Barcelona

This is our last stop before returning to San Francisco. We’ve been on the road for over 9 weeks and although we do miss San Francisco now and then, we’re really not ready for the trip to end. We could just as easily get on a plane and go to North Africa and keep going south for a while. Once you get past the 2 month line, traveling gets very addictive.

We’re very familiar with this city. We’ve been coming here since 1994 and every couple of years we come back if for no other reason than to see the progress on the Sagrada Familia church. Antoni Gaudi started working on this church in 1882 and spent the last 15 years of his life working on nothing else. But then Gaudi died in 1926, run over by a tram while trying to get home. Since he never cared much for his personal appearance, he looked more or less like a bum and the Barcelona cab drivers drove right past him. After he was hit by the tram, it took a few days for one of his concerned friends to find him. The Pauper’s hospital they brought him too was one of the last places they looked. And when his friends tried to have him moved, Gaudi just refused and told him he belonged there with the poor. He died 5 days later and buried under the Sagrada Familia. It’s been said that over half the city mourned his death, which is kind of strange since most people thought he was a crazy lunatic while he was alive.
And even though Gaudi is now considered as one of the greatest architects of all times, it’s amazing his church is getting built. First of all, there were no blueprints. All of his work was built solely from sketches. He would show up every day and instruct the workmen on how to achieve his vision but not a plan to work from. When he died in 1926, the project was given over to one of his collaborators, the architect Domenech Sugranyes, but in 1935, during the Spanish Civil War, Gaudi’s workshop was firebombed by anarchists. Most all the drawings were destroyed
When the war was over, a few architects who knew and worked with the old master reconstructed versions of the original drawings and the project got underway again. It’s hard to say how much o it was Gaudi’s vision and how much of it is the vision of what the current architects thought Gaudi’s vision might have been. But with the current aid of computer generated details and designs it looks like it’ll actually get finished. The completion date is scheduled for 2026. That’s the good news.
The strange news is that so many people have had their hand in this project that it can get a bit bizarre and totally confusing. In many ways the original Gaudi elements tend to look old and almost out of date compared to the Gaudiesque additions. And then there is very modern, angular and controversial  “Passion” entrance by Catalan artist Josep Subirach. I won’t add my voice to the controversy. Lets’ face it. The Subirachs side was done 90 years after the Gaudi side. I actually like them both, but I’ll agree, they really don’t work well together. It looks likes two different churches.

Speaking of things that didn’t work well together, our new trendy hotel across the street from the Gotic cathedral in the Bario Gotic was horrible. I can’t (in all honesty) say it was a bad hotel. The lobby was dark but trendy. The floors were very dark with only pin spot lighting on the numbers of the guest rooms. This would have been OK if you opened the door to your room and it was warm and bright and had a view of something. Unfortunately, ours didn’t. When we asked for an upgrade or at least a room with one large bed, we were told we rented an executive room and all the executive rooms came with twin beds only. We got the same answer when we asked for a larger room or a brighter room or a room with a view of something besides the dark walls of tired old building. “All our executive rooms are like this one.” And, of course, all the standard rooms and superior rooms were ‘fully booked”. I love this line.
According to the cancellation policy we had to spend one night at the Hotel Grand Central or forfeit one night’s rate. And so we dropped our bags in the room and hit the streets.
It didn’t take very long. We were going to get a room at Le Meridien Hotel on the Ramblas. It was close and we know the hotel. We stayed there in the late 90’s. Lucky for us the front desk manager told us if we came back on the day we wanted to check in we might be able to get a better “last minute” rate up to 30% less that he could offer today. Fine, we’ll come back tomorrow. But then, almost immediately after we left Le Meridien, we noticed the brand new Hotel 1898. “Hey, we haven’t confirmed anything yet” I said. “Let’s check it out.”
A few minutes later we handed them our credit card and booked one of the best rooms we stayed in the entire trip. It had warmth and beauty. It had a great view and lots of light. It was quiet and the hotel had great service. And we had free internet. In the executive room we just checked out of at the Hotel Grand Central we had to pay extra for it.
And to make it even more appealing, the room at the Hotel 1898 was a mere  5 euros more per day than the Hotel Grand Central.

