Tag: Barcelona

Barcelona #6: Zoo Redux

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Imagine my surprise when my Traveling Companion wanted to try the zoo again. We made an earlier start of it, used a less circuitous route, and really found it this time. Arriving in the early afternoon, we found the zoo to be almost completely deserted.  Admission was surprisingly high (16€ each). One of the many reasons I loved going to the St. Louis Zoo when I was in high school (other than the obvious reason that I had friends who worked there) was that most of the zoo was free. It was the best people-watching in all of St. Louis.
The Barcelona Zoo has pony rides, a children’s train, and even golf carts you can rent. They also have a candy store and several spots to buy a beer.  They have both kinds of camels, fighting flamingos, meerkats and too many parrots. Many animals behaved in a way that made us think that they’ve been fed by people looking at them; most turned and looked at us, and others walked right up when we approached.
The genuine treat of the day was that they have three kinds of vultures: a large sociable colony of Griffon Vultures, a pair of Black Vultures, and my Traveling Companion’s favorite bird ever, the Bearded Vulture. 
The gorgeous solitary Bearded Vulture we saw had taken up a spot in its new enclosure where it could survey its entire cage and still see all the way to the tables of the snack bar. I took three pictures of it, and despite the fact that I could see its face almost the whole time we were there, its head is completely turned away from me in each shot. This bird lives on skin and bones and marrow and tendons, with a pH of 1 in its stomach.  They have been observed dropping bones from a great height to break them open.
The Griffon Vultures had just been fed, and there were beheaded rabbit carcasses strewn about their enclosure.  Griffon Vultures are very expressive birds, with downy tan fuzz on their heads and on their long, curved necks. There was also some gentle squabbling over the best spot on a perch and plenty of cantering over the ground. These vultures have a ruff of long, thin feathers which float about their thin necks like a fancy collar, and long flat feathers that hand around their legs like culottes. Certainly this is the best-dressed vulture I’ve ever seen.  We observed several individuals spreading their enormous wings to stretch.  Suddenly one lifted into the air and had a quick flight across the enclosure; in the large Doñana Aviary next door, the Eurasian Spoonbills rose in agitation. The other species were quiet, unmoved by either the swoop of the great vulture or the excited circling of the spoonbills.

Barcelona #5: Barcelona 3, Me 0

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Finding the zoo was pretty easy. A change of train lines, from the L3 (green) to the L5 (yellow) was required. Emerging from the station we located the Parc de la Ciutadella, where the zoo lives. We found a sign and followed the arrow…to another sign, with an arrow pointing back to the first sign. It was funny. We distracted ourselves by exploring the gorgeous neo-baroque Cascada fountain and laughing at the fact that we could see the fence enclosing the zoo but not the entrance. Settling upon a direction, we circumnavigated the walls of the zoo, emerging at the entrance roughly 100 meters from where we entered the park. When we attempted to buy tickets, we were informed that the “animals are closed at 5,” by a woman who blinked at me furiously, as if to remind me how stupid I am.
My Traveling Companion announced that we needed to go back to the hotel. I insisted on Plan B: we could go to the MUSEU MARÍTIMDE BARCELONA.  One of my books calls it “the most fascinating museum in town.”  Another says, “These royal dry docks are the largest and most complete surviving medieval complex of their kind in the world.”  The third book describes it as “excellent…well worth the visit.”  The fourth, “one of Barcelona’s finest Gothic structures.” Nowhere did it even hint at what we were told when we entered the building, which is that it is closed for renovation for two years.
At this point I had lost all credibility with my Traveling Companion, to the degree that he wanted to take a taxi back to the hotel. I insisted on the subway (having at my advantage the view of the subway station and knowing it was on the L3 (green) line).
I dropped my Traveling Companion at our hotel and told him I was “going shopping” before dinner. Shopping is something I find difficult in all circumstances, and I am no better at it with the anonymity of being a foreigner. I did manage to buy some tights (which I badly need back home but have little need for here), and a pretty lilac linen scarf. I asked clumsily to wear the scarf out of the store despite the fact that linen season is still months away. I had not traveled much more than another block when I realized my mother would have liked it, and it made me sad.
My Traveling Companion suggested dinner in the hotel: a fine idea after a day of failures.  The restaurant is on the roof, with a limited menu and one charming staff member in attendance. I drank local beer and we stuffed ourselves on ham, followed by sandwiches and ice cream. At the end of the meal I asked my Traveling Companion what he thought we should do tomorrow, our second to last day. He suggested the zoo, but with a different Plan B.

