Touring Barcelona

The weather forecast for our last two days in Barcelona was sunny, low 70's, with some clouds.  Absolutely perfect weather to close out the relaxing leg of our vacation by laying on the beach drinking sangria.  We made use of the beautiful weather by walking the streets of Barcelona, not once stepping foot on the beaches.

The activity my daughter most anticipated for Barcelona was a visit to the zoo. On Thursday, we took the short, four block walk from our hotel to the Parc de la Ciutadella. Like many top attractions in Barcelona, Gaudi had a hand in its design and contributed the fountain. We started at the north end of the park and walked past the Gaudi fountain down to the parliamentary buildings and then over to the zoo, taking pictures along the way.

The zoo itself is deceptively large. The animals are no more or less spectacular than you find in most zoos throughout the world. We have visited enough zoos in the last year that the Barcelona zoo didn't leave us feeling enriched. Besides, it is hard to top the animal interactions possible at safari park in near Jakarta. I think people who enjoy zoos, however, would also enjoy the Barcelona Zoo. The dolphin show was pretty nice.

From the park, we made our way to the Gothic district of Barcelona, passing by the Picasso Museum on the way. We kept wondering where Barcelona's old world charm was, and we found it in the Gothic district. This is where we found all of the historic buildings, the narrow alleyways that one imagines from old pirate tales and books like Shadow of the Wind.

We made our way to Ramblas street where old and new truly emeet. Inside buildings hundreds of years old you'll find Starbucks, Burger King, and Subway. You'll also find shops that, coupled with the buildings, transport you back to the days of Don Quixote riding a donkey and fighting windmill dragons. On Carrer de Princessa the rich aroma of a chocolate confectionary was so overwhelming and enticing we each bought a chocolate treat to hold us over until our late lunch.

When mealtime finally arrived, we selected a local restaurant and each sampled a different version of paella (a rice dish, for those of you unfamiliar). We ordered the obligatory liter of sangria to share, and also a liter of Sangria de Cava, which is a local variation using Spanish sparkling wine instead of red wine. The two liters proved a challenge for three people to complete after such a long walk, and, when combined with the heavy meals and full day of walking, had us all exhausted and ready to return to the hotel.

On Friday, we walked to the Sagrada Familia. My wife says of all the architectural wonders we've ever seen - things ranging from Mayan temples, to Borobudur, to the Sacre Coeur - Sagrada Familia is by far her favorite. This cathedral was Gaudi's final project and has been under construction since 1882 and is not likely to complete for another 20-30 years (take that Boston's Big Dig!).  This visually indulgent building is the most visited location in Barcelona and we were not going to leave Barcelona without seeing it (though I was the only one who knew it existed).

Exterior:

Interior (designed to look like a forest):

  
From Sagrada Familia, we walked down Calle de Mallorca to Rambla de Catalunya (which becomes the Ramblas street we were on the day before).  My wife and niece wanted to visit some of the shops they had seen the prior day and buy some souvenirs.
 
Rambla de Catalunya, like many of the large streets in Barcelona, has a large promenade splitting the two directions of traffic.  On Thursday, we had walked the sides of the streets with the shops and restaurants.  Friday, we walked down the central promenade.  This is where artisans and performance artists congregate to sell their crafts and to do their performances.  Most of these "performances" are people standing "statuesque" in elaborate costumes.  If you take your picture with them, or just of them, they ask you for a donation.  The only one that drew a substantial crowd is pictured below.  If you can't figure out how he accomplishes the levitation trick, send me an email and I'll explain it to you.

Walking from the hotel, to Sagrada Familia, to Rambla Catlunya, and then back to the hotel consumed our whole day - our last in Barcelona.  The total walk was 6 miles.  Here was the route:

 
There is much in Barcelona we did not get to see or experience due to our short time:  castles, palaces, cemetaries, more parks, or any of the many beaches near Barcelona but outside the city.  Unlike Paris, I'm sure my wife and I will return at some point in the near future and spend two weeks just in Barcelona.

Some additional pictures of Barcelona:

I'm pretty sure this was a hotel:

Barcelona Pictures

I haven't loaded any pictures from Barcelona and, as we spent another day at the beach without much to report, today is a good day to load all of the pictures.  Before I get to the pictures, I'd like to share one interesting fact about Barcelona.  Reading signs and menus I was surprised at the spelling of some familiar words and at the number of words that were unfamiliar to me.  Then we ate at a restaurant that had three languages on the menu - one I didn't recognize, Spanish and English, with the one I didn't recognize in the prominent position and font.  I asked the waiter and he said that, by law, all communication must first be provided in Catalan, the local language.  That was new to me.