With just 2 days left, we had a quick agenda;
A walk along the Ramblas.
I know this can be a pretty touristy and cheesy part of the city, but we just can’t seem to get enough of it. No matter how many times we stroll this street, the people watching is always too good. We rate the street mimes in Barcelona the best in the world, and we usually hate street mimes. Their small performance spaces line adjacent to each other covering at least 1 km of the street, like some sort of Cocteau inspired statuary. For the most part they’re your typical gold or silver variety, but Barcelona is a vibrant city and the more experienced models have created kind of an arcade style attraction to their costume. They’ll hide in a portable box, occasionally wagging a finger to the crowd, trying to seduce a passerby with some loose change. The crowd will build but they’ll wait patiently. Someone will drop a 20 euro cent coin into their box but it won’t be enough. Sometimes even a euro isn’t enough. But eventually the price is paid and they come screeching out of the box like a banshee from hell. We all know it’s coming but it still scares the hell out of everyone when it comes.
Ghouls, goblins and fantasy creatures are always a big hit on the Ramblas but there is a good representation of Hollywood screen legends, rock stars, Che Guevara, Billy the Kid and this year, soccer players keeping a ball in the air for 10 minutes or more as the crowd cheered them on. Yes, there are always a crowd. We’ve been here in the fall, spring and summer and it’s always packed.

Getting lost in the Bario Gotic.
Even with a map, the small web of streets can be confusing and you’ll always scrach your hear when you end up back again on Calle de Ferran between the twin governement buildings in the Placa de Sant Juame. They look so much alike you can’t remember which side of the street you were on the last time you were there. The Bario Gotic is one of the oldest medieval cities in Europe. There are even remnants of the old Roman city, Castrum, in the Placa del Rei and built into the walls of the Cathedral. The city’s history actually goes back further than that. Supposedly it was founded by Hercules before the Carthaginian Hamiclar Barca (the father of Hannibal) rebuilt it as Barcino in the 3rd century BC.
The Museo de Picasso is one of the big attraction of the old quarter. Then, any Picasso museum in Europe is usually crowded. The great painter spent his youth here and in 1970 he donated a lot of his early works from the Barcelona years to the museum. There are drawings from his childhood, paintings from the blue period and paintings made during his early 1900’s relationship with the Russian dancer Olga Koklova. Over the years from 1970 till now, the museum collection has grown and now there are over 3500 pieces (paintings, sculptures, drawings and ceramics). And more pieces mean more publicity and more publicity mean more people and more people mean longer lines and longer lines mean we didn’t stay around to see it on this visit.
But as I said, we come here often.

Visiting the Modernista houses along the Passeig de Gracia
There is a lot more to the modernista movement than just Antoni Guadi, although Gaudi’s work is really amazing and he is possibly the defining achitect of the city. He had a genuine feel for natural shapes and his building almost feel as if they have an organic quality. They also look as if they were the inspiration for every science fiction comic book I read throughout the 1950’s. His “Casa Batllo” has the presence of an underwater palace, which might have been influenced by the fact that he was a big fan of Jules Verne.
No one really knows how he did it. His parabolic arches were enormous and structurally untested, and yet, they’ve lasted (without damage) for close to 100 years. In his workshop at the Sagrada Familia you can see some of his models where he used gravity to form the shapes by placing weights into interconnected string sculptures. He figured if it would work upside down, it should work inverted the other way. It turned out he was right. Either it was really good guess or the guy knew more about structural strength than anyone else.
I read somewhere that suppposedly Gaudí was color blind. If this was true he’s even more amazing. Light and color are such an important part of his creations. How he did it no one knows.

Gaudi might be revered as the father of Modernista architecture these days but history has a wonderful way of rewriting itself. While he was alive his buildinsg were given names like the “boneyard” or “quarry” and he was ridiculed by his peers. If it wasn’t for the rich industrialist Eusebi Guell, there might not have been many buildings at all. When George Orwell came to Barcelona as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War he reported Gaudi’s architecture to be horrid. Lucky for us, opinion has changed. Otherwise these great houses and buildings might have been torn down.

In 1908 Gaudí's was invited to bid on a design fro a New York Skyscraper, but the design was rejected. Nonetheless, the drawings still exist and they were re-proposed for the redesign of the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks. It was considered for about a minute. The drawing to the left is a detail from the 9/11 proposal featuring the Gaudi building.

