(No I didn’t make a Spanish mistake with the title, it’s in Catalán!)
Without further delay, stories from my visit to Barcelona!! Be prepared for a lengthy reading session!!
My class schedule really is awesome, I feel challenged enough but not overwhelmed and I have Fridays, and most of Thursdays off!! My plane to Barcelona left at four and got to Barcelona by five fifteen on Thursday night. I took the AeroBus from the airport to one of the well known plazas in Barcelona, Plaza Catalunya. This was my first encounter with Catalán. Catalán is the language spoken in the north of Spain. It looks like a mixture of Spanish and French. In Spanish, it would be called la plaza Cataluña but in Catalán it is la Plaça Catalunya. Luckily for me, many words sound similar enough that I could guess what they were. Also everyone spoke Castilian Spanish as well since it is the national language of Spain. I started looking for my hostel, and finally found it about 20 minutes after I should have. It had a great location! It was just a few blocks away from the center of the action so it was quite but I could easily walk everywhere. The hostel was called Somnio. I stayed in an all girls dorm which had an average of two other people in it each night (the room could house up to six). There was a sink in the room and a communal bathroom off the hallway. It is basically in an apartment building, you had to buzz in from the street then walk up to the second floor where they usually kept the front door a little cracked, or maybe only once you buzzed. Then each dorm has an electronic key card, just like at a hotel. For it being my first true hostel experience I was really happy. I didn’t talk much with any of the other girls that were in my room, we seemed to keep different schedules. A really nice feature was my locker. I was able to lock up all of my stuff and only carry what I needed for the day.
I was very hungry by the time I got settled at the hostel and picked one of the first restaurants I saw. It had a salad bar and stir fry. I know that doesn’t sound very Spanish. However, they eat a lot of fresh veggies here, and A LOT of rice! After dinner, I wandered a bit to get to know the area around my hostel and stumbled upon a movie theater. I decided to see Bridesmaids (in Spanish it is titled La Boda de mi Mejor Amiga or the wedding of my best friend) even though I’ve already seen it in English. The theaters here are very strange. It was a three story building, my theater being on the third floor. The actual theater was pretty small, I would say it could hold about 50-75 people. Also there were bathrooms INSIDE of the theater! I don’t know why that’s not more common, it’s such a great idea! That way you can still hear the movie and you aren’t totally lost when you come back. After the movie I went to bed, wanting to go to bed early so I could have a full day on Friday.
I got up around 8am on Friday and researched the opening times of all of the sights I wanted to see. I sat down in the lobby and unfolded the enormous free map that the hostel gave me and planned my route. My first stop was Gaudi’s Casa Batlló. For those who don’t know, which included me before I started researching for my trip, Gaudi either built or influenced most of Barcelona. His style can be seen in the obvious, buildings he has created, down to the almost unnoticeable sidewalk stones throughout the downtown area. The Casa Batlló is one of Gaudi’s more famous works. It was built as an estate for a wealthy family, by the name of Batlló, back in the day (that’s right I think the place is awesome but I am not one who readily remembers exact dates sorry!) Gaudi was known for his incredible attention to even the smallest detail. The thing I noticed most about his work was his love for mosaic tile. There was some sort of tile work in basically every room Gaudi designed. I also really loved his free form style, all curving lines and soft shapes. I could have spent all day in that house and still not have noticed all of the small details Gaudi put into it. Everything from the doorknobs to the light fixtures to the fence posts had a very specific design. My favorite was the interior patio. The house was built in a square with the center taken out and a huge skylight put in. This allowed so much light to pour into every room of the house. Plus Gaudi did a lot of tile work on this are that reflected the light and it was just beautiful.
