Barcelona

She Said . . .

This is the first time for either of us in Spain.  And what a wonderful first place to visit!

I found it charming and old world with a definite Spanish feel to the architecture.  There are lots of narrow streets.  You often feel you are walking in an alley to get to some place bigger.

Walking to the City

We did not do an excursion through the cruise ship because none of them offered the 3 sites we wanted to be sure to see and experience:  The Picasso Museum, The Sagrada Familia, and Las Ramblas.  So, using Rick Steves Pocket Guide to Barcelona we mapped everything out using our feet and the metro train (subway).  What Rick Steves did not tell us was how far the cruise ship terminal was to all the sites.  It was a MUCH longer walk than anticipated.  Oh well  - It was a great way to work off some of the food we have been eating even though I have been trying not to overindulge.  And by not overindulging I mean eating a lighter breakfast and lunch so I can have a lovely leisurely dinner with dessert.  Let’s not forget dessert.  The goal is not to gain any weight while on vacation.  I may not lose any but maintaining the status quo works for me.

Back to the topic at hand - Barcelona.

As I said, the walk into the city center was much longer than we anticipated.  After many looks at our 20th century map (no free cell phone here), we made it to the Picasso Museum, passing along the way a humongous lobster statue (you can’t see from the picture but he was a happy lobster with a huge smile on his face - probably because he wasn’t someone’s dinner) and the Columbus monument.

Picasso Museum

The Picasso museum was in a grotto-like building that was no doubt centuries old - pretty fantastic in its own right.  Now I have never been a Picasso fan but he spent much of his teenage years in Barcelona so we had to go to the museum.  I have never really  “got” Picasso but what this museum did with its rather large collection of his earlier works, was let me know the dude had talent.  He clearly knew what he was doing.  He could draw/paint the human figure at 14 like people twice or three times his age could never do. He was clearly gifted.  And coming from someone who has never appreciated his art, I’ve come a long way - merely with that visit to the Picasso museum.  Now we have not made a final decision, but soon we will visit his birthplace, Malaga, so perhaps we will visit the Picasso museum there.  I suspect what happened is he started experimenting with different techniques as he grew weary of the standard fare.  Who knows.  That is merely my interpretation and it works for me.

Sagrada Familia

Then it was off to Sagrada Familia, the Catholic Basilica, with our first attempt at using the subway system.  I found in Paris I really dig using subways.  Somehow I easily understand them and know where to go and when.  The metro station was a couple blocks from the museum and we made our way on foot around 10:30/10:45 AM.  We had to transfer from one line to the other.

No big deal as I had already mapped everything out using the map in Rick Steves Pocket Guide.  (I’m a planner.)  If you are ever in Europe, you should consider his guides.  They are phenominal.  While it might not give you everything you need to know, you will be certainly ahead of the curve if you use them.  If you need one to Rome or Barcelona, just ask me - we have you covered and would be happy to loan them to you.

The metro was no issue at all.  You never have to wait any longer than 5 minutes for the next train so it doesn’t matter when you arrive.  Just wait a few and a train will be there shortly.  At this time of day, there weren’t many folks on the train.  Perhaps they were at mass somewhere, but most people were not on the train.  I say this because later in the day, the train was packed and stinky.  I have no idea if that was a product of the time of day or the different route we were on.

The metro dumped us out right in front of Sagrada Familia, a Catholic Basilica, designed by Gaudi many years ago and consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.  It has been under construction for over 100 years and is scheduled to complete in 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.  Gaudi started this church (commissioned in 1883) knowing it would not be finished in his lifetime.  There are to be 3 facades, The Nativity, The Passion (of the crucifixion), and The Glory) on the building, one on each of three of the four sides of the church.  The only one complete in Gaudi’s lifetime was The Nativity facade, where you enter.  The main entrance, when the building is completed will by one of the other facades, I just can’t remember which.  Note that I said it was 20% complete on the pictures I posted on Facebook.  I was wrong.  It was 20% at the time of Gaudi’s death in 1926.

The Nativity facade is lovely. I told Blaise the faces were so sweet-looking, full of love.  After making our way through the interior, we went out to look at the Passion facade.  Completely different from the Nativity facade - the faces were quite square and full of pure pain.  It was obvious The Nativity Facade and The Passion Facade were done by two different artists.  While I understand the expressions would be very different for the crucifixion of Christ versus his birth, the artistic style was amazingly different too.  The person in me who likes consistency was bothered by the different artistic styles.  If the different expressions on the faces had been in the same artistic style, I would have been comfortable.

