Barcelona

 

   After our four day pilgrimage along the northwest coast of Spain we could have gone home, but decided since we were here we should see more of the country. 

  From Santiago we flew to Barcelona on the Mediterranean. The parts of this large city that we saw consisted of broad avenues lined with five or six story apartment buildings. The avenues are planted to sycamore trees. The secondary streets are also lined with apartment buildings and many of these streets have sycamore trees. There is always a shady side of the street. 

 Connecting the secondary streets are narrower streets and alleys of apartment buildings some with small trees. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, scooters, bikes, and pedestrians swarm these streets in greater or lesser number depending on the time of day. 

  We arrived in Barcelona during rush hour. We were tired so we splurged and took a cab to our lodging. It was worth it. Our Airbnb was in a building on a narrow street. Martin was supposed to meet us there with the key, but he was not there. 

  Cars, bikes and people, mostly parents picking their kids up, passed on the narrow street. We were warm. A young boy opened the heavy grill entrance door with a big key and went in. After 15 minutes Martin’s assistant arrived with the keys. 

  We were on the fifth floor. Teresa and her suitcase went up first in the tiny antique elevator. The assistant yelled up the stairs for Teresa to close the elevator doors so it would come back down. 

  I went up in the elevator with my suitcase, then it was the turn of the assistant. She opened the door to our dark narrow apartment, turning on lights as she went. Bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. She pulled open the curtains, tall glass doors, and wooden shutters revealing our little balcony and the balconies of our neighbors. 

La vista

  The temperature would be in the 80s every day during our week in Barcelona. Only the bedroom had a/c. A couple fans moved air around the living room. On the spectrum between luxury and squalor, our apartment was “good enough”. After days of long hikes around the city, it was home sweet home to us. 

  After four days of ten mile hikes on our recent pilgrimage, walking a few miles a day around Barcelona was not daunting. People had told us to skip the Rambla, the tacky tourist avenue, home of numberless souvenir shops, outdoor restaurants all selling the same thing, and the most skillful pickpockets in Europe. Bring it on we said.

  The whole point of travel is to feel, touch, and smell a place different from home. The chatter of the parakeets in the trees, the aroma of strange foods, the feel of my wallet gripped in my front pocket, safe from Fagan’s gang. 

  The Rambla, like every other street in the city, was lined with apartment buildings. The business of the city takes place on the first floor: restaurants, cafes, bakeries, often with tables out front, clothing stores, gift stores, artisan’s shops, everything you couldn’t imagine. Add in the endless stream of humanity and it's a feast for the eyes.   

  At the bottom of the Rambla not far from the sea is the statue of Columbus atop a tall tower. I had no desire to go to the top. Teresa said, “The kids would say, ‘Just do it’”. I said “Whatever.” There was no line for the tower and it was only six euros. The operator of the tiny circular elevator spoke English. That alone was worth five euros. He knew Boston is called Beantown.  I told him that in Beantown they took down their Columbus statue. He mentioned Captain Cook and other expropriators. In Columbus’ day it was ok to kill people if they refused to dig in your mine. Captain Cook was skewered on the beach by the Hawaiians. Columbus died suing the king for back pay. 

Tear that statue down!

  The most rewarding place we visited was the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's fantastical church. This place deserves a post of its own so I’ll leave it for later. 

  The elevator operator in the Columbus tower told us we could escape the tourist traps by visiting the Park of the Labyrinth. I could see on my phone map that this park was three miles from our apartment. The phone map didn’t show it was mostly uphill. 

  Labyrinth day was warm, as the road inclined upward. Two old guys sitting by an ancient water pump invited us to cool ourselves, which we did. They had never heard of the Park of the Labyrinth. 

  The straight streets of the lower city now began to twist and turn. I have offline maps on my phone but the blue dot showing our location has as poor a sense of direction as I do. Sometimes we had to walk a hundred feet before we knew we were going the wrong way. The area was as busy as downtown, but as promised, there were no tourists except us bedraggled ones. I noticed a subway stop on the map.  After some zigzagging, we found it. A local showed us how to manage the tickets. 

  Once home I did the research I should have done earlier. I discovered there was a different subway station just below the labyrinth park. So next morning we rode there in comfort. As a bonus, the park was free on Sundays. We joined the line of families headed that way. The labyrinth is just one part of this park, once the estate of a wealthy family. 

  We entered the labyrinth and made our way between the tall cypress trees. Some people were looking at their phones. After research the next day, I realized they were following a map of the labyrinth. We could see people on a portico outside the labyrinth looking back down at us, but we couldn't reach them. After numerous dead ends, we stumbled on the place we had come in. Enough of that. 

Abandon hope all ye who enter here. 

  The next day we walked to another park only a mile away from our apartment where Gaudi had lived and practiced designs he would use for Sagrada Famlia. It's now a museum. It was not free during our visit. It never is. We felt we had blown our Gaudi wad touring the church a few days earlier, so after taking a few pics, we headed for the subway which we rode all the way down to the sea.  

  We ended up back at the Columbus Tower. To the right were the docks where the cruise ships and freighters come in. To the left was the beach. The beach was our goal.  To get to the the beach (there are several beaches stretching along the coast of the city) we had to pass a huge marina. It's good to see so many people are able to afford such massive vessels. We saw the contestants of the Ms Trans World Competition doing a publicity shoot. We stopped for a snack at a harborside café.  And still we had to traipse across a Red Bull skate park and past numerous tents purveying stuff made in Barcelona. 

  At last the sea appeared. Lots of people were enjoying a sunny day on the beach. A breeze spread the big decorative blankets proffered by the beach towel men. Other men delivered water, beer, and mojitos to the crowd. Catamarans zipped across the horizon. A guy on a board manipulated a hang glider sail overhead till it pulled him out to sea at a high rate of knots. 

  We had done our sightseeing duty. Time to head back to the apartment to rest before our late supper. We were living like the locals. A nearby subway stop carried us quickly back to home. 

  Walking around the streets of the neighborhood in the evening was like living in a Brueghel painting. This for me is the main incentive for leaving the fleshpots of Wannaska.