After the Casa Batlló I tried the Metro for the first time. I bought a ten ride pass to last me for the weekend and carefully read all the signs to make sure I got on the right train. Although I think having done the Metro system so much in Madrid now I am better at understanding the general idea of how things will be laid out. One thing I love about the Madrid metro system that I learned is not true about the Barcelona Metro system is that in Madrid your train will almost always come in on your right. Of course there are a few exceptions to this but 90% of the time you can look to the right for your train. I wish this was true in Barcelona, and the United States, because it makes wondering where to wait for the train much easier. There were some things I liked better about Barcelona’s trains. They had these little light boards on the train that had the map of the train line and a light for all the stations the train had already gone through as well as a flashing light for the next station. They also had more hand rails and standing areas for when all the seats are full. The stations and trains however were much dirtier and smellier than in Madrid. Also, my ten ride pass, which gets stamped every time you put it in a machine to know when you have completed ten rides, told me my ticket was full at only eight rides! It was only stamped eight times but it said ticket finished and no machine would take it, I was very annoyed!
My first Metro trip was to another Gaudi monument known as Parc Güell (pronounced Park Well). The park was meant to be an elaborate open area for the upper classes. However, due to lack of attendance by said upper class people, funding was cut and the park was not as decorated as Gaudi had planned. It is massive with winding pathways in every direction. Gaudi constructed almost cave like structures, I would assume as shade from the sun. They looked almost as if Mother Nature had decided to create something a little more upscale herself rather than it being a man made structure. Again Gaudi’s love for mosaic tiles can be seen at the park, in fact I’d say it’s where he went mosaic crazy! They are all so beautiful. The tiles themselves are vibrant and some with a tied dye like pattern to them. Gaudi put them on the walls, the benches, the ceilings, anywhere he could it seems. I took one of the paths around part of the park and up to the main open area. It is a huge area with a wrap around bench. You can easily see much of that part of Barcelona and the mountains in the distance. I would imagine it was used for open air shows at some point (this one was not my fault of not remembering, there was no tour or information given). From here you also have a very good view of the two decorated buildings in the park. One of which has the iconic spiral with a cross on top. From far away it looks as though they are just painted but from inside the park, you can see that the spirals are covered in tiny mosaic pieces as well. I can’t imagine how long it would take to cover those large pieces in roughly 1 inch by 1 inch tiles! The park also holds Barcelona’s famous mosaic lizard. The lizard spans a staircase and is the center of everyone’s pictures. I did my best to get a picture of just the lizard but it seemed that EVERYONE wanted a picture of themselves with they’re hand in the lizard’s mouth, which by the way even had a mosaic tongue. I also stopped to do a little shopping and lunch at the park. The big open area is filled with street vendors selling everything from cheesy tourist gifts to handmade jewelry. I was looking at some of the latter when the man working on it struck up a conversation with me. He was very friendly! He first explained his jewelry and the process of making it and then was asking me all about my trip to Barcelona. He gave me some recommendations of places to see that he said are more local. He also said he was surprised that my Spanish was so good coming from the United States. I wasn’t quite sure if that was a complement or a dig at the US but it made me laugh. Many of the tourist attractions ask you what country you are from and once I say the US they try to speak English with me. I continue to speak Spanish and ask for the Spanish tours and eventually people stopped treating me like the American who must not know Spanish. That must be common so a word to everyone who is going to travel to Europe, learn at least a little of the home language, it will get you much better hospitality anywhere you go. I also make sure to take the time to pronounce things right. I ask people to repeat certain words so I can make sure I am not butchering their language and people seem to appreciate it a lot. In fact in Puerto Rico it got me a discount on two occasions!
Back to Barcelona… I ate lunch at a little café whose kitchen is actually built into a cave in the park. I got a bagguetini, similar to a frozen French bread pizza at home, they are very popular in Spain and are usually loaded with ham and cheese! I ate my lunch and people watched before leaving the park. Oh back step, when I was planning my day I asked the front desk manager at my hostel the best way to get to the park. He told me which Metro station to take but warned me that it was at the bottom of a very big hill and the park was at the top. He told me about a bus that left from the same place as the train and dropped me off at the top of the hill but was a little more expensive. I decided to ignore his warning and take the Metro. He wasn’t kidding about the hill! I would guess it was about a 70 degree incline and it was about 5 blocks long, I was dying!! Although it is October, it is still in the mid seventies during the day here, even hotter in Barcelona! Also on my way back down the hill to the Metro I noticed some very funny graffiti. It said “Tourists go home, Gaudi hates you” (see the picture). It made me laugh a lot, especially the fact that it was only written in English.