It appeared The Glory Facade was under construction as we could not see it - that side of the building was covered.

If you are looking for a completed building with no cranes or scaffolding, this is not the place to go.  It is quite obvious from the outside, it is a work in progress.

The entire site is one you have to experience to appreciate its beauty.

By the way, the entire effort is funded soley by donations and entrance fees at this point.  Pictures do not do it justice so the written word cannot come close.  I’ll leave it at that.

Las Ramblas

After that we headed to Las Ramblas, the famed pedestrian walkway of Barcelona, which, unfortunately, has been in the news recently for a terrorist attack.  We took the metro again to Las Ramblas but decided to dump out in the middle so as to avoid Placa de Catalunya, a gathering place for the Catalan people.  Catalan is a province/state of Spain.  Some of their people have been protesting recently to succeed from Spain while others are protesting to stay part of Spain.  We knew people had been protesting the day before, likely at Placa de Catalunya (a square or piazza), so to avoid any protests turned riots (haven’t heard of this happening in Spain but you never know), we did not start our Las Ramblas walk at the beginning at Placa de Catalunya.  We got off at the next metro stop halfway down Las Ramblas.  That was good enough for us.  While I would not have minded to see a bit of demonstration, getting home safely was more important.

FYI, the metro was cramped and body odor stinky this time but other than that, no issues with it.

It was a lovely walk ending with tapas and sangria at the end of Las Ramblas (closer to the sea) before we got back on the boat.

What a beautiful day!  While if given the chance to go back to Barcelona, we will, it is not on the top of our list of cities to which we want to return.  Those are currently reserved for Vienna, Paris, Rome (yes again), Sydney, Berlin (Blaise has been there for work, I have not), Stockholm, and London (where we merely spent the night at Heathrow to catch a plane the next morning).  I might be missing a couple.

Note to Guy Rodgers:  We never made it to the tapas bar you recommended.  We confused the address with Las Ramblas, thinking there was only one street with Ramblas in the name.  We were too far away to make it there.  Next time!

Helipad Extravaganza

We waived goodbye to Barcelona from the helipad of the ship by special invitation.  I am sure it is because our elite status with Celebrity Cruise Lines.  It was an interesting vantage point.  I had to practically drag Blaise - he want to nap and remain totally anonymous on the ship and thought taking advantage of this opportunity may impede both.  I think in the end, however, he enjoyed it, even if he will never admit it to me.

Dana’s Food Watch

Breakfast - Buffet items, nothing special to note here.

Lunch - tapas and sangria. For tapas, I had some potato and egg thing on a piece of bread and chicken salad, wrapped in ham with a shrimp on top. The latter was an unusual combination but yet tasty.  Blaise had some sort of tuna salad - no bread, just tuna salad.  He said it was good.

Dinner - We ate at Luminae again, the restaurant for suite guests only.  We sat at a different table so different waiter this time.  We both had the kale salad.  Then Blaise had the New York strip and I had the veal canelloni. The pasta wrap of my canneloni was some of the best I have had.  I ate the whole thing.  Dessert was hazelnut cake with mint gelato for me and the cheese plate for Blaise.  I don’t normally like minty frozen desserts, but this was the best I have had.

Injury Watch

Despite 4-6 miles of walking, no injuries, just lots of “watch your step” from Blaise to Ami accompanied by a guiding arm.

He Said . . .

We had decided to do Barcelona on our own because we couldn’t find an excursion that had the things in it we wanted to see, mainly the Picasso museum, the Sagrada Familia Church and the Los Ramblas shopping street while ensuring that we were nowhere near any of the possible terrorist opportunities (protesters for Catalonia to break away from Spain and form their own utopia, if it ever played out that way).

Initially we missed the crosswalk escribed that told of getting to town via the bridge.  Who doesn’t post a real sign? That tacked on 30 minutes and pushed Ami ever closer to the attempted coup that was taking a 5 euro bus ride when you can do it for free and get the exercise all for gratis.  I held firm and we walked it, good for mind and spirit.  But, it put us behind getting to the Picasso museum, fortunately we had not purchased tickets online with a time constraint as we had for the Sagrada Familia, and we entered quickly enough.

We knew we had about 1.5 hours to get through the exhibition, hit the metro and get to the church.  Rick Steve’s had said that it was 8 rooms to the exhibit and so I began pacing for approximately 10 minutes per room, you would have been proud of the Griswald-esque manner in which I approached the task, look at the notes, nod twice, look erudite and rub your chin and then move on.

