Gaudacious!I am now firmly in the camp with everyone who didn't get robbed (and maybe a few that did) in Barcelona: we love it. It's center oozes "cool". For a place that gave me such a bad first impression, I now consider it among my favorite "big cities" in Europe.
Em and I stayed, primarily, at Sant Jordi Arago right off of Arago and Passeig de Gracias (a main road in town). It is yards away from the Gaudi masterpiece Casa Batllo. It's skeletal frame and soft curves with bright colors give off a vibe that is as whimsical as it is macabre.
The hostel organizes regular events (pub crawls and dinners) so on our 2nd day we headed to Frico's for the FC Barcelona vs Manchester United. It was the game EVERYONE was talking about. The ramblas were overwhelmed by ManU fans supporting their team. Every newspaper, every nook of the city was ready to explode if Barcelona could manage the upset. Naturally, we were root root rooting for the home team. Not because I care about the sport (much less the team) but because I am always a fan of people making noise until 5a. After a hard fought match, the game ended the way it began: 0-0. Excuse me while I hock up a cheek busting 25cl mouthful of loogie and spit it right onto the steps of Sagrada Familia. How can a tie for a game so big possibly be acceptable? This is the champions league! I just don't get it. Games should have winners and losers. A tie should leave everyone feeling miserable and yet there were people still in the streets reenacting parts of the game; "Remember when the guy from Brazil went like this :moves feet around: yeah!" Oh who cares...
The next day we were off to Sagrada familia, Gaudi's most famous work in progress. The Cathedral is expected to be finished in 2026 for the 100th anniversary of his death. The nativity facade is amazing in it's intricacy. It is like Gaudi decided to melt an existing cathedral. When all is said and done it is expected to be 550ft tall. To put that in perspective, the Dom of Cologne is "only" 515ft. Given our extra days in Barcelona we decided not to go inside since we would have only been able to see the first floor (no climbing the towers) and even then we had 30 minutes before it closed. So we instead marveled at it from the outside (apparently the consensus from everyone is that the inside is a bit disappointing).
On Friday, we were rounding out our final day in Barcelona with a girl we met at the hostel. We did a tour of Mont Juic (trying to catch the Magic Fountain which, outside of the summer tourist season, only has shows on Friday and Saturday. The fountain was built in the 20s but suffered from years of neglect. When the olympics were awarded to Barcelona it was fully refurbished and has been wowing visitors ever since with its mix of lights, water and music. Unfortunately, we showed up a little late and only caught the tail end of it. One more thing on the next time list...along with the inside of Sagrada Familia.The next day we got our bus to Andorra la Vella which Em will tell you about...
--Joey
1 comment:
Oh good. We were afraid you had been so overwhelmed by Salamanca that you weren't going to be able to blog again. Or was it just too boring?
Glad you saw some Gaudi - Orwell called it a truly ugly cathedral. But then, he was being shot at while he was in Barcelona so perhaps he was a little unfair.
We'd love to see some more pictures. Tia told me that Baba told her that you loved Andorra because it looked like "Pam's Christmas village on crack."
We checked it out on google image.
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