Marty Stepp

More about Marty and Jessica’s adventures in Barcelona, Sep 19 – 23, 2009!

One random drawback to Barcelona I haven’t mentioned yet was the Catalan language.  Apparently back in the olden days, lots of the regions and territories of Spain had their own languages.  Barcelona’s local language was called Catalan.  As these regions were taken over or merged to become the current nation of Spain, most of them have had to adopt Spanish as their official language to get along with everybody else.  But Barcelona’s Catalan is still deeply infused into the town and its people and culture.  The locals all know Spanish, but Catalan is their preferred language.  If you see signs for things, like at the subway or a restaurant, chances are they’re in Catalan.  If you’re lucky, they give you two or three versions of a sign: Catalan, then Espanol, then maybe English.  But it’s confusing, since Catalan is kinda-sorta similar to Spanish, but they’re different.  Lots of words are spelled similarly but with 1-2 letters different, or a different accent, or some such thing.  I don’t mean any disrespect to the Catalan culture or the people of Barcelona; it’s kind of like the Irish Gaelic language when I visited Dublin.  But if you’re a gringo American trying to learn a little Spanish by looking at signs and listening to people, Barcelona is a bad place to learn.  And I wasn’t interested in learning Catalan since it isn’t used much at all outside that city/area.  Oh, well.

The rest of our stay in Barcelona was much warmer than the one rainy day we had previously.  We were able to bust out the short sleeves for the daytime, thank God.  There are a lot of people out walking or on rented bikes or mopeds.  I really wanted to rent a moped for a day (you can do so for 20-25 Euros) but we didn’t find time to do so.  I wouldn’t drive a motorcycle around in the States, but here the traffic just has a different flow that is, while chaotic and busy, more amenable to smaller vehicles such as bikes, mopeds, and smart cars.  I like the complete lack of SUVs and minivans; that’s how it should be.

We took the metro to Barceloneta, a neighborhood in southeast Barcelona that is right on the beach.  It was a great sunny day for it.  We walked along the beach boardwalk full of yummy looking seafood restaurants.  I bought a sexy pair of dark blue sunglasses with white flames on them (these were the least bad pair they had for sale, IMO).  We made our way to the beach.  We actually didn’t swim since we wanted to see the sights, but there were a lot of people out on the sandy beach sunbathing and swimming in the Mediterranean.  Jessica says that some beaches in Spain are topless, or at least are fine with people walking around with no tops on.  After careful examination I can say that I did not spot any such women at this particular beach.

After hanging out at the beach for a while we went to the Teleferica, a cable car that takes you from Barceloneta to the top of an area called Montjuic Hill.  Montjuic is an area that has some pretty grassy parks as well as a couple of nice museums and a large castle.  The ride in the cable car was pretty neat, since we got to see a bird’s eye view of the entire city of Barcelona from all angles.  We were close to the water so we could see the shipping harbors and boats and that sort of thing.  We could also see the entire city skyline and on a sunny day, Barcelona is one pretty city.  Probably the only downside of the cable car is that it was standing-only and they cram people into it like sardines, so you don’t get lots of space to look around.  Luckily we crammed ourselves against a well chosen edge of the car to give ourselves a good view.

Once we got to the top of Montjuic, we decided to skip the museums and go to the castle.  It was built in the 17th century and added onto in the 18th; they used it as a lookout and to hold prisoners or something.  It is a pretty impressive sight, and they let you walk right in for free and have the run of the place.  There are several levels you can go up, each with a better view than the last.  The castle has these giant cannon turrets mounted all around it that you can walk right up and stand on.  I got my picture taken in front of one of them, wearing my lightning bolt shades no less; I made it my Facebook profile picture.

One thing about countries other than the USA is they don’t work so hard to try to stop you from being an idiot and hurting yourself.  So for example, there were several parts of the castle that had just a low (shin-level) wall and then an 80 foot drop to the death.  There would be a small sign saying the Spanish equivalent of, “Careful, don’t step this way, you will die.” with a picture of a stick man falling on his head with ouch marks coming out.  (Should have taken a picture of that!)

The view from the top of the castle was spectacular.  Jess and I spent a while just sitting on benches up there soaking in the city as the sun slowly set.

As the evening drew to a close, we hopped on a special slanted metro that took us back down Montjuic Hill, but not to the Barceloneta neighborhood; it took us closer to the southwest end of the Barri Gotic thoroughfare that we’d been to several times.  We turned down some more hashish and passed by more street performers.  One annoying fad here is that they sell these little cheap plastic devices that you can stick in your mouth and it turns your voice really high and squeaky like a chipmunk.  The street perfomers were all wearing them and using them to scream at the top of their lungs in shrill chipmunk voices at everyone.  People were laughing and seemed to think it was funny, but I could have done without it.

La Rambla and the Barri Gotic is the general area of choice if you want a good dinner.  Jess and I went to a really nice place called La Fonda that was recommended by Jess’s Rough Guide book.  We had noticed it on a previous night, but it had a huge line out the door, so we skipped it.  This time, it was half empty for whatever reason, so we went in.