After the Parc Güell I was off to my next Gaudi attraction, just as the graffiti warned me not to do, called La Sagrada Familia. La Sagrada Familia is an enormous cathedral that was started 126 years ago and is still not complete. Gaudi had extremely ambitious plans for the cathedral, hoping to make it his most famous work. However, he soon realized that he would never be able to finish it in his life so he left very detailed plans on how it should be finished so that other architects could complete it. Of course it hasn’t been in progress all of those 126 years but it is still under construction today. I followed around a tour guide (shh don’t tell!) so I learned a little about the cathedral. It is meant to have 20 towers, 6 of them being bell towers. It currently has 8 with 2 bell towers (I think). Each tower has a very specific meaning. Twelve of them represent the 12 apostles of Jesus, one represents Jesus’ death assent into heaven while the largest tower, which is not yet built, will represent Jesus’ life and his importance. This tower will be the largest by a lot and will be the most ornately decorated. If you look at the pictures, it’s going to be pretty hard to top how ornate the rest of the towers are. To me the outside seemed much more gothic and structured than the other Gaudi works I had just visited. I sadly didn’t go inside because the line wrapped around the entire block and was at a complete standstill. I would guess it was about a three hour line. I had read that the inside is not impressive to all, that the outside is really the coolest part so I decided to forgo a tour of the inside. Although I would have liked to see the inside, I am happy with how my day turned out.
I decided to go back to my hostel and take a little break, what time I had planned on being inside the cathedral, and review the rest of my day. When I got back I noticed a flyer for free walking tours. Because I had not waited in line, I was able to join one of these tours and see what is known as the Barri Gótico or gothic neighborhood. I really wanted to see this area but I was afraid to attempt it on my own because it is a maze of small winding streets and I have no sense of direction. I am also glad I had a tour because I learned a lot about the history of Barcelona, at least as far as its architecture. The guide was so helpful and interesting. The Barri Gótico comprises what used to be the center of Barcelona in roman times. Back then its name was Colonia Julia Augusta Faventia Paterna Barcelo. If you look on a map you can see that the center of Barcelona, including this Barri Gótico, is set up in sort of a circular fashion, with lots of little side streets and no specific layout. Once outside of the city center you can see a very definitive grid pattern for almost all of the other streets in Barcelona. This is because that small section is the beginning of Barcelona. There used to be a wall around the city in roman times which you could still easily picture on a current map today because of the vast difference between the two layouts. Part of this wall still exists in the Barri Gótico, in fact it exists in some pretty strange places. If you go inside a seemingly modern store with purses and necklaces and glass cases and go to the back, you can still see part of the old wall that protected Barcelona in its earlier years. Chunks of this wall were also used in the construction of other buildings such as one of the main churches of Barcelona, where Isabel and Ferdinand worshiped, and supposedly welcomed Christopher Columbus after his trip to America, but that is up for debate. We also saw the oldest shop in all of Barcelona. It was built in 1761 and has remained the same type of shop for its entire existence. Any guesses on what it could be?! If you’ve already looked through my pictures that’s cheating! It is a candle shop. They sell a lot of very big, elaborate, and very expensive candles, as well as some smaller ones. We walked all around the Barri Gótico and I was impressed with every building we saw, all had such long history and every little stone that build them was important to someone, for example, some of the buildings were built during a time when stone was scarce so they used headstones as material for the buildings. Some of them face the outside and you can still see the inscriptions.
