Adventures On the Road

I’ve become a little obsessed about these BARCINO letters.  I love taking photos of them.  I feel like it represents Barcelona for me.  So that means that I made my sister pose and take funny photos with the letters.  I kept yelling out, ‘go sit in the C’ until she finally relented.  The photo looked so cute, so I tried it too – and I barely fit – my torso is just too long!

We did manage to drag ourselves away from these letters and took time to wander the narrow streets in El Barri Gotic and ooh and awe over some of Antoni Gaudi’s other buildings in the city – Casa Batllo – an artistic legend with a modernist facade that mirrors a calm sea (although when I looked at it it reminded me of dragons and rainbows).

And what do you know, we found some more time to eat!  Back to La Boqueria for lunch, and this time we weren’t going to leave without saddling up to the bar at the Universal kiosk for the mixed seafood plate and some garlic razor clams.  The seafood was so fresh we were watching the gambas (prawns) move around in the display.

After another tour around the market to take some photos, I found myself at a charcuterie stand, where I made a new friend that took his time to carve me a tasty treat – every piece was carved with love.  He was a great sport and even posed for pictures with me.

My Barcelona City Guide told me that you can’t leave Barcelona without trying the Jamon Iberico de Bellota (acorn-fed Iberico ham).  The Iberico pig has become Spain’s modern-day caviar and this specific pig is able to store monounsaturated fats from the acorns it eats in streaks and marbled layers of fat that run through its muscle tissue.  After two years of aging, the flavors are nutty, buttery and earthy.  This specific type of ham liquefies at room temperature, so it literally melts in your mouth.  And yes it did.  Even my meat-disliking sister tried some and enjoyed it.

In between eating stops we wandered around Barcelona taking random photos of each other – lots of sisterly bonding.  I don’t think her husband would have yelled out, ‘ride the lion!  Go ride the lion!’  – my husband probably would though.  I didn’t get a full mount though, the closest I got was her sitting on his butt.

After visiting the BARCINO letters one more time and while we were there, taking some photos of the Barcelona Cathedral , we waited patiently for the restaurants to open up for dinner.  Aside from tapas and very touristy restaurants, most places closed after lunch and didn’t open up again for dinner until 8PM.

Just steps from our hotel we found Pirineus, a small family restaurant that kept us entertained and left us full of Cava and Seafood Paella.  They loved us there and we didn’t leave before we had learned a few new Catalan words, had our palms read, eaten complimentary desserts and had our cheeks kissed a couple times.

The jet lag is hitting me.  After an evening of tasty treats, wine, cava and hot chocolate I easily fell into a deep sleep after our first night in Barcelona.  Only to wake up at 4AM wide awake, hours before my alarm was set to go off for our day of exploring.  I tried to lull myself back to sleep, but my body was thinking it was 7PM and I just took a long nap before my real bed time.  I reviewed my spanish phrases, ‘no hablo espanol’. ‘no entiendo’, ‘cuanto cuesta?’, ‘la cuenta por favor’ and ‘Esta es mi hermana’.  I don’t speak spanish, I don’t understand, how much is this?, the bill please, and this is my sister.  Got it.  

Now what to do for another 3 hours.  I tried to fall back asleep but I could hear the Cathedral bells ringing in the distance and I just felt like things were happening in the city and I was missing it!  What does the Cathedral look like as the sun is rising?  What does it look like before La Boqueria opens officially?  These are the secret sights of the city that I really wanted to see, but, I settled for looking through my Barcelona City Guide app while I waited for the sun to rise, the city to start buzzing and most importantly, for my sister to wake up.

Barcelona Cathedral

We had one thing on our agenda for our sunny day in Barcelona.  La Sagrada Familia, an overwhelmingly large Roman Catholic Church designed by Catalan architect, Antoni Gaudi.  Construction of La Sagrada Familia started in 1882 and Gaudi became involved in 1883, taking over the project and transforming it with his architectural style, combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms.  By 2010, the construction had only reached the midpoint, and currently the completion year is set for 2026 – 144 years of construction.

It was an amazing experience to see this 132 year old construction project up close and personal.  The amount of detail in the stone carvings made me want to take a photo of every sculpture – everywhere you looked was a work of art.  It took us a long time before we made our way inside.