Unfortunately about three paintings into the first room and I happened onto a portrait of a man that Picasso had done while working in Barcelona whereby he was to recreate a painting of a Velasquez original, it was absolutely spot on (the Velasquez picture was hanging next to it, not the portrait the picture of the portrait).  I studied the composition, the brush strokes, the colors (laughable considering my monochromatic color blindness), the paint thickness, everything my art appreciation prof had ever imparted upon me (she’d have been proud).  The conclusion, this guy was fantastic, he was incredible, a true master; now for my other realization, everything I just said was all true, until 1903, after that there was virtually nothing I enjoyed or thought was truly groundbreaking.  I personally thought that he sold out and realized that he could monetize virtually anything after he became famous and why would you spend so much time on proportionality, scale, lighting, shadowing and the like when you could just call it a post-modern impressionist painting and people paid for what I think of as lazy art.  I mean he did a series of pigeons between the 6 and 13 of September of 1953 than was an entire room, probably millions of dollars if they were to ever auction them off, please look them up on the interwebs, they suck!!!  My niece’s (Hayley not sure about Sydney) is much better and she’s developing an artistic style, it was crap; I digress.  Turns out I think Rick hadn’t been here for a while, they added more rooms (3 I think), oh my god, what now, speed up; now it was full on Griswald at the Grand Canyon, nod-nod-nod, “uh-huh”, let’s go!!

We had passed our Metro station (Jaime I) on the walk over so it was a quick return and with Rick’s (Steve’s, Rick like I know him personally) help we grabbed the 10 pack of travel tickets for 10 Euros from the machine without a hiccup.  We were in the tube and it whisked us off; 3 stops later and we were waiting for the La Linea L3 to get us over to Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) for our 11:45-12:00PM ticket time.  Yes, you have a 15 minute window to get into the church otherwise you take your selfies outside with the folks that didn’t realize you needed a ticket; that wasn’t going to be us.  And it wasn’t!!

The church is a mix of Gothic, neo-gothic and postmodern interpretations by the architect something Gaudi, the first name escapes me and the only other Gaudi I know is Pete Gaudi, the football player, and that’s not right; where are those interwebs when I need them!!!  Anyway, Gaudi said he knew it would never be finished in his lifetime and that it was a labor of love to be the original architect.

He was right, here’s the real rub, they’re trying to get it finished before 2026, yea, 2026, why the hurry now?  That’s the 100th year AFTER Gaudi’s death, yes, like all things in Spain they had a few things come up.  They only have 4 of the 18 spires completed, and if I were the project manager on the project I would be actively looking for “opportunities” as I don’t believe they can possibly finish it by then, nonetheless the parts that are complete are amazingly beautiful and I would have to say he was a true visionary, much better than Picasso if you were asking the layman’s opinion, I know, you’re not, so I’ll hold my tongue.  Surf it up it’s definitely worth the keystrokes. It’s very much like the Trevi fountain as the scale is so large pictures can’t do it justice but it will certainly tempt you to put it on your bucket list, I would encourage you to do so.

Back off to the Metro to get to the shopping district; now mind you when we got to the Sagrada Familia it was 10:45AM on Sunday so the traveling public was still sleeping in, but by now they were awake and all on the metro.  We jammed ourselves into the car, standing room only, with a stench of BO that you knew had killed every other living thing (less the people responsible) on that car.  For my part I was certain it wasn’t me, how pray tell would I know that, because I was holding onto an ape hanger to sturdy me and there was a poor women who must have been able to tell my deodorant (Mitchum, if you were wondering :)) about six inches from my armpit, she never moved, never made a sour face, nothing...I knew I was holding strong, I’ve never seen that Mitchum add, gross!!!  After that lovely ride we had to transfer to the L3, it was a fairly long walk underground but uneventful.  We popped up at the Lucie stop right on Las Ramblas, after orienting we made our way down the busy shopping esplanade and people watched before grabbing a Tapas (Ami did), and I had some sort of tuna salad concoction, I had a glass of water and Ami had a terrific Sangria (I tested it, it was yummy).  We “borrowed” the wifi and uploaded the pictures from the day.

We started back in the late afternoon after congratulating ourselves on traveling as the locals and without incident.  And for some reason Memrise has not taught me how to ask for the check so I asked the waiter “como se dice check in espanol”, he informs me that it’s “la quinta”, I said gracias as I knew I would need it in Cartagena tomorrow.  Turns out I did, but more on that tomorrow.  The walk back to the ship took about 50 minutes, nice breeze and nobody needed the draw bridge while we were on it so that was a plus!! We stopped to take a few photos and enjoyed the solitude of our stroll, just another beautiful day in Barcelona, until tomorrow...