Now, the pictures...

The first set tells a story of frustration.  As I mentioned in a prior post, the cabin was small.  Thankfully, there was an overhead shelf where we could place our luggage.  I put the three largest pieces up there, and they were a tight fit.  On my first trip to the dining car, my niece tried without success to remove her luggage from the compartment.  She was using all her strength and even put one foot on the wall in her futile attempt to gain access to her belongings.  After retrieving me from the car, I simply face the other direction, pushed up, and pulled it easily out.  My niece was not amused.

This is how my kids were sleeping until they put the beds down.

One of the nice thing about Barcelona is there are parks everywhere.  Each beach has a jungle-gym for climbing, and every few blocks - at least near the beach - has a park.  We've made use of most of them.

My niece said she needs to GAIN fifteen pounds on this trip.  As evidenced by this time on the see-saw, we're doing our best to help her attain her goal.

When I was in High School, my mom's parents took a trip to Hawaii and brought me back a nylon cap.  The visor was flimsy and quickly damaged, so I cut it off and made it into a skull cap.  I never saw a store selling a similar hat, so it was always my unique fashion statement.  In college, on my final spring break, I lost it on a cruise ship.  In Spain, I finally found a close approximation.  I know, I look like a fisherman.

Everyone in the family has their special beach attire.  Because my son is able to crawl, curious about everything, and puts he can touch in his mouth, we brought a kiddie pool for him to sit in while at the beach.  Then we realized he is big enough to reach over the side and grab sand, that he then wants to put in his mouth.

A few pictures from our long walk to the aquarium.  You can see the blending of the old with the new.

Beaches, Blight and Bad Weather

The bad weather has followed us from Paris.  Monday began with bright, sunny skies, but, after having not slept much on Saturday, we overslept on Monday and didn't make it to the beach until nearly 11 AM.  Shortly after we arrived, clouds covered the sun and warm changed to cool.  We had a few drops of rain, but nothing torrential enough to force us from our comfortable beach chairs.  Our perseverance paid off with about an hour of sun, before more clouds found their way overhead.

We gave up on the beach at 3PM and had our early dinner at a restaurant in a nearby mall.  We started our meal outside, but the clouds that caused us to leave the beach decided they would also provide rain, and we had to move inside.  On a positive note, we discovered the laundromat we needed a few doors down from where we enjoyed sangrias and spinach salads.  We closed out our Monday in the hotel hot tub and steam room.

Tuesday brought more rain.  According to the weather report, we would have rain all day Tuesday, sun on Wednesday, overcast skies on Thursday, and sun for our last day on Friday.  We decided rainy weather created an ideal opportunity to do our laundry.  I took our daughter and son to the Barcelona aquarium while my wife and niece did laundry and had drinks and appetizers at the restaurant from the prior day.

I spent the morning looking over a Google map of Barcelona and thought I had figured out how to get from the hotel to the aquarium.  An hour later, I realized three things:  1)  I was lost, 2)  No one in Barcelona knows where the aquarium is, 3)  I should probably buy a map.  I did eventually find the aquarium, and my son and daughter both enjoyed looking at the fishes.  I would not recommend the aquarium to adults, however, or even for older children.  It wasn't that impressive.

We left the aquarium shortly before 2 PM and had rejoined my wife and niece at the restaurant by 2:15 (the aquarium isn't that far if you don't get lost).  We went on a hunt for a Burger King rumored to be in the vicinity.  I swore I had seen one on our walk back.  After walking all the way to the aquarium and back again, we never did find it and settled on a local restaurant near the beach.

After three days in Barcelona I think it feels a lot like a post-Katrina New Orleans.  Many of the buildings in the city are abandoned and in disrepair.  Though Barcelona and Paris are roughly the same age, Barcelona exhibits none of the old world charm that Paris has in abundance.  There are a smattering of old buildings, but most were designed by Gaudi in the late 19th century.  Barcelona received a facelift for the 1992 summer Olympics and it needs to revisit the plastic surgeon today.

All day, even during periods of what should be a rush hour, the streets are empty.  Even with bad weather, I was surprised to find the largest local beach completely empty.  Many of the shops (including the Burger King in the mall) are either closed or no longer doing business.  I know Spain has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, but I thought a major tourist destination like Barcelona would be a little more vibrant.  I think Barcelona is a seasonal version of Las Vegas and Orlando.  Both of those cities have relatively small local populations (roughly 500,000) but have roughly 4 million people in the city at any time thanks to tourism.  I asked a local shopkeeper why Barcelona was so empty and she told me it doesn't pick up until July.