Barcelona #4: Montjuïc

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There is of course what a person could do and then there is what a person should do and then there is the limp little fact of what a person does do. Today’s limp little fact is that in the presence of the Traveling Companion doing what he did yesterday (sleep until late afternoon), I did the same (sit around the hotel room) without the presence of mind to order coffee, go get coffee, or do anything else at all. I know I will be sorry on my way home that I spent a vacation in as nice a place as this doing very little at all, but there it is, the limp little fact that most vacations are for loafing.
Outside, it is perfectly sunny and 57F. The locals are wearing boots and buttoned overcoats with mufflers wrapped carefully around their throats. For about 3€ you can have a café con leche and a ham and cheese croissant, and it will be the best you’ve ever had. You can then sit at your tiny table and read and pick at crumbs on your plate for as long as you would ever want.  Outside, everyone looks like they’re freezing, but they’re over-reacting.
Once I harassed my Traveling Companion enough to get him out of bed, we took the subway to Montjuïc, an urban mountain park in western Barcelona. The subway beat us last time, but this time we mastered it. The ticket kiosks only accept my cash and not my credit card, and consumed all of my smaller bills and coins, but we got our tickets and got to where we wanted to go. The menuing is pretty one-dimensional in these kiosks, offering baffling pictures of the various tickets available, and most of it is so poorly translated into English as to remain unknowable. From the Paral’lel Stop (which really does have that peculiar apostrophe), you can transfer to the funicular railroad which lifts its passengers to a point about half-way up the mountain. From here, you transfer to a cable car, which requires more tickets but round-trip is an option for once.
Half-way up, we visited the Fundació Joan C, a museum displaying the breadth and depth of Miró’s work, from sketches, collages, pen and ink, and sculptures to the bulk of his efforts: paintings. I always loved Miró; his work was so free and slightly surreal and experimental and just cool. My Traveling Companion found his work to be one-dimensional and really not very interesting.  Me:  “Oh, I love this!” Him: “Meh.” At least his admission to that museum was free.
Next, we took the cable-car up to the top of Montjuïc, to the castle on the top. I did not know while we were visiting that there is a long history of executions held there, from anarchists and Catalan nationalists to Republicans and Fascists. The spot offers commanding views of most of Barcelona, including the port and the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia. Best of all, there were magpies in the trees.
Yesterday in my boredom I read a book about the basilica we had visited the day before. Today I am back to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. I haven’t gotten very far.  My father used to claim that he and his buddies wanted to go to Hungary in 1956 to fight the Soviets, not unlike what Orwell and Hemingway did in Spain. I am almost certain my father never seriously wanted to go.