I also learned some not so truly historic information. Our guide taught us about a Christmas tradition in Barcelona. It is common to see a manger set up at Christmas just like in the United States, but there is one extra figure. In Barcelona they have a man dressed in tradition Barcelona clothing, which includes a bright red hat that looks similar to a beret, with his pants at his knees. He is squatting and pooping to signify that the earth gives us nutrients and we all eventually give these nutrients back to the earth. Although the sentiment is very nice, the actual figure is quite strange. It does come with a small pile of poop that you set up under the squatter, and some even have pee streams made with yellow wire.
Another thing I learned, that is not quite so weird but also is up for debate on its level of truth is how Barcelona got its flag. If you look, the Barcelona flag is yellow with four red stripes down it. The legend is that a man named Wilfred the Hairy, who had played a vital role in uniting the colonies of Catalunya and is depicted to look much like a werewolf, had been fighting in battle. He was very badly wounded, he lay bleeding next to his gold shield. The King, Louis the Pious, came and knowing that Wilfred had no heirs and no crest to carry on his legacy, he dipped his hand in Wilfred’s blood and ran his four fingers down Wilfred’s shield thus giving Barcelona a gold/yellow flag with for red stripes. As our guide made sure to stress, this is mostly legend, but it is a very cool legend that I am choosing to believe.
One more, very depressing, story that I learned my tour was that of Santa Eulalia. She was a 13 year old girl living in Barcelona at the time of Christian persecution. She was recognized as a Roman Christian and she renounced her family so that they would not be tortured. She was set to receive thirteen tortures, one for each year of her life. These tortures included putting her in a barrel with knives and rolling her down a hill, crucifying her in an X shape, and many others. During her last torture, the crucifixion, she was on display naked in a town square. The snow began to fall, covering her with a blanket of white. This symbolized purity and hope and, what she is now known for. She is now considered one of the patron saints of Barcelona. Her body is still entombed in a cathedral, the cathedral of Santa Eulalia, in Barcelona, in the Barri Gótico where her tortures took place.
Maybe I should have ended with the pooping figure because now it is hard to change the subject to something happier. But after my tour through the Barri Gótico I walked along one of the most well known ports in Barcelona, Port Vell. Port Vell is at the end of another Barcelona landmark called La Rambla. La Rambla is a long street with a big pedestrian are in the middle, well actually most of it is pedestrian area. There are flower shops and the best restaurants, and Barcelona’s biggest, in fact one of Spain’s biggest open markets. Going back one step for a humorous story about Port Vell… In Port Vell there is a statue of Christopher Columbus. He is pointing out towards the Mediterranean Sea which at first seems to make sense since he traveled by boat. However the Mediterranean is east and Columbus sailed west. Now he probably had to go a little east from the coast of Barcelona to get west, or maybe he left from the other side of the country clearly I’m not an expert on Columbus’ exact journey, but the funny point is that he is not pointing in the direction of his greatest discovery. I really enjoyed this!! So back to the market on La Rambla… It is called La Boquería and it is enormous! It has so many fresh fruit, vegetable, cheese, meat, fish anything stands! I would say I saw the most fruit and fish but it is so big I probably only saw a quarter of it. There were fresh ground spices, mushrooms, food that was still living such as lobster, any fancy meal you want to prepare, you go to the market to get the freshest ingredients. I really enjoyed it, and ended up eating a lot of fruit.
Friday evening I ventured out on the Metro again to a place called Plaça de Espanya. I had heard that there was una fuente magica, a magic fountain there. At night this big fountain, similar to Buckingham in Chicago, puts on a dancing water show with lights and music. I was lucky enough to arrive about 30 minutes before the show started, especially since I had no idea when the show was starting. By the time it had started, the area was packed with people! I had scored a seat on a railing/wall so I finally had a height advantage on most of the crowd. The show was very cool, they did a whole section on Disney songs that were of course in Spanish. That was my favorite part. The circle of life and Hakkuna Mattata are just as cool of songs in Spanish! After the show I caught the metro back to my hostel, stopping for some gelato on the way because Barcelona smartly follows the Italians in the tradition of gelato instead of ice cream, and I was exhausted. I planned another day before crashing in my nice cozy bunk bed.