But as I mentioned, there’s a lot more to the modernisa movement than just Gaudi. The Palau de la Musica Catalana is another of my favorite buildings. It’s grand brick and glazed tile building not only accents the culture of Art Nouveau, it tips a nod to the early Moorish influence in Spain. The exterior is clever and understated and the interior is fantasy stained glass. The Music theatre, designed by Lluis Domenech i Montaner opened in 1908. Unfortunately it was under the wraps of renovation when we got there. But once again, we’ve been here before so we weren’t totally disappointed. Now we’ll get to come back to the newly refurbished Palau de la Musica Catalana.

I included a photo from 1994, our first visit to Barcelona. Yep, that's me at the ticket window of the Palau de la Musica Catalana.

But speaking of disappointment, on our way to the Music Hall we were walking down Calle de Sardenya back towards the Barrio Gotic when we were hite by the Barcelona Bird Poop Scam. We were somewhere in the L’Eixample district between Carrer de Casp and Carrer d’Ausias March when Gretchen dropped her sunglasses. As she bent down to pick them up, a young guy came out of the apartment house we stopped in front of. He walked by us and then stopped, turning towards me and pointing out that a bird had just shit on Gretchen’s head. Gretchen replied, “shit, it must have just happened as I leaned over to pick up my glasses.” The young guy, a nice college student type with a small backpack, handed me a tissue and I started wiping it off. The strange thing was that it didn’t look like bird poop. It was brown and runny. I thought maybe someone in the building had tossed a pile of cat or dog poop down on us. As I was cleaning to poop from Gretchen’s head, the guy pointed out that the bird got her shirt too and within a minute he pointed out that it was all over her; her head, her shirt, her pants, both front and back. He started joking with us, everything from “it’s good luck” to get pooped on by a pigeon to “wow, it must have been an elephant”
Soon he motioned for us to follow him back inside the building, and stupid us, we followed him in. We thought this was his home and he was bringing us in to help clean us off. Oh hindsight is so painful.
He showed us a bench in the foyer and motioned for us to sit. He pulled a bottle of water from his bag and handing us more tissue. Then, as we were cleaning the stuff from Gretchen, he pointed out that I too had been pooped. Sure enough, there were spots on my shirt and a large glob on my shoulder bag. More tissue and more water followed. I was cleaning Gretchen, he was cleaning me out. We stayed in the foyer with his bottle of water and tissue. He smiled, waved “good luck” and walked out the door.
It took about 10 minutes to realize I’d been picked, another 15 minutes to get back to the hotel, but in that 25 minutes he had already tried to use all three credit cards in my wallet, trying to take out 2500 euros from each card. It was the only time I was ever happy about the 300 euro limit withdrawal from the ATM machines. And since he didn’t have my PIN numbers he probably just the threw the cards away along with my drivers license and proof of medical insurance (and my Bell Market discount card and Costco membership). All in all he got about $320 worth of cash. I can’t believe I just went to the ATM and withdrew 220 euros about an hour earlier.

As I searched the internet for more information on the bird poop scam, I found it. Yes, others have fallen victim to the same scam and in the same neighborhood.

I also discovered Barcelona is known by many as the “Capital of Pickpockets”, although I’m sure there are a lot of cities competing for this dubious title. But when you have the major part of tourism defined to a very small section of the city, it’s literally like shooting fish in a barrel. It the crowds of the Ramblas and the barrio Gotic it easy for a tag team to cause a distraction by bumping someone from the front while the partner thief in the back is picking the contents from a bag or pants pocket. I thought I was so savvy when it came to protecting my valuables. It was an expensive lesson.

The agent a the hotel told us we could go to the police to report the crime but they would keep us there for close to three hours and even if the thief was caught, he would spend one night in jail and be out the next day. There was not much he could do.

It was the last day of the trip. As I said at the beginning of this journal, we were ready to continue on for another week, month, whatever. We definitely weren’t looking forward to getting on a plane and returning to the US. But when you’re sitting in a hotel room with no cash and no credit cards, the trip home doesn’t look so bad.
Anyway, he got into my pocket but he didn’t get into Gretchen’s. And so we enjoyed the rest of the day, had a good meal in the Barrio Gotic and the next morning we were off to the airport.

But we'll be back. We have to come back. There were so many buildings under wraps; so any new and exciting architectural projects going up. I'll just be more careful next time. I promise..