The Fetmans Take Barceolona Day 1: Gaudi Mad

Thursday, June 22

Woke up at around 8:15am to a knock at our cabin door; it was the conductor returning the tickets that he had collected the night before. Once awake I opened the curtains that did an impeccable job at blocking out any sort of natural light. We were riding into Barcelona! I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been wanting to come to Barcelona ever since I arrived in Spain—Barcelona: the other heart of European avant-garde and modernist art (next to Paris). So exciting! Despite the fair amount of sleep I had received, I was still exhausted. So after getting dressed and ready and packing up my things, Shana and I passed out on the bunk beds for another half an hour before Daddy came into our cabin to wake us up to tell us that we were there. We de-trained and grabbed two cabs to our four-star hotel (the only nice hotel we stayed in the entire trip): the NH Calderón. Upon arriving I was immediately taken aback by the language difference displayed on the signs everywhere. In Cataluña, the northernmost province of Spain, they don’t speak castellano Spanish (the Spanish we know), but they speak what is called Catalán, which is a variation of Spanish that looks/sounds like an amalgamation of French and Spanish (which makes sense since Barcelona almost touches the southwest tip of France). So that was new. Although it is the official language, I was able to communicate in castellano without a problem. It was weird not hearing the Andalucian accent anymore.
So we rode for about 15 minutes to our hotel. Barcelona seemed pretty modern and urban, yet pretty—kind of like Chicago. Our hotel was right on the most popular, central street: las Ramblas, which is a really well structured, populated street. In the middle runs a large, thick island on which street performers and café seating reside. On either side of the island runs the street traffic, and also various stores and restaurants with an attached sidewalk. At one end of las Ramblas (it’s quite long) lies the Mediterranean Sea, and at the other, the mountains. Water run-off from the mountains flowed down las Ramblas to the Sea before the streets were constructed in the 18th century. Clever city planning, I must say. Anyways, we checked into the NH which was extremely nice. The staff was overly friendly and the lobby was spacious and gorgeous with an art deco theme. They took our luggage to hold right away. It was obvious that this was a swanky place…I, for one, felt pretty out of place. Hehe. We wouldn’t be able to check into our rooms for another hour and a half, so we decided to walk around and check out our surroundings and subsequently grab some brunch. According to weather.com the weather would be mild and in the 70’s, but ohhh was it wrong. It was hot. Well, not quite as hot as it would be down south, but still pretty damned hot. So we walked around, sweat a bit, were cranky from lack of sleep, until we found a little breakfast buffet place. We all got some Spanish tortillas (which were pretty good) and some little sandwiches. We then wandered around some more and finally returned to the hotel where we bummed around on the couches waiting for our rooms to be ready. We just weren’t in the mood to wander anymore until we were all settled in.
We finally were able to enter our rooms at noon. The rooms were so nice. Very modern with a mahogany, black, white, and red theme. Our rooms were equipped with desk, desk table, nice beds (although Shana’s and mine were on wheels and constantly shifted), comfy pillows, and a flat screen TV with cable…which could only mean one thing…Mtv! Yesssss. Everyone napped a bit, but I stayed up and studied this “what to do in Barcelona” book provided by the hotel. It was huuuuge and I literally studied that thing. There is so much to do in Barcelona! It was overwhelming. I figured out some main attractions. Soon Shana woke up and we watched a buttload of “My Super Sweet 16” which I have missed oh so much…despite the annoying German subtitles…and the commercials in German. Oh well. After a good hour and a half the parents came to the room and we planned our next moves for the day. We decided to walk to the street called Diagonal (which literally runs diagonally with the end of las Ramblas) and walk towards Sagrada Familia, the infamous Gaudí church. The main thing that I wanted to check out in Barcelona was all of the famous Gaudí architecture. He’s so unique and I’ve always wanted to see his work in person. It’s so interesting—his architecture is art nouveau and is all from the 19th-20th century—a huge change from the old, 12th century architecture I’m used to down in Andalucía. Supposedly there was a lot of Gaudí architecture in that area that we could check out on the way to one of Gaudí’s most renowned masterpieces.
On the way we passed a lot of really neat architecture—so modern and unique and different from anything that I had ever seen. We caught a couple Gaudí buildings, but nothing too impressive. We passed a famous building (not Gaudí) that I had read about in the book the hotel gave us, so we entered. It’s called The Asia House, and the interior is a neo-Asian modernist architectural fusion. It’s pretty awesome. We went to all of the levels, saw a cool photo exhibit about the people of the Philippines, a cool slideshow, and such. It was a good introduction to what Barcelona would be all about: the modernist influence. We then walked some more (we walked for awhile, man). We passed la Pedrera, one of Gaudí’s most famous apartment buildings, but decided to see it on the way back. We were hungry, so we stopped for some quick sandwiches after spotting the tips of la Sagrada Familia. After eating and exiting the little café, we couldn’t find the church. We had seen it, then it suddenly disappeared. It was frustrating. We consulted the map a bunch of times, wandered around, and after a good fifteen minutes finally spotted it again and walked towards it. We were there in another ten minutes.
