London, Barcelona and Home!

It's Monday, July 20.  I'm off to work in a bit, but decided to update the blog first.  Since I'm again at an Internet cafe and can't post pictures yet, I'll put in text and add photos when I get home.  Come back in a few days...pictures should be fantastic.

So much has gone on...after getting back from Berlin I had two very good classes at the North London School.  One class got out of hand with several students over my limit; we still managed to have a great class.  The second was just under limit and both days seemed to be good ones.  Then back to work on Monday after teaching both weekend days.  

Monday afternoon I left from the clinic and met Gloria at Heathrow, where we found the correct terminal and boarded our flight to Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain.  We arrived at 10 pm local time, to a very poorly marked and un-tourist-friendly airport.  We had a guidebook that told us to take the A1 bus to the Placa Catalunya; we found an A2 bus and the girl in front of us told us it would get us there.  On the way to the plaza, Gloria noticed a sign of Caller Sant Antoni, the street our hotel was on, so we jumped off the bus.  Then after looking around, we decided to take a taxi instead of trying to find our way.  The taxi took us about three blocks, to a very nice hotel--the best of our trip.  We had a lovely Spanish balcony with wrought iron railings and shutters, that looked over the busy street below.  Quite nice.  (Though here you're seeing a demonstration by Catalunyan Nationalists who were marching and singing only a block from our balcony.)  After settling in at 11 pm (which was really 10 by our body clocks) we went out for a short walk, found a sidewalk cafe, and had a glass of sangria.  We liked Barcelona already.

Tuesday morning we were up late and got our beach things together, then walked down the main tourist walkway, called La Rambla--it's from an arabic word for 'the river' and it was a river of traffic, at all the hours we were on it.  We walked down the hill, admiring tourist stands, flower vendors, bird markets, street entertainers and a large market of produce, before arriving at the seaport at the bottom of the hill, where Christopher Columbus stands atop a huge column pointing to the New World.  While he truly had little connection to Barcelona, this is the place he came back to when he told Ferdinand and Isabella of his discovery of the New World.  We turned left and walked along the seafront, past marinas and beautiful buildings; a right down a neighborhood took us to Barcoleneta Beach, where we spent the day.  Fantastic, though the surf was pretty strong and the stones were a bit big.  But a good beach day.  And look at this whale!  It's another design by Gehry, whose work I saw in Berlin.

That afternoon we walked back home, through the old town Barri Gotic, to see the cathedral, through the St Josep market, and found our way back out after a shower, to a decent meal in a fancy restaurant, of paella--a great dish of saffroned rice and seafood.  Unfortunately, this wasn't a great paella, especially at the price we paid.  Back to the hotel through interesting and foreign streets for wine and sleep.

Wednesday we chose to have a tourist day, which I began with a great breakfast down the street.  Then we took the Metro--a new and fantastically smooth system, probably from the 1992 Olympics--to the Familia Sagrada cathedral.  This was incredible.  It's an old fashioned cathedral such as one would have built in the Middle Ages, but it's still in progress.  They've been building for 110 years, and have 30 or 40 to go.  The main architect was a man named Gaudi, and after looking at the museum in the cathedral, we had a better sense of his work.  From the outside one facade of the cathedral looks like a sand-dripped sand castle--like a cathedral on acid.  The pillars inside are twisted and angled, and branching into three columns at the top, so that you almost feel you're in a forest.  The more you look, the more you admire Gaudi's genius.  It was a high point for me.

We then walked to the Palau (Palace) of Catalunyan Music and bought tickets for a Saturday night guitar concert; then proceeded to the Picasso Museum.  Picasso lived off and on in the Gothic Quarter of the town, and several houses have been turned into a museum, which was quite wonderful.  His output was amazing, and we really enjoyed this one.  We also heard several nice street musicians, including this harpist.  After, more sangria in a tapas bar, purchases on the way home for a supper of bread, cheese, olives and wine in the room, and an early night in.

