Barcelona, Spain – 05/30 – 06/01

(Michelle) We didn’t book ahead in Barcelona and it turned out to be a little tricky to get a room, but we finally found something that was decent. It seems that the hostels/budget hotels were mostly located on one or two floors of a building instead of being a whole building. This made them hard to find because there is no sign outside, just a name on a buzzer on the door. After settling in, we went to the museum of the history of the city, which is pretty cool. The museum is actually on top of actual uncovered Roman Ruins from when Barcelona was just the Roman settlement of Barcino around 2nd or 3rd century AD. You can go in the basement and walk through the ruins as they were found. Two take-aways –
In Barcino, the laundry cleaners kept buckets outside for men to pee in. They used the urine to clean clothes. That is what I call recycling.
Later on in Barcelona’s history, they described rulers by what kind of hair they had. Willfred the Hairy, Charles the Bald… and they didn’t say it, but I’m sure there must have been a Thomas the Mullet or possibly a Thomas the Combover.
We walked down Las Ramblas, which is the main drag with loads of tourist restaurants and “fake statues” (real people acting like statues). At a newsstand, we bought a “What’s happening in Barcelona this week” guide. In it, we saw they had a Chicago Pizza restaurant. Well, we have to check that out. So we took the metro up there to see what it was all about. This was not in a tourist area, and the people inside were all locals except us. This place had a boat load of cool Chicago posters and signs from the 80s. The crust of the pizza was decently close, but the pizza was missing a key element. There was no sauce…??? How do you have a Chicago style pizza with no sauce?
The next day we went to La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family), designed by the famous local architect Gaudi. I thought the days of taking 200 years to build a cathedral were over, but I was wrong. This started construction in the late 1800s and it doesn’t appear to be very close to finished yet (although construction was going strong during our visit). The only official purpose this building has served yet is that Gaudi is buried in the Crypt (he died after getting hit by a street car in the late 20s or early 30s). That being said, what is done so far is truly amazing. Perhaps my former roommates (both architects) will laugh at my amateur assessment, but it seems to me that Gaudi was an architectural GENIUS. The use of animals and nature and hyperboles and curves and funky statues was kickass. Even though a genius, I think there was one thing that he overlooked on this one. With all of his super cool statues and curves outside, he created an awesome playground for pigeons. Not that we haven’t seen pigeons on most other cathedrals, but they were always cramped into little tiny spaces. These pigeons looked like they were having a lot of fun here and tons of places to hang out and run around on easily. It just seems wrong to me for there to be pigeon crap on the head of the little baby Jesus statue.
The next day, we went to huge market off Las Ramblas. It was pretty hectic.. So hectic apparently that it drove one woman in her early 50s to stop by the food stand we were at on her break, had a smoke, did a shot and then headed back to her stand. We ate some Shis Ka Bobs at the stand we were at and then headed up to Montjuic. At the top are some great views of Barcelona. Also, much to TJ’s delight, there was a military museum with a whole room dedicated to one man’s collection of little Spanish soldiers. While we saw loads of tourists on La Ramblas, we pretty much had the military museum to ourselves. They clearly don’t put too much into it as some of the glass cases holding the historical weapons looked older than the weapons they housed.
We also went to the Pablo Picasso museum here. Good stuff, but the best was the room where they had his inside jokes with his best friend. He basically took magazine pictures of models and drew in funny pictures of his best friend next to the model. This actually made Picasso seem like more of a person than anything I’ve seen on his work. Also cool was the room where he had loads of drawings mimicking the Meninas by Diego Velazquez (see note later on Prado museum).
It is 12 hours by bus to Granada, so it’s an overnight bus for us next.

(TJ) I’ll cut right to the coolest thing to see in Barcelona, which is the Sagrada Familia. The last time I was in Barcelona I only saw the outside of the facades which are amazing. This time I splurged and actually went inside which also awe inspiring. The columns on the inside start of as squares or hexagons and then as they go up they gradually get more faces. So a hexagon at the base becomes a 12 sided more circular column at the top. After this they split off like branches from a tree to support the different vaults which have a geometrical appearance to a forest canopy. I’d say if the Catholic church had more cathedrals like this they would not have a problem getting people in the pews. It probably would not hurt either if they updated some of their beliefs. It does not amaze me that this has taken over 100 yrs to build. The stonework sculptures are pieces of art and are layered with all sorts of things that you do not see at first or second glance. Not to mention the numerous changes that have taken place and the enormous cost of this innovative ever changing design. They have made some good progress on this in the last 6 years but I think that it will probably take 10-12 more for them to finish barring no financial troubles. That it has taken this long to build is a statement in itself of how innovative and ambitious this building is considering the main portions of the design are over 80 yrs old.