The sun was shining through the stained glass windows, making the colors pop and twinkle.  The ceiling was so high and the walls and columns intricately designed and you can see Gaudi’s inspiration from nature.

My sister and I took pictures of everything inside and out.  We compared photos and it is amazing how you can be standing in front of the same thing and have such a different perspective.  I loved the stained glass and she was infatuated with the columns – she kept snapping photos and I would look at them and say, ‘I have no idea what you just took a picture of – I can’t even see the angle to get that shot’.  Over and over again it happened, but that’s what makes it fun to travel with someone with a different perspective on the world.

It has been 7 years since my sister and I have traveled together.  It was our first solo trip together (just us – not a family vacation) and we went on the cheapest 4 star all inclusive we could find out of Toronto.  So we went to Cuba.  We drank cuban coffee, chilled red wine, local cheeses and fruits, I played water polo with the boys while she took a siesta and she freaked out when I stayed out til 5am with the Italian activities staff.  A lot has changed since then.  I was living in Vancouver, BC, she in Toronto, ON.  Now I’m in Seattle, WA and she lives in Geneva, Switzerland.  We went from two single workaholics to two married women of leisure 7 years later (well…..I work from home, but she’s retired).  She had 2 cats, she still has 2 cats.  I was single and fancy free and now have a cat and a 15 year old step son.  My how things have changed.

For our second sister trip we went to Barcelona, Spain.

The first impression of a city is something that you can’t replicate.  Yes, it was raining when we arrived in Barcelona and despite the palm trees, it didn’t really seem tropical like I would expect Spain to be like, but, I loved it.  The streets were shiny from the rain, the sun was going down so the city lights were starting to turn on and as we walked from Placa de Catalunya to our hotel, I looked down every narrow alleyway with awe.  We were staying in the El Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter).  Barcelona is a gorgeous city.

Our first night we had no plans except to eat and drink!  We started our evening at Bilbao Berria for pintxo tapas – Basque region-style tapas.  Small tastes that are served on bread and skewered – just count up the sticks at the end of the night.

We continued our evening with a walk down Las Ramblas and peeked into Mercat de Sant Josep de La Boqueria, the famous La Boqueria market, for dragon fruit, coconut and strawberry juice.  Most of the stalls were starting to close up but we scurried around for a quick tour and saw stacks of colorful, exotic fruit, every type of meat/organ that you would ever want (tripe, goat heads, pigs feet, roosters with their head feathers still attached) and the most random seafood that you would never think that you would eat.  We left that market seeing something that could look like a small skinned dog, but I translated it when we got back to the hotel, conejo = rabbit.  

We told ourselves we would be back tomorrow, but not before we grabbed some fuchsia-coloured dragon fruit and fresh coconut for a late night snack.

Next stop:  Cafe de L’Opera, the historic cafe on Las Ramblas that made its start as a tavern in the 18th century.  Our plan was to end our evening with the Chocolat con Churros.  But…….we just couldn’t say no to cava sangria.

And maybe some Catalan-style bread brushed with garlic and tomato and assorted tapas, because you can’t go wrong with patatas bravas, olives and fried cheese.

We did finish the night with the infamous Chocolat con Churros and the hot chocolate was so thick, but perfect for dipping churros.

We made our way back to our hotel and I told my sister, the one thing I wanted to find was the BARCINO metal sculpture letters.  Set against the city’s oldest stones, the sculpture BARCINO is the roman name for Barcelona, with 6 letters made of bronze and 1 made of aluminum.  She had been to Barcelona and had never seen them.  Well it turns out that these letters were right by our hotel (how she did not see them last time since they stayed at the same hotel – I do not know…)

The view of the Placa Nova and the Catedral de Barcelona at night was a perfect way to complete my introduction to Barcelona.  And I couldn’t wait for what other discoveries we would make during our trip.

From Cuba to Barcelona.  My sister and I have evolved from umbrella drinks, suntanning and not leaving the resort in Cuba, to eating sprees, testing out my Rosetta Stone Spanish and walking, metro’ing and busing our way through Barcelona.