Happy MarcLarance Barcelona

Okay, so that's supposed to be a clever pun off that new movie Vicky Christina Barcelona, if you didn't get it. Anyway, as I write this, I sit at my terminal in the Barcelona airport waiting for my plane...which takes off in 6 1/2 hours. I felt it was easiest to spend the few hours I would sleep curled up on a terminal bench or something and then I could just get on the plane, pass out to Sevilla, and pass out again once I got home. If it doesn't work out that way, c'est la vie. This weekend was worth a little discomfort that I can afford on a Monday (seriously though, let the rest of the evening work out fine and dandy...)

This weekend was quite excellent, probably one of my favorites so far. I reached Barcelona via a Vueling plane early Friday afternoon, so I was able to meet up with my good friend Marc Larance without any trouble. Marc is studying in Montpelier, France, so meeting up in Barcelona was the easiest place for both of us. He traveled with two program mates, Becca and Kaitlin. They are very nice people, and I do believe I've met Becca before through Big Ben Pruitt and Ted Morgan. Good ol' days in 3rd Floor Cobb. Anyway, that is our group for a fun-filled adventure in an exotic city where no one really speaks the language. Remember, Barcelona is in Catalunya, which, according to some graffiti we took a picture of, is not Spain. Thus, they speak Catalan and not Castellian (though most speak Castillian and a fair amount of English...took some of the challenge out of it, if you ask me).

Our first afternoon was filled with walking and some interesting sights. We went to the Cathedral in Barcelona, which was pretty but not astonishing, though I really do enjoy the Spanish habit of placing patios in the middle of everything...there were even some mohawked geese just playing around in the decorative fountain. From there, we walked around a bit, stumbling onto one of the many large avenues of Barcelona (said "avinguda" in Catalan), where a large glass of sangria was 11,75 Euro...despite being on vacation, we're still poor college students and didn't stop. We ditched into some alleyways and in one, walked through what we believed to be a police roundup. There were two serious vans and a patrol car, several uniformed officers with floppy hats (Marc really wants one for his military hat collection), and they were asking for identification from a group of men sitting on some stairs. We hustled through that part and headed back to the more civilized portion of town. On the way, we came across an open-air concert by some choral group that were using definitely old-school tunes with what I think were Christian lyrics...it was sung in English but I couldn't hear particularly well, though they were fun to listen to for a few minutes. I definitely heard them use Jail House Rock as a tune though. From there, we found a restaurant for some much needed nourishment, where I ordered some chicken and french fries and vegetables. We also ordered a vino rosado (which Marc described as rose, rosee...between white and red, you understand) which was quite tasty. We almost ordered a second bottle in fact. We all enjoyed our dinners and from there made the trek back to our hostel, the Sant Jordi Sants hostel. We were planning on going out, but Marc and the girls had been up since around 5 that morning and I wasn't feeling particularly energetic, so we played some Go Fish across our bunkbeds, talked for a bit, listened to some tunes, and called it an early night.

We woke up the next day around 9:30 I guess (I wanted to sleep more, but they made me get up and get breakfast). We paid our 2 Euro for breakfast materials and Marc and I went to town on our Poor Man's Grilled Cheese -- cheese placed upon toast immediately after being pulled out of the toaster (the toast, not the cheese) and then butter the top of the top slice of the sandwich. Very simple, very tasty. I think we both had 2 or 3, plus some cereal and a few glasses of juice. From breakfast, we decided to explore Barcelona some more, though my Sevillan accent didn't help us much through the day, though I didn't feel like as much of a tourist as the rest. Let's see, we visited some Gaudi monuments, including his old apartment building that looks like a choppy surf frozen in stone, with railing of wrought-iron seaweed. Really neat, and my guidebook said there wasn't a single straight wall in the entire building (are walls and ceilings considered walls in this instance?). Checked out some other building that has some really cool spires and a neat facade, picked up some postcards and decided to continue onto the Sagrada Familia. For those of you unfamiliar with this work, it is (or will be) the main cathedral of Barcelona. It is Gaudi's greatest architectural work and it is only about 50% completed today (started about 200 years ago mind you). Like his apartment building, much of the design is taken from nature, landscapes and animals (and bee's honeycombs...he liked those particularly). The cathedral has 3 main facades: The Nativity, the (insert one I can't remember), and the Passion (though only the Nativity facade is completed as of today). In contrast to his natural designs for the rest of the architecture, his depiction of the Passion is angular and hard in nature, nearly sinister (guidebook's word, though I could understand once I looked upon it myself). The interior was mostly filled with construction materials but the parts we could see were rounded and smooth and all headed upwards toward Heaven, and the Nativity facade is beautiful and natural and elegantly sculpted. Angels overlooked the joyful birth of the Christ child, and the Three Wise Kings brought their gifts, and the shepards looked on in awe. It was absolutely beautiful.

