To Barcelona and Back

In the interest of trying to spend as much time in airports as possible within a week's time, last Friday we left for Barcelona and spent the weekend there, coming back Monday morning. Barcelona is in the opposite corner of Spain in the northeast, on the Mediterranean Sea, but it's far enough away that you either fly or take the 15-hour train. We stayed in a fairly nice hostel close to the docks and one of the main streets, La Rambla, which has a large open area between the sides of the streets with street performers, restaurants/cafes, and people selling things from tents. We wandered into a big indoor market with tons of vendors selling fruit, fish, spices, and animals, such as whole pigs ready to roast. In the evening, we took the metro to the Plaza España, an area on a hill overlooking the city that has a famous fountain that has a show every night with colored lights and music.

Since Barcelona is a huge city and very spread out, we opted to get two-day passes for the hop-on-hop-off bus tour. We began Saturday morning by seeing some of the buildings designed by the modernist architect Gaudi. We started with a tour of the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral Gaudi began over 100 years ago and is still under construction (he has since passed away, but he wasn't worried about finishing it in his lifetime- he said his client was God and He had all the time in the world). It is an unusual combination of architectural styles; one side is Gothic, one side has modernist figures with very square features, and one side is incredibly elaborate and incredibly hard to describe. One side told the story of the nativity, another had images of the cruxificion, and another was the asencion. Later in the day we walked around a park Gaudi had designed as a community for rich people, but since the buildings were slightly odd the idea never caught on. Since it was raining on and off, for the rest of the day we rode the busses around to get a feel for the rest of the city, enjoyed some tapas, and ended up back at La Rambla.

On Sunday we toured one of Gaudi's most famous houses, the House of Bones or the Dragon house. The roof is designed with colorful tiles that look like scales on a dragon's back, the pillars in the front look like bones, and the balcony railings look like teeth. On the inside, there are staircases that look like vertibrae, ceilings that are swirled, and the center of the house represents the sea, with blue tiles and curved glass that looks like waves. But even though it looks a bit strange, the house is very livable since Gaudi came up with a lot of innovative features for lighting and ventilation.

In the afternoon we took the bus to the Spanish Village, which was built to house the athletes for the 1992 Olympics. Each area of the village was built in the style of a different region of Spain (every region of Spain does look pretty different) and now has artisians, shops, and restaurants you can walk around.

Later we went down to the beach, and for the first time ever that I have tried to go to a beach on the Med, it was actually sunny! It was cooler in Barcelona than Sevilla, but it was still beautiful and we were able to walk around on the sand for a while.

Barcelona is a lot different than Sevilla is. It is a lot bigger and feels like a big city, as well as being a lot more modern. The people are different too. The region Barcelona is in actually has it's own language, Catalan, so most the signs, menus, and news was in Catalan so it was hard to understand them. Pretty much everyone in the city speaks Spanish too, but since they are very proud of being Catalan, there were a couple people that refused to speak Spanish to me, choosing to try to speak English instead. We enjoyed seeing Barcelona because it is so different, and it is a beautiful city.

Well, I've been keeping mom and dad pretty busy for the last week, so I'll write more about other things we've done later. They leave early tomorrow morning to go back to the States, and they'll see some of you soon!