The next morning I wanted to see another of the Gaudi houses that was not far from my hostel but when I got there it was closed. Next I tried to visit one of the places the jewelry man had told me about. He said there was a big park, comparable to Retiro in Madrid, which had a big market on Saturdays and Sundays. I saw the park and it was nice, certainly not as cool as Retiro, but there was no market. So I continued on my plan for the day. My first stop was the market to take more of it in and to grab some fresh fruit for my second stop. I was set on visiting the beach to see the Mediterranean Sea. Although I hadn’t brought a bathing suit, I didn’t feel like I could visit the coast and ignore the sea. I didn’t dip my toes in or anything but I did enjoy a nice big hunk of fresh watermelon while watching the waves. This is also pretty impressive considering it was September 30th! It was about 80 degrees and very sunny on Saturday so the beach was full! They also had a very loud and very annoying air show going on so I didn’t stay too long. I walked up the beach and back to Port Vell, then back up La Rambla to do some shopping. Barcelona has quite the shopping scene and although I didn’t take much of it in because I can shop anywhere, I did feel it was necessary to pick up a few things to say I got them in Barcelona. There are also a lot of book tents along the area near the hostel I was staying in. These small tents are crammed with hundreds of books from great classics like Romeo and Juliet to cookbooks on tapas and seafood, all in Spanish or Catalán of course. After my little bit of shopping I went back to the hostel and got ready for my first flamenco show. Now I’m pretty sure flamenco and Barcelona aren’t really pairs but flamenco is a Spanish tradition and it was cheaper in Barcelona than I had seen advertised in Madrid. I really enjoyed it. It’s very intense, like stomping but with music and feeling. Plus I just can’t believe anyone can move their feet that fast!!! After the show I ate dinner on La Rambla. I went into a place advertising great tapas. I ordered a plate of cheese, because I’ve been dying to try the cheese but you can only buy it in huge, expensive wheels, and a plate of green peppers. Now I ordered the peppers because I assumed they would be stuffed with rice and meat because I had seen that a couple time already and it looked good. But what I got was a plain plate of cheese cut into triangles and a plate of grilled green peppers of varying sizes and heat. Although it was a strange dinner it was really good! I cut the peppers into pieces and ate them with bites of cheese and they made a great combination.
Sunday morning I got up, packed everything up and checked out of my hostel. I had some time before I needed to go to the airport so I leisurely walked around the area near the hostel and the plaça Catalunya before getting back on the aerobus. I got patted down at security for the first time ever and I had to try hard not to giggle since I figured that would be seen as suspicious behavior. I waited in a line in my terminal for about 45 minutes before they finally said we could board, late of course. But once we got into that small movable hallway between the gate and the plane they turned us around. The flight got cancelled and I had to wait in another line, for about an hour, just to get on another flight a few hours later. They did give me a coupon for a free meal but it did very little to ease my annoyance. I understand it’s better to wait for a plane that works but I had paid about20 more Euros to get on a slightly later flight so I wouldn’t have to be at the airport at like 6am and I couldn’t stop thinking about how I could be back already. I did ease my wait time with a large container of Lindt truffles, one of the best things ever made. After my plane landed in Madrid, I still had an hour and half train ride to get back to Móstoles. I was so tired by the time I actually made it in the door!
Overall I loved Barcelona!! I prefer the food and the Metro system in Madrid but other than that Barcelona gave Madrid a serious run for its money!!! I would absolutely recommend Barcelona to anyone wanting to travel anywhere and I would go back again in a heartbeat. I hope I didn’t lose all the readers in those 4,600 words!!
¡Kacie's Semester Abroad! 