as a separate entity within Spain, was once more deprived of its right to that autonomous status.  And let's face it -- it had a lot to gain from being on its own, mainly the fact that it didn't have to carry the rest of Spain on its shoulders.  (Without Catalunya, Spain would not be nearly as wealthy as it is today.)  A lot of people in Barcelona speak English, Catalan, and castellano (or Castilian Spanish), but I think they resent it when people can't speak Catalan, even though they know it isn't a very widespread language.  They even prefer speaking English over castellano.  So the service at this restaurant may have been a little begrudging towards us, but I guess all in all, they're used to it.  I suppose that doesn't mean they have to like it.


Explanation done.  On to the rest of the trip!  Meagan and I got up the next morning early to go to La Sagrada Familia, the famous basilica designed by Antoni Gaudí that (still) has yet to be finished since it started being built in the early part of the 20th century.  (The white parts of the model below are the parts that still have yet to be built.)  Let me give some future travelers some advice: if you're going to Barcelona, you need to do two things to make sure that you have a good Sagrada Familia experience.  One, buy your tickets in advance (the line to get tickets was around the block, even before 9:00), and two, get there early, whether you have your tickets or not (see above parenthetical comment).  We were treated to a fairly empty basilica versus an incredibly full one, and as such, were able to get pictures like this without people in the way:

Obviously, it was amazing.  There really isn't anything like this building.  Gaudí was so revolutionary in his architecture and that is clearly evident, especially in the heavy influence of crazy mathematical shapes in his work.  There were TV screens in the main part of the church that explained how he achieved sculpting hyperboloids and ovacular structures.  It's pretty ridiculous.  And wonderful.  But at the same time that it was wonderful, it left me feeling kind of hollow.  I don't want to discredit anything about the basilica, but I found myself wondering what it was really built for, Gaudí or God.  Of course, I didn't know at the time that Gaudí was actually a devout Catholic, so in retrospect, it puts some of my qualms to rest, but it still felt weird to be taking pictures among other amazed tourists in the middle of God's sanctuary.  I got past it, though, as you can see from my volume of pictures.

Later, we went to another Gaudí invention, Parc Guell, which is quite far out of the way of the main drag of the city (a.k.a. where everything else is).  It was packed, of course, but just as amazing.  It's a very tall park, in the sense that each main section is built on top of the other on the hillside where the park is located.  I found it very ingenious.  Between the amount of people and the rule against standing on anything historical (which we quickly discovered after grumpy park guides kept calling all of us tourists maleducados, which basically means "badly educated" and is much more strong of an insult in Spain than in the U.S.), it was very hard to take pictures.  But here are what I have to offer:




We, of course, didn't make it to the whole park, but what we saw of it was amazing.

We made our way back down through the city to La Rambla, which is the famously exciting street in Barcelona full of street vendors, performers, and just really awesomely weird people.  We wanted to go to the outdoor market that one of us had heard about to buy food and other items for lunch (since none of us were keen on eating out and spending more than we had to).  Well, when we found it, we were amazed.

This place is called La Boquería, and let me tell you, it was one of the most wonderful things I have seen on this trip!  The market was made up of lots and lots of booths selling one thing or another under a covered pavilion, all for really cheap (except for the chocolate, as Meagan and I found out too late).  We ended up getting bread, strawberries, and some juice for a really good price (but then we got chocolate and paid way too much for it -- I think the woman felt bad for us because she knew we didn't expect it, so she gave us some extras for free too).  I wish we could've spent more time just looking at everything, but we had to go.  Some pictures:




We ended up walking down to a cool pier (called something along the lines of "La Rambla del Mar" or "La Rambla of the sea") and sat and ate under a monument to Christoper Columbus.  The statue was surrounded by several lions that you could climb on to take pictures, like this one below!  I sadly did not get any of me.  But I'm not that broken up by it.

At this point, we were all pretty tired, especially having gone onto the actual pier to lie down for a quick breather.  Our next stop, though, was the Picasso Museum of Barcelona.  Picasso, as I mentioned in my last post, was born in Málaga, a city which is very proud of that fact.  However, he did not spend his entire life there; he actually spent most of his education in Barcelona, so of course there was a museum here too.  I actually preferred the one in Málaga because I felt like it was more classic Picasso, but this one chronicled more of his progression as an artist.  I found a new admiration for Picasso for doing whatever he wanted to do. Did you know that Picasso was an Impressionist first?  I didn't.  The museum took works from every artistic "period" of his, including sketches and "studies," a fancy word for sketches or planning phases of a bigger work.  My favorite was one that made use of Pointillism (which is a fancy word for "dot art"), but for the life of me, I can't remember the name of the painting.  I wish I could to show you.  Also, in the museum was Picasso's take on the famous Velázquez painting, Las meninas.  Above, I've put a side-by-side comparison.

The day was almost over and we still hadn't made it to the beach yet, so we decided to go see the Mediterranean.  The beach was about the same as it was in Málaga, but this time we saw it at sunset.  (Another difference: there was a nudist there too, which was strange because we didn't see any signs for a nude beach and nobody else was nude.  Interesting.)  I wish I could've put my feet in the sea, but it was really cold and I had socks on, which came with the incredibly unappetizing idea of putting my wet and sandy feet back in them afterwards.  I'll have other chances, I'm sure.

We returned back to the hostels, all pretty tired out, but we still had plans to go out that night.  Elizabeth really wanted to go to this part she had heard of from her friend and also from her guidebook.  It was a very old bar, with a specialty in serving absinthe, which as you may or may not know, was illegal in the U.S. until four years ago (according to Wikipedia).  I didn't get one, instead opting for a beer and getting up in the morning, but I did try a few sips and I have to say, it was incredibly strong.  Like, incredibly.  Evidently, also according to Wikipedia, absinthe is not a liqueur, but a spirit.  Go figure.  The bar was also cool because evidently Picasso and Hemingway both frequented it a long time ago.  To take absinthe?  Maybe.

That night, we went to sleep very contentedly, and the next morning, we didn't do much but walk around, back to Plaça Catalunya for a bit, and then make our way to the airport to fly home.

All in all, I love Barcelona.  Like, really love it.  I can't say that I prefer it over Sevilla, but I definitely love both of them, albeit for different reasons.  Sevilla is more like Charleston, SC whereas Barcelona is more like Chicago.  Two very different styles, yet both are fantastic.  I highly recommend that you go, and longer for a weekend.

Speaking of places to go longer than a weekend, I'm leaving for Paris today!  But only for the weekend.  Nonetheless, it should be fun!  Wish me luck on this adventure, and that I will be able to survive a country that speaks a language I don't understand.

Nick