Spain! Feb 1-4 (Barcelona)

Spain!
We got back from Spain yesterday, and since there are an awful lot of pictures, I guess we'll break these posts up into chunks. This shall be the first chunk, covering our adventures through Barcelona. The moral of the story shall be put in the last post (but to summarize, Spain was really great!)

February the First:

Our day began with an only slightly reduced amount of sleep (we did pretty good, for us!), and then bus 59A to bus 13A to a bus to Bratislava airport to our flight to Girona to our bus to Barcelona to a train to the central tourism office to a train to our hotel.

Highlights and observations from the day:

-SlovakLines busses to Bratislava provide you with Slovakian crossword(maybe?) puzzles. These you can't even guess what to do with.

-On the way from Vienna to Bratislava, there are all these trees with some sort of *bright green* parasite balls or vine or something. These are weird.

-There are also a couple of cute, very old Austrian cities on the way with old city walls and stuff.

-RyanAir is a crazy, crazy airline. Seating is done by who can squish their way ahead in line, and anyone who does web-check-in automatically gets to the head of the line. We did web check-in. Worked like a charm. We got exit-row. This time. (There were 3 RyanAir flights on this trip)

-Spanish busses are slightly more cramped than RyanAir

-A lot of spanish girls look very much alike.

-Our hotel concierge lady gave us a dinner recommendation to a place down the street. This place was really very fantastic. I had Noodles with Baby Eels, because I was feeling adventurous. Noodles with Baby Eels means that you get noodles, and mixed in with the yellow noodles are white and grey noodles, except those noodles are little baby eels. Surprisingly, as soon as you get over the fact that eating baby eels as if they were noodles is kind of gross, the dish was really great. I am on the hunt for the elusive red Guindilla chili, which I realize only now that I am an idiot not to have purchased it in Spain.

February the Second: Old Barcelona Day

We spent the day touring the old parts of Barcelona - the old town, the cathedral (which has a neat courtyard full of ducks, who apparently were (and are) used as an alarm. Our guidebook waxes poetic at this point: "They honk to this very day"), a tapas bar (the spanish use really yummy wine vinegars instead of balsamic vinegar + olive oil. This is, well, really yummy. Also, creme brulée crepes are yummy). We went to a concert of medieval spanish music. There was one musician who played a one-handed flute and a drum at the same time, beating out ridiculously complicated, fast rhythms in changing meeters while playing also complicated, fast melodies on her flute. Very neat.

February the Third/Fourth: New(ish) Barcelona Day

We spent this day touring Modernist architecture, starting with a tour of the Palace of Catalan Music (which is just beautiful inside, but doesn't allow pictures, except for the couple not-great ones I snapped secretly), moving down La Rambla, the 3rd-street-promenade of Barcelona except with live rooster shops instead of ice cream shops, going to home of "The Best Sandwich in the Entire World" according to the New York Times (unfortunately expectations were a little too high), the Opera house (pretty), and then...Gaudi!

Gaudi is the neatest architect ever. We saw 2 Gaudi sites on the third and one on the fourth. On the third it was pouring, pouring rain, but that was ok because Gaudi is the best architect ever. We went to La Sagrada Familia, his famous unfinished church (Will be done around 2030; Spain trip is planned for whenever it's ready), and to Casa Batllo, his whacky marine house with the most inane of audioguides. Sagrada Familia was really very inspiring and amazing, and the idea that it's going to get *taller* is kind of insane. We took lots of pictures but you really must go there to get a feel for it. We went up into the towers, which have pathways between them and insane sea-shell-inspired spiral staircases and let you get a sense of what the outside of the building looks like up-close. We got soaked with rain but it was mucho worth it.

Casa Batllo is a really neat house, except that the audioguide spends so much time telling you how neat and amazing it is that you almost stop believing it. Here's a quote: "You are now entering...the most extravagant and fantastic room...you have *ever* *been* *in*." or, in case you didn't know, "Imagination is the psychic faculty to see new forms..in your *own* *mind*" Lame. (But Casa Batllo was very much not lame.)

The next morning, we went to Park Güell, Gaudi's flirt with landscaping. We took a bus, then hiked up a hill for 30 minutes (we later realized there's another way up involving escalators. oops). The park is tourist central, with a ridiculous number of people sprawling themselves over the beautiful architecture and making thumbs-up gestures or what-not for photos. [soapbox]I never really got the point of avoiding areas where tourists go, since I too would be a tourist, but I get it now. Tourists are really annoying! [/soapbox] Anyway the Park was beautiful, and then you realize that the plaza is actually on top of a hall of columns, and next to one of the most amazing feats of architecture I've ever seen. He has a pathway under a wave of rocks, and you actually feel like you're inside of a moving wave. Except it's made of rocks. Madness.

Barcelona was really fantastic. It's a wonderful city, pretty easy to get to, great food, blah blah blah. A+ gold star.

Only going to show 20 photos per post, in the interests of bandwidth kindness to, well, Andrea. Click on that first photo of the trees to get you to the beginning of the Barcelona photoset.

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