Not only was it really good and had good atmosphere, but it was way cheaper than any other dinner we had in Barcelona.  We got a giant mixed paella along with wine and salad and other such things.  If you haven’t had paella, it’s basically a sauced rice dish with various meats in it.  There are some gross shellfish in there that are hard to pull apart and actually eat, but the meat inside tastes lobstery and is probably worth the trouble of extricating from the shelly nastiness.

The next morning I woke up and for whatever reason felt extremely ill.  I was numb all over my body and could hardly get myself out of bed.  I also felt nauseated and had no appetite and was sweating and feverish.  Not good.  Jess and I decided that we should still try to go do things and have a normal day, since it was our last full day in town and it would be a shame to waste it sitting around the hotel room.

We went back to La Rambla and tried to find a restaurant with mild, safe food that I could eat.  We settled on this vegetarian place.

I ordered some soup and a fruit drink.  (TMI alert!)  Before my food arrived I had to go and hurl in the men’s room.  This was embarrassing because the men’s and women’s rooms shared a sink and several patrons got to watch me refunding my various digestive contents.  After that I felt a little better so I weakly ate my soup and drink and stumbled out of there, still with very low energy.

After eating we walked to a cathedral called La Seu that was designed by Gaudi, the same uber-famous Spanish architect who did the Sagrada Familia.  This one you can walk right into for free, which is nice.  It’s a big church with high ceilings and lots of gated-off holy displays along the walls.  Each display has a row of small light bulbs in front of it that look like candles with a coin slot next to it.  If you drop a 2-Euro coin in the slot, one of the “candles” lights up for the day.  I guess the worshipping Catholics like to light candles in front of certain displays to pay tribute.  So this is a watered-down version of that where you can pretend to light a candle by paying 2 Euros.  Most displays had 2-3 candles lit or less.  I guess the public isn’t buying into this particular product today.

The Seu has a central open courtyard with a gated area that includes a pond of ducks and geese.  They swim right up to you and let you take nice pictures of them.  There are also several medium-sized fountains spouting water in this area.  Tourists and locals were filling up their plastic water bottles with this water and holding them with pride, as though this were extremely rare and valuable water that didn’t come from the same pipes as the rest of the city’s water.  Perhaps it has been blessed by the church, but I am not aware.

After La Seu Jess and I did a bit of shopping.  Jess made me wait while she checked out all the admittedly pretty Spanish dresses and clothes for sale.  I think all stores that sell girls’ clothes should have a section in the back for the boys who are stuck waiting.  They could stock it with the usual staples like an X-box and beer and porn and so on.  Or at least a seat would have been nice.

After that I did my usual ritual, passed down from my father, of buying a T-shirt from every new place I travel.  The “place shirts” are mostly pretty hideous, so finding a less-hideous one can take a while.  I settled on an understated brown one that says “Barcelona” and will probably sit in the back of the closet.

Next we walked to the east side of town to a large park called Parc de la Ciutadella.  This was a very pretty grassy park with trees and little rolling hills.  It was another nice day out, so there were plenty of people out just lounging under trees, walking dogs, jogging, and playing frisbee and soccer.  Some guys were working in one corner of the park setting it up for the start of some kind of week-long festival to begin the next day.  They were setting up a music stage and sound system.  They were testing the speakers by playing various music loudly for spans of a few minutes at a time.  They played Hotel California and some old Guns and Roses songs.  I guess if your speakers can handle that, you’re good to go.

Lastly Jess and I went to a bookstore and I picked up some reading for the plane trips to come: The Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, by Nassim Taleb (about extremely rare events / people and how much they shape soceity), and Pygmy, by my man Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and author of choice for angsty early-20s American boys.

After the bookstore I had no energy left, so I went home without dinner and left Jess to do more shopping and to eat her own supper alone.  I went back to the hotel and fell right to sleep.  She showed up a few hours later.  She was a sweetie and brought me some light foods to eat, like a banana and some crackers.  We went to bed early because the next morning was our flight to Serrano, Italy (next blog post!).

On the plane I let Jess read the Swan book, and I took Pygmy.  It’s written from the view of a teenage immigrant boy, and the whole thing is written in pidgin English.  Uh oh.  Chucky, are you sure this was a good idea?  The damn thing is hard to read.

…

That was the extent of my time in Barcelona.  It is a great city to visit, probably more fun overall than Madrid, at least in my experience.  It has beaches, it’s a bit warmer, it seems to have a more clear and accessible food / shopping / entertainment district in La Rambla that is fairly tourist-friendly, and so on. My analogy would be that Madrid is their New York City and Barcelona is their Southern California.

There were also some other interesting sights in Barcelona I didn’t get to see, such as the Tibidabo cathedral and amusement park atop a hill, the Parc Guell which was also designed by Gaudi, the Museo Picasso which is a museum housing many of Pablo Picasso’s best works (we planned to see this but skipped it due to my sickness), and renting a moped, and so on.  I felt like I could easily have spent 3-4 more days there and had a great time.  Plus the weather was great even though Madrid was a bit more cloudy and chilly on this particular visit.