Barcelona #3: Dinner

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Some days require an adjustment of expectations. Today I woke at 10 am, which sounds more decadent than it was (I couldn’t sleep until 2 am).  My Traveling Companion was hard to wake. I tried three or four times and gave up. I pretty much headed out of the hotel (having been quite frightened away from the trays of food set up for late breakfast in the bar) and just wandered down the street to get a café con leche. On my return, I still could not wake the Traveling Companion, so I settled in for a quiet day of Twitter.  Finally, he woke, and we walked La Rambla to Old Town and back. Afterward, I negotiated some front desk help with a dinner reservation by giggling and pointing.
Dinner is served from 8:30 pm onward. Many places serve food until 2 am. Lunch is 1 pm to 4 pm or something. Breakfast is a mystery.
The Barcelona I have seen has none of the hysteria I found so common to Italy. Cars obey traffic lights. Pedestrians quietly glare at a taxi or truck that disobeys the signals. Crosswalks have lights which people mostly follow. There are bike lanes that are used by bikes and scooters and lots of parking in the middle of the street.  The scooters park on the sidewalks, in great silent congregations; this is easy to understand since they are naturally herd animals of the plains.
I see a lot of working people during the day, in suits, though mostly men. No drama in their discourse, just talking. Yesterday at lunch there was a group of three businessmen quietly working on a triangular-management-nonsense chart while they ate. They ordered dessert, too. One got a piece of fruit (was it apple? pear?) and it was served rolling around loose on a plate with a sharp knife and a fork. The manproceeded to eat it as if carving a tiny goose.
I am frequently spoken to in Spanish or Catalan or French. They have a query that runs through the languages. I often reply with a “hi!” and we proceed in a version of English.
Dinner has been under 50 euros the first two nights, despite ordering quite a lot of food. They charge your credit card for the amount on the ticket, and if something has occurred inspiring you to make a tip, you do it in cash.  Wait staff leave you alone for long periods unless you attempt to engage them a lot, and sometimes will ignore us so ferociously we start to wonder about it.
Last night we found a crêperie on the way to trying to find another restaurant. It was so small and inviting we stopped and went in. We had a cheese and meat plate and then galettes, which are traditional buckwheat crepes. The whole meal was pretty much fantastic. I had two glasses of cold French cider brut which was served to me in a tea cup. More delicious than anything I have had in a long time. They played French indie pop and rock on the stereo and had an amateurish mural of a dragon and an apple tree on the wall. I loved it.
Tonight’s dinner was at an establishment recommended by a Fodor’s guide. I tend to be a minimalist as far as travel books go, preferring the firm opinions of one book over a stack of conflicting ideas. Nevertheless, a friend went to Spain last summer and put a pile of books in the mail to me, and I have been the better for it.  First, I found a hotel which is both strange and pleasant and perfectly located yet near nothing and yet still near enough. Second, I can throw one of the glossy colorful books at my Traveling Companion and he can pretend to learn something just like I do.  Anyway, I needed the help of the front desk to even make the reservation (Tonight? Tomorrow? I don’t care! What time? As early as possible. Ok, yes 8:30 pm.). It was close by, which was fine. It was well-lit, which was awkward. We were the second table to be seated (also awkward). Our menu was in English. The specials were in Catalan and Spanish. The food was local specialties, prepared with superlative skill. The wait for the check at the end of the meal will be even more memorable than the meal. Tomorrow, we’re thinking Japanese. 

Barcelona #2: The Basilica of the Sagrada Familia

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Cathedrals take a long time to build. The Basilica of the Sagrada Familia has been under construction since 1882.
We went to see it yesterday. I knew I was headed the right way, but my Traveling Companion did not trust me, and insisted that I demonstrate my knowledge. I caught a glimpse of the construction cranes as we headed roughly north/north-east along Carrer de Provença, and somehow talked my way out of having to prove it.
You can look at pictures of this cathedral online, but I promise that they will never do justice to seeing it in person. Even though you’ll stand in line for a while, spend 12€ (cash) just to walk around, and more if you want to go up in the towers, it is worth it to see the way space is enclosed, to see how sculptural forms climb from the stone,  and the experience the scale of it. You enter at the Passion Façade, completed since 1988, and marvel at terrifying knights and a crucified Jesus hanging by his shoulders.  On the other side, there is the Nativity Façade, where animals and angels emerge from a cloud-like chaos, which looks like a sand-castle in photographs, a crispy jumble of shapes, with none of the actual energy and beauty easily seen in person.  Best of all, you might be inside when they play the organ, as we were. Inside, giant columns soar up to knots of splendid mathematical shapes and then to a ceiling that is like a giant forest canopy. It is incredibly beautiful.
Gaudí died in 1926, after 42 years of work designing and building the basilica. He saw only one tower finished. Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War destroyed the beautiful little school (which has been re-built) and most of the models and plans for the cathedral, and the work on the cathedral has continued anyway. As for me, I hope to come back in ten years to see more stained glass and maybe the beginnings of the Glory Façade, which Gaudí intended to portray Death, Judgment, descent into Hell and then Glory.