We alternated, so the next day was another beach day, at a new place called Mar Bella, farther south, with gentler waves, less rocks and cleaner water.  We spent a full day there, then again a nice dinner out.  Friday, again we were the tourists--were we ever!  We took a funicular (actually a cog railway in a tunnel) up the Montjuic--the old Jewish cemetary mountain that was the site of much of the Olympics--where we first visited the Miro Museum.  This isn't an artist I care to see again, though Gloria enjoyed some of his work.  I couldn't find it.  We walked on to the Olympic Stadium, to the Catalunyan Museum, which was the old Exhibition Hall palace from 1920's I believe.  The closer we got the more impressive it became.  When on the bus to the airport at the end of our journey I saw the front view from afar; I found a reason to return to Barcelona.   After viewing the Olympic torch ring, we next walked all the way to the top of the mountain to the Castello, or fort.

Incredible.  Lots of stone work, a very impregnable-looking overlook of the entire bay and city.     The views were spectacular, the fort was fascinating, the food was great, and it was another highlight.  But, we got lost on the way down  the mountain, and ended up walking the entire way.  We were pretty tired when we finally arrived at the bottom of the hill, but took a Metro up to the area where one finds some of the most famous examples of Modernista architecture, including more work by Gaudi.   After walking around through this neighborhood, L'Exiample district, we took another Metro and a long walk to the Parc Guell, a Gaudi-designed planned community that never happened.  It's become a park, and was amazing.  

How to even describe it?  Well, first after climbing a long hill, you are greeted by two gingerbread-style cottages that are the gateway.  Next you climb steps, past fountains and statues of animals all covered in mosaics.  Past that you come into a market place area that is full of heavy columns.  Through the market you begin to see the grottos--man made ledges of stone columns with hidey-holes behind them.  Another flight of steps takes you onto a plaza--a wide open space with the most bizarre bench lining three fourths of the plaza--a continuous bench that winds like a serpent, is covered in mosaics, looks over the plaza and the ocean.  Truly divine.  In the market were both a classical guitarist and many people selling wares--above on the plaza were two Indian dancers.  What a place!

After coming off the hill we stopped for a pitcher of sangria--we'd become heavy hitters.  Then back to our room, cleaned up, and out to the neighborhood for a nice evening meal.  Saturday, again up and ready to go to the beach, back to Mar Bella, where the waves were a bit less friendly, and where I soaked up a bit too much sun.  But another fantastic day.

Saturday night was heaven, Barcelona style.  We walked to a lovely restaurant and shared a lobster paella that was quite good; then on to our concert.  The Palau or concert hall was a modernista type design--Gaudi-inspired if not Gaudi-designed.  It was incredible...every square inch was covered with mosaics, stained glass, pillars, plaster images, and behind the musician was a wall filled with carved figures of 18 women, all playing various musical instruments, and set in a field of red mosaic work.  What a place!  Then the music began, and the guitarist was truly world class.  Gloria read somewhere that the two places in the world that keep alive good guitar music are Barcelona and Uruguay--we certainly heard the best.  It was a fantastic close to a great vacation.

Barcelona was difficult.  I have a very bit of Spanish, but the people there are actually not Spanish in their preference, and speak even another language--Catalonian--which I found to be a bit like French.  I really couldn't keep it straight, and was ready to be back among English speakers.  If/when we return, I want to be better at both Spanish and Catalonian.

But, getting back home wasn't easy--we took a bus from the main square again, by chance got on the right bus, not the one the tour book said to take.  On arrival the flight info told us to go to Terminal C.  After a walk of perhaps half a mile we were told that actually we needed Terminal B.  We finally found the right space and got to our gate with perhaps 15 minutes before boarding.  They really don't seem to make it easy for foreigners.  But we were off, to land in Madrid and spend a couple of hours before boarding our flight for London.  Arrival in London was uneventful, other than an hour wait in customs, which often happens.

We'd made plans to have a last meal with my friend Susan in north London, so two more tubes and a bus got us to her place, where we had a nice meal out and a bottle of wine at home.  It rained on us, the first time that had happened in awhile; we were actually cold after the blood-thinning temperatures of Barcelona.  This morning I have on my long sleeve shirt for the first time in the whole trip.  I've got a long work day ahead; then home for a bit of packing, dinner with Elizabeth and Gilli at Elizabeth's house, and a 6 am trip to the airport for our 9 am flight and our trip home.

So, another trip comes to a close.  It's been a good one, a long one.  Lots of miles, lots of friends, lots of clients, lots of students, and lots of great memories.  And, it's always good to get home!