Beautiful Barcelona
(I suspect I'm going to be constantly about one or two days behind on updates. Apologies for any typos - they will be fixed upon my return to Canada when I have "free" and unlimited Internet.)
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Yesterday, We arrived in Barcelona. The flight between Frankfurt and Spain wasn't bad, length-wise, and there were some truly spectacular cloud formations outside of my window. (Another thing: I love window seats and hate being stuck in the middle of the middle aisle.) I thought of them as "cloud cathedrals": huge columns and even arches! It should have been very zen.
Instead, we had this screaming two ear old girl in front of us who simply refused to stop screeching. You could tell she was tired and felt sick, and all she wanted was her mother's attention... And the woman chose the worst time, in my opinion, to try to teach her child that crying will get you nowhere. I don't think that in that entire flight there was more than a five minute long period of silence from that child. :(
But everything was looking up from there! The airport at our destination was spectacularly beautiful: open, airy, full of natural light... also very shiny.
We got picked up by a man at the airport from the travel agency, but he couldn't drop us off directly at our hotel. You see, La Rambla, a nice big main street, was blocked off to vehicles for the St. George's Day celebrations. We did get tossed directly in to the crowds, to be sure, and we did get a bit turned around, but we found our hotel easily enough, and it's lovely. It's down a side street, so it's away from the madness, but only a few steps away from all of the interesting bits. Well-chosen, mum and dad!
Anyway, apparently St. George (the same saint whom we know as being famous for fighting the dragon) is a big deal in the city. His feast day is actually celebrated much like St. Valentine's, with a matchmaking/courtship bent. Men buy women a rose, and men get books in return. That meant that there were a LOT of roses and secondhand book stalls around. :3
We had some amazing tapas that first night. LOTS of fried seafood. <3 The owner of the restaurant was a gruff but friendly old man, and he did a couple of magic tricks, narrating in broken English. I'm sure he does that for all the tourists, but he was endearing. :)
This morning (Sunday) we went on a three hour bus tour of the city with a... quintalingual(?) man. He spoke Castilian Spanish, Catalan, English and Italian on the tour, and he told us he spoke French, too. For all I know he could know others. Basque, maybe? Anyway, I have loads of pictures from he cloister with the thirteen white geese (whose story I shall explain when I post the photos), and from the architecture park. Apparently for an exhibition in the late 1920s, the city built a reproduction of dozens of cites of various architectural types from all over Spain (except for a few of the Islands because the guy doing the preliminary research was driving) and assembled it in one schizophrenic village. It's pretty cool. The buildings are all restaurants or craft shops... Even the reproduction church, which is only one on the outside. We also got a free Champagne-like drink whose name escapes me.
Anyway, we did more wandering and shopping after that, so much so that my feet hurt now. The Old City is bustling with people, and is absolutely beautiful. I love how friendly the streets are to pedestrians and cyclists. The taxis zoom by in their special lanes so fast they scare me, though. Still! I'm having fun. :) Tomorrow, we head off to check out Gaudi's church, first thing, before the crowds. After that... Who knows?