I’m in Barcelona!! With Mira, Marda, and Sarah. Mira and I arrived last night around 1:30 am and took a bus to Placa Catalunya. Sarah and Marda flew in on Saturday, and so they were able to meet us at the Hard Rock Café in the Placa, and take us to the hostel. It’s an awesome hostel. Very clean and we have free internet and a really nice room straight out of an IKEA catalog. It’s about 54 euro for 3 nights. This morning we were so lazy- woke up around 10:30 and eventually left the hostel around noon to go explore. We wandered through this huge market that sold chocolate covered almonds, raisins, pig heads, tripe, cactus flower & coconut smoothies, mushrooms…anything you could think of!
We ended up finding a great little spot for lunch too, called Taller de Tapas. I had the best gazpacho of my life (sorry Mom), and a tapa plate with potatoes, fried egg, and chorizo (sausage). After lunch we set out on a quest for the Barcelona Pavilion- we took the metro to Espanya. We ended up stumbling upon it. We had decided to walk towards this big palace, and when we were about halfway up, we stopped on a terrace to turn and see the view, and there it was! We got in at the student price of 2.30 euro and took lots of pictures and sketched for a while.
Oct 19
After the Barcelona Pavilion, we wandered further uphill and found the Olympic Sport Complex, called the Institut Barcelona Esports. The “backyard” was this grand landscape with nothing but extruded shapes. It was rather odd looking and deserted, but intriguing nonetheless. It had a futuristic, space-like quality to it. Like a rendering without any scale figures.
We dropped off our sketchbooks at the hostel and went out to dinner at another tapas restaurant. I had a chicken, pineapple, apple salad with a suace similar to a Thousand Island dressing, tortillas patatas (egg with potatoes), musclos a la marinera (mussels in marinera), and caprice ice cream (crème brulee over ice cream with fudge sauce). Dessert wasn’t that great, but the rest was good- I wish there were more tapas restaurants around me.
Today we left “early” and walked from our hostel to La Sagrada Familia. I had to ask some people directions on the way, but we eventually found it after walking for about an hour or so. The line was long to get in, and we almost didn’t go, but it moved quickly, so we went inside for the student discount of 10 euros. The inside of the church is amazing. It is still under construction, which is unfortunate, but it will look amazing when it is done. There are beautiful stained glass windows that filter the light. I tried sketching, but the forms are so organic that it is hard to get the form right. And because of all the construction, the middle of the church is inaccessible.
After seeing La Sagrada Familia, we just had to see more Gaudi, so we walked to Casa Mila from La Sagrada. There were actually a number of modern buildings, all within the same block near the Casa Mila, that were interesting to look at too. And the restaurant/café we had lunch in definitely designed their interior around Gaudi’s ideas. After lunch we headed to Park Guell, which also was designed by Gaudi. It is at the very top of a hill, and you can see the Sagrada Familia from it, as well as the rest of the city. There are prescribed paths for you to take when you enter. We took the one that went down, and ended up in this wide open area. The “walls” of this open area was a long, continuous bench that wrapped around the space. People were relaxing in the sun, vendors were selling jewelry, and some guys were playing guitar. I ended up buying a pair of earrings that were made by the man selling them. He was very personable, asking if I wanted to practice my Spanish, which of course I said Yes! So our whole conversation was in Spanish. We stopped for ice cream on the way out, and by the time we got back to Placa Catalunya, we were tired of walking around. So we did a little bit of shopping (since our hostel was in the middle of a commercial area) and regrouped at the hostel. Dinner was at a Japanese buffet- stir fry, rice…very good. And we’re going to bed on the early side, since our train from Barcelona to Alicante is at 7 tomorrow morning. Alicante, Spain is where we are flying out of to Fes, Morocco.
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