Barcelona #1

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My traveling companion and I arrived in Barcelona yesterday. We took the train from the airport (aeroporto), the up-side of which is that it is the most inexpensive option. The down-side is having the shacks and graffiti-covered hulls of buildings you see from the train as your introduction to the countryside of Spain.  And of course, this being Spain the lovely colorful subway map that comes in all the travel books and is posted on walls seems to have essentially no relation to the lines as the trains actually travel them.  We simply scratched our heads, argued a bit, and got on the train everyone else got on. What a relief to see that our stop was only number four (of course, when I say “our stop” what I mean was the connection we were going to attempt, which was in Spanish on the train and is in Catalan in all of the guidebooks).
At some point on the train a man with an accordion appeared in our car. When this happens in New York, people make eye-contact with you and roll their eyes theatrically. Here in Spain, local folks went into extreme no-eye-contact-mode, and the tourists smiled at their traveling companions with a half-wink, “Say, this never happens in Tokyo!” In New York, we have yet to have a man with an accordion get on our subway car, though we have had the rapper and fellows with guitars. I love music on the train, even when the musicians are not talented. It’s obviously people like me who keep these folks in business.  I usually let my Traveling Companion keep the Euro change in his pockets, but I had to intercept the 2 Euro coin from him; he is a true believer in tipping street musicians of all kinds.
Triumphantly we got off our train into a packed underground station with flights of stairs and tons of people, some wearing party masks, and one of them carrying an unhappy, meowing cat in a crate. We made our way to the huge paper posters of train schedules to discover that they were written in some sort of cuneiform script. Here, our triumph ended, and we ascended to the street.
At this point, you see, we were utterly unable to see how you switched to the subway train line, so we walked. Emerging on Passeig de Gràcia (which also has a Spanish name, Paseo de Gracia), we immediately encountered an enormous Sunday political rally, complete with flags, party stickers, neck-kerchiefs, loudspeakers, a lingering helicopter hovering above, soldiers, police, and thousands of strolling, well-dressed people. My Traveling Companion wanted to know what they wanted and why they were assembled. I had no clue. Many of them waved a red banner with “CCOP,” which is probably Catalonian Communists. I have a history of encountering communist party rallies, and happened upon one the last time I came to Europe, near the open air market by our hotel in Venice.  This time, my Traveling Companion would never have tolerated me taking a picture, so I didn’t.
The hotel was not too hard to find. As in Italy, the street signs are attached to buildings at the corners of intersections so it took us a few blocks to verify that we were headed in the correct direction. I brought along an orphaned AT&T iPhone in case of emergency (Verizon phones are based on shorter string technology and do not stretch across the Atlantic Ocean), and turned on this phone to use the compass.  I was right about north (a skill I cannot always count on, but did inherit from my father). The iPhone is being covered by “Orange” wireless. Tempting to make some calls, send a bunch of texts, etc., but once I saw a $3000 mobile phone bill. 
Besides, I felt like a hero when I found the hotel (for about five minutes). We had to wait for our room until 3:30 pm, about 4 hours. We went and got delicious croissants and cafe au lait around the corner (being too simple-minded to be able to order anything more substantive). The wait for the room was actually excruciating! Stupid details of the timing of check-in and check-out are always so dicey. My Traveling Companion did not sleep on the plane but fell asleep waiting in the lobby and still sleeps now.
Our room is as strange and wonderful as I expected. Modern in the extreme, with three levels, two rooms and two baths. They have the bizarro key-in-the-light-switch deal here, which makes sense but also adds to the initial confusion of figuring out a room. The other hotel guests include a squalling baby and several commandeering adult men, who seem like they are in our room when they talk in the hall; this is never more startling than when you are sleeping off a headache and an overnight flight in coach. Housekeeping persistently knocked around 6 pm and I had to shout genuine nonsense at them to make them go away.
I logged on with the “free wireless,” which is 60 minutes worth of wireless, free every 24 hours.

We will rise soon and go eat tapas around 9:30 pm, enjoying sitting outside under a heater, listening to our fellow diners chatting in French on one side and Korean on the other.  We will enjoy the communal aspect of the Euro-zone, where our waiter will bestow the most marginal service imaginable, and expects no tip, and we will bask and eat in a plume of second-hand cigarette smoke. There will be fried white anchovies and a decent glass of red wine even though I will ask for white, and it will be a privilege.