The Barcelona 100

Today marks a momentous occasion. This is my hundredth post, and what better way to celebrate than posting about my adventures in Barcelona, Spain‽ Thank the stars for the concordance of trips and posts into such an opportune time. It was a wonderful time, and I fulfilled one of my life dreams by going to Barcelona. However, before I talk too much about Barcelona, I'll tell you more about Teddy's visit. We spent the first day of her visit here in Madrid, exploring Puerta del Sol, the Prado, the cathedral behind the Prado, and Plaza Mayor.

The Prado is that-a-way, man.

As we were outside of the Prado, we were approached by an older man who started to talk to us and ask us about Madrid. We were obviously tourists, pouring over our maps, and I wasn’t necessarily happy to be approached by a well-meaning but overly-helpful Madrileño. He asked us how much Spanish we knew, and said that we should practice Spanish everyday for eight hours for several weeks if we really wanted to get good at it. Who has the patience and the free time to study Spanish for that long?

There was a cathedral behind the Prado, and I wanted to see inside it. The man, very kindly, asked if he could come with us, and we couldn’t exactly say no. We walked up the steps (on a red carpet, mind you) to the entrance, and we walked in on the middle of a wedding. The cathedral was full of people, and the bride, groom, and priest looked small as they stood at the end of the nave. We made our visit brief, and were out in front of the cathedral in no time. The older man did not overstay his welcome by much, as Teddy wanted to listen to a guitar player in the shadow of the Prado, and the older man wanted to go to the Botanical Gardens nearby.

The following day, we got on a Renfe train, and three hours and a lot of Spanish countryside later, we arrived in Barcelona. Barcelona, say it slowly and let it roll off your tongue. Barcelona, city of dreams and magic and wistful futures, of voyages and crossroads. We had arrived.

Leaving the apartment early in the morning

You bet your bottom that's a Renfe train.

What the Spanish countryside can look like.

We got our tourist Metro tickets, and then we were off on the Metro to our hostel in the Gothic Quarter. Our first night was to be at the hostel Alberg Palau, and we wandered the narrow, winding streets of the Gothic Quarter before finding the correct, cozy little side street where our lodgings were located. I had never stayed at a hostel before, so this was going to be quite an experience.

I was really surprised when we arrived at the hostel and it was so clean and neat. It took up an entire floor of a building from the nineteenth-century, and all of the rooms circled around a central skylight. The windows were always open, and you could see across the courtyard into every part of the hostel (well, every part of the hostel which wasn’t a room). Every room got light, especially the breakfast nook.

Look at the happy frog! How can you not trust that frog?

I did not remember to take a picture of the common areas of the hostel, but I did manage to find the drawing I had made in order to get from the train station to our hostels.

Teddy and I were put into a room with five other chicas, one from Seville and the other four from France. We had French doors which opened onto a balcony overlooking the street below. There was no air conditioning, but a nice breeze came through the door. We settled our stuff down, made an itinerary, and were off to wander around Barcelona.

We saw a bit of Las Ramblas, although we didn’t spend too much time there, and we got lost and distracted looking at clothes - especially kurta pants, which are all the rage in Spain. We wandered over to La Cathedrale de la Santa Maria del Mar (who knows if that is correct). Interestingly enough, we caught the tag-end of a wedding at the Maria del Mar. Two cathedrals and two weddings in two days. Go figure.

We walked along the Carrer de Colom (they say “carrer” instead of “calle” for street in Barcelona, I think) and towards the marina just as the sun was setting. The air was moist and cool, and the sky was pink and cold. In the middle of the sky, there was a little glowing white wedge. Any pictures I have taken don’t do justice to the atmosphere and the immensity of the marina, the street, the sky, the moment.

Sunday morning, were off to see the Sagrada Familia. A few stops on the Metro and we found ourselves blinking in the sudden sunlight at the mass of towers that is the Temple of the Sacred Family. I was incredibly excited, because I had wanted to go to Barcelona and see buildings by the famous architect Antoni Gaudi for nearly five years. (That is a quarter of my life span, by the way. If I have any older readers, like Mom and Dad, that isn’t much to someone like you who is much wiser and has experienced more, but my perspective changes when I put the years into percentages. I hope yours does, too.)

We bought our tickets and the use of an audio guide, and we were on our way into the cathedrale amidst the milling crowds.

I am happy.

Despite being in the process of achieving my dreams, I was a little dissatisfied as we entered the cathedral. There were a lot of people and it was rather warm out, making me sticky and sweaty, which took up a lot of my patience, but then I had problems with my camera. First of all, my camera wasn’t taking crystal-clear pictures every time like I expected it to. Secondly, everyone I asked to take a picture of me didn’t know what they were doing. It gets boring if you take a picture of someone and they’re standing in the middle of the frame in every single photo, full-body shot. There is a reason why the viewfinder and the digital camera preview were invented: you can see your picture before you take it, which means that you can crop the picture and make it artistic, or at least interesting!

Note: As you can tell, I did not take this picture, which is why I don't particularly care for it.

Anyway, this was a momentous occasion in my life, and I wanted to document it well – not have a collection of poor, blurry pictures as remnants of my memories. I didn’t want to spend all of my time taking and retaking pictures until they came out, either. (Yes, Mom, this is a blatant plea for a new camera for my birthday.)

I was also disappointed by how incomplete the cathedral was. I knew it was still under construction, but I hadn’t realized how much it needed. Much of the area where the altar will go is unfinished, and there was nary a hint of a pew. The audio tour expected it to be done by 2030. That’s a whole lot of work which needs to be done on the cathedral in twenty years by about 200 or so people. I take solace in the fact that the exorbitant fees charged by the Sagrada Familia are the only way that construction continues on the cathedral. Now Teddy and I have contributed a little piece of the Sagrada Familia, along with millions of other people.

Nevertheless, it is still a beautiful, beautiful building. My immediate impressions were that it was a gigantic sandcastle.

Sandcastle!

The colors were really, really beautiful, like a watercolor rainbow.

After the Sagrada Familia, we checked into Sunday night’s accommodations, Hostel New York. We had our own room this time, although it was on the fourth floor, had one tiny little window, and no air circulation. The hostel was kind enough to give us a fan which we kept running constantly. Hostel New York was nowhere near as quaint or personable as Alberg Palau, but not all things can be equal. After a quick change of costume in our room, Teddy and I were ready to hit the beach.

The view from the Alberg Palau, where we stayed the first night.

Thus ends the first installment of the Barcelona adventure. This post has already gone on way too long, and I have lost so many details and thoughts just getting the bare bones of what we did down.