The overwhelming benefit to this is it feels like we have the city to ourselves.  Not a bad feeling.

Au Revoir Paris, Hola Barcelona!

Well, we have made it to Barcelona!  I am WAY excited.  This is my first time in southern Europe.

We spent our last day in Paris oversleeping and nearly missing breakfast, killing time by visiting a mall where I watched the kids in the play area while my wife and niece went shopping (which, for clarity, is different than "buying"), and then taking a van to the train station.  Our train left Paris at 8:30 PM.  The taxi company wanted to pick us up from the hotel at 7:30.  I asked them to make it 7:00 and, when we were still in the car at 8:00, was glad I asked them to make it earlier.

We checked in for our passage and lugged our baggage to our specific coach.  That's when I first discovered that traveling by train was not a good idea.  Four people, five bags and a stroller make for very tight quarters on a train.  The stroller almost didn't fit.  I had to use force to get it through the hallway and into our room.  Once in the room, there was no place to put the stroller that allowed us to put down all four beds, so we had to get by with three.

Sleep did not come easy if you were over the age of three.  My son slept soundly from the moment we put him down to the moment he awoke in the morning. My daughter slept fine until she wet the bed she was sharing with my niece and my niece pushed her out of the top bunk in her sleep.  She hit the floor in a loud crash, waking myself and my wife, but not my niece.  My wife slept in spurts, a few minutes at a time.  I abandoned the clan and spent my time discussing molecular engineering, biochemistry, and philosophy with a few Canadians and a metal fabrication owner from Boston who drank more screwdrivers in the course of three hours than the Russians made in all of Communism.  When I finally went back to our cabin, I found sleep difficult myself because the room was too hot.

We arrived in Barcelona at 8:30 AM, everyone exhausted, everyone needing a shower and hopped into two separate cabs to our hotel.  As we experienced in Paris, our room in Barcelona was not available when we arrived at 9 AM and we had to wait until 2 PM to check in.  Unlike Paris, however, this hotel had a shower we could use.  Of course, this is Spain, and the changing room and (only) shower were both co-ed.  The shower also did not have any hot water.

We ate breakfast at the hotel buffet and took a walk across the street to the beach.  There are four beaches in Barcelona, each separated by a small pier.  They are all clean, sandy, have a gentle surf and plenty of amenities.  They are all connected by one long promenade with the beach on one side, and a variety of parks and Olympic facilities on the other side.  The string of four beaches is a little over 4 km in length.

We started at the southern most beach, called Barceloneta, and walked north past Icaria, Mar Bella and Nova Mar Bella, then turned south and walked back.  All of the beaches of Spain are considered clothing optional, but in Barcelona Mar Bella and Nova Mar Bella are the unofficial 'nudist' beaches.  On all of the beaches you'll find adults and children in various degrees of undress.

On the walk south, we stopped for a few moments at one of the parks to rest.  This proved to be a mistake as we were all too tired to stay awake if we weren't moving.  We relocated to a beach side restaurant for drinks while we waited for the room to become available.  At 2 PM, we checked in to the hotel, and checked out of the world of the conscious.  After a two hour nap, we woke, went to dinner, and returned to the hotel for baths and to put the kids to bed.

In one day, I've noticed a few major differences from Paris:

1)  Barcelona is quiet.  We picked a good city to be the relaxing portion of our vacation.  Granted, we arrived on a Sunday in a very Catholic nation, but the streets were empty.  Even the beaches were pretty empty.

2)  Our hotel is in a good location.  The places we wanted to visit with the kids while in Barcelona are all walking distance from our hotel.  The zoo, the Guadi park and architectural buildings are all within two miles of our hotel.

3)  Everything is cheaper.  The food, the drinks, the transportation are all half the price of everything in Paris.  We had tapas for dinner tonight and the total cost for a meal that stuffed all of us to the brink was half what a collection of snacks would have cost us in Paris.  I'm still reeling from the costs of Paris, so this is a welcome change.

4)  They are more accommodating of tourists.  Tourism, last time I checked, was Spain's top industry.  The people of Barcelona know this, and welcome tourists with open arms.  They speak English freely and do it well.  Unlike Paris where, when I asked a waitress if we could speak in English, was told "in France, we speak French".

5)  My Spanish is pretty good.  On the train, I had two choices to converse with our steward - Spanish or French.  My Spanish is mucho mejor than my French, so I chose that.  We were able to communicate easily.  I may have to buy a phrase book for Italy, though.  I don't think Italians are particularly known for speaking English to tourists.