Next to la Sagrada Familia sits a large park where stupid kids were setting off loud firecrackers. Ugh. That was annoying. We got to the line and found out that with my International Student ID card I could get in for a really reduced rate…too bad I brought my USevilla ID and not my other ID…I mean, I never use my ISICard. Ugh. So entrance to the church was really pricey. It was okay, though, because the church itself is pretty damned impressive. The sucky part is that it’s still under construction (it’s still incomplete, even since construction began on it in the early 20th century!). However, it’s impressive. Gaudí is so awesome because he incorporates influences of nature in his architecture, so there’s a resonant likeness of the limbs, roots, and branches of leafless trees which make up the main structure of the church. It’s a neo-gothic-turned modernist cathedral. Really impressive. It cost money to ride the elevator to the top, so figuring that it wasn’t too high up, we decided to walk the spiral staircase all the way to the top. Well, it was a long, rough journey, especially in such a narrow space. It was hell, actually, and coincidentally. We had to take periodic breaks. By the time we reached the top I was dripping in sweat. It was disgusting. But the view was awesome! Not only did we get a great view of Barcelona, but also of the details of the cathedral: the fruit-topped columns, the little mosaiqued towers, the hymns inscribed on the structure, the modernist statue depictions of Jesus and the Holy Family, etc. It was great. Actually, the walk down was the worse. I stayed behind with Mom while she took pictures, so we got caught behind this really slow kid who was little and walked one step at a time. Walking down in such a hot, closed space in a constant spiral was making me dizzy and claustrophobic. The walk down was now the most difficult because I started feeling like I was going to suffocate. It was terrible. I’ve never had such an intense feeling of claustrophobia…and I’m not really claustrophobic! I mean, I don’t really enjoy crowds, but it never affects me too badly. Now it did. And this kid would not speed up. I just wanted out. Now. I was moving with such haste against his slow pace that I accidentally kicked him a couple times. Oops. Finally we got out and I needed air. I kind of felt like I was having a hard time breathing. I had to sit outside and breath deeply for a bit and drink some water. After about fifteen minutes I was calm, cool, and my sweat had all dried (I was gross). So we went downstairs to the Gaudí museum which was pretty large and extremely fascinating. That’s where I learned all about how he takes direct influence from nature in his work. So amazing. I respect his work. A lot. My mom, particularly, fell in love with his work. Yeah, he’s pretty awesome. At around 7pm we finally headed out. We walked to la Pedrera, which took about 15-20 minutes. Our legs were killing us, we were so exhausted from all of the walking. The past week was finally catching up with us. Once we got to the famous apartment building it was about 7:30, and they wouldn’t let us in. Although it closed at 8, the last elevator went up at 7:30 and we had just missed it. We were a bit disappointed, but no big deal because we had two more days…and it was so close to our hotel.
So we walked back to the NH, washed up a bit, settled, rested, then headed out to dinner. We decided to go to the Port Olympic for dinner which is a strip of bars, clubs, and restaurants along the Mediterranean. Mom had read about it before coming to Spain and was all about going. I was excited. We decided to try out the Metro system of Barcelona. Sigh, the Metro…so many European memories. We went to the Metro stop near our hotel on Gran Vía. Across from the stop were 2 famous Gaudí apartments that I had wanted to see, so this was a treat. We got to snap a few photos. That’s what was so nice about Barcelona: at first I was pretty intimidated by all that there was to see, and afraid that we wouldn’t get to see everything that there was to see. Nevertheless, all of the main sights are close to each other, and somehow we ended up seeing most of them without even meaning to intentionally. Pretty nice. Anyways, at the Metro stop we ended up having to walk around a lot underground to get to the line we wanted to take. It was hot and stuffy and kind of irritating, but no biggy. After a 20 minute fun-filled Metro experience we got off at our stop. Once out in the open air we had no idea which way to go. We followed our instincts and walked in one direction hoping that it was the way to the beach. We were unsure, so I asked some cops walking by; turns out we were going in the opposite direction. Luckily we hadn’t walked too far, so we turned around and walked back over 2 parking structures and past a casino. Woooohooo. It was a nice walk, though, because on the way to the beach we saw a bunch of buildings and statues that were in the book the hotel gave me, so I got to inadvertently see some more sights. After about 15 minutes we were at the beach. As I had expected, it was nothing special. All of the beaches in Spain that I have seen are alright, nothing too impressive, and this was just another one of those. The cool part was that it was on the Mediterranean, and there was a really nice, swanky strip of bars and restaurants. One of the bars was filled with yelling people watching the World Cup (of course). After walking up and down the strip a bunch of times to find a restaurant (some of them had beds and couches on which one could eat!) we finally settled on a cute place that wasn’t full and gave us a good outdoor view of the Sea. For some reason I was in the mood for just some simple pasta that night (me with my exotic Spanish palette) and ordered spaghetti with tomato sauce. That’s it. We all got an appetizer platter of Iberian meats and cheeses. Our waiter was new and kept messing up and forgetting us, especially with Shana’s food. He was very apologetic about it. While eating a bunch of men kept approaching us from the street and urged us to buy roses. The first time we said no politely, but by the 5th guy it was quite out-of-hand and we started giving them attitude and laughing in their faces. They didn’t seem quite pleased about our snootiness, but whatever. Enough is enough, leave us alone! Once the sun had gone down it had gotten cold out. After the meal we thought about going to the shore to feel the water (Mom had never touched the Mediterranean and wanted to say that she had), but it was cold and dark, so we just walked back to the Metro. We were all so exhausted, and my feet were killing my from a week’s worth of walking all around Spain in flip-flops. Oh well, c’est la vie. We grabbed the Metro back and walked back to the hotel. Shana and I discovered a top 40 channel that played the BEST music videos. I’m talking, almost up to Málaga’s standards. They played new music, like Shakira, then really old Christina Aguilera (“What a Girl Wants”), Whitney Houston, and also music from the 70’s and 80’s. It was AMAAAAZING. I stayed up blogging (at the nice desk the room supplied) and watching the music videos. Oh yeah, and I also took a shower. Which was amazing. BEST hotel shower. I was in there for so long. Gotta live it up. And that’s about it. Barcelona was really impressing me so far. Couldn’t wait to see what else it would have to offer!