From the Sagrada Familia, Kaitlin really wanted to visit Park Guell, a park filled even more Gaudi designs. I remember it from when my family went to Barcelona a couple of years ago, though we couldn't spend a lot of time there this time because some of us had to return to the hostel by a certain time in order to register for classes for the Spring semester (gotta love having enough hours to register with the seniors (: ). We explored a little through the gardens, watched some street performers and listened to the abundant musicians positioned along various paths. What's more, the excellent view of the city from the terraces was gorgeous, and we took some good pictures. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long, and we entered the Barcelona metro system to head back to the hostel. I will be honest and say the metro system in Barcelona is a helluva lot better than my few times in the NYC metro system. It's cleaner, more modern, and easy to navigate, even if you can't speak Spanish (all the signs and ticket machines had English portions). I got back in time to register, and we stayed in the hostel for dinner, making ourselves some spaghetti with tomato sauce and garlic bread. We accidentally fell into gender roles, with Becca and Kaitlin making dinner while Marc and I went out and bought some more bread and some beer...no one realized it until after dinner had started. After dinner, Marc, Becca, and I utilized our tickets to a Barcelona/Athletico Madrid futbol match. That's right. Barcelona vs. Madrid (though not Real Madrid, like I had initially thought). Anyway, the match was insane! Within the first 6 minutes, Barcelona went up 3-0 with one great goal, a PK, and another off a quick free kick. Madrid never stood a chance. More goals kept coming (including one from Madrid that was pretty spectacular in its own right) and the night ended 6-1 with Barcelona as the happy victors. It was quite the match to experience, and the highlights were too much fun to watch the next day. After the game, the three of us returned to the hostel to fetch Kaitlin. we were all feeling sleepy again, but we were determined to go out, so on the advice of the hostel receptionist we checked out this place called La Fira where they supposedly had 2 Euro shots. They were, in fact, 4 Euros each, and beers were 5. We all took a shot, and then finished up our drinking for the night with a Heineken. If we were too cheap to drink 11 Euro sangria, why would we spend 30 or 40 Euros on drinks in a bar? Still in La Fira, we brought our drinks to the dance floor for an hour and a half or so, the four of us forming our circle and getting thoroughly confused by the constantly changing music (think you have musical ADD? the DJ didn't let a single song end, and would suddenly change into songs with wildly differing beats). However, there was a fair amount of merengue beats played, so I danced with Becca and Kaitlin and showed off enough to force Marc to show some of his own moves. Reminded me greatly of the dance scene in My Blue Heaven (never seen it? Shame. Wait til I get back to Carolina and we'll rectify that most egregious mistake). We called it a night around 3.

We got up around 10:30 today in order not to miss breakfast, which we got down to the kitchen with about 10 minutes left before they ostensibly denied us their foodstuffs. We didn't really get our acts together until around 1, when we jumped back on the Metro and headed toward the outskirts of Barcelona in order to ascend the "mountain" and visit the cathedral and the comm tower and get an even better view of the city from above. We took a funicular (def: an old-school train that is designed to ascend/descend steep inclines...yes, those are the exact words in the OED). Cost us 2 Euros to take it up, and we decided to save a euro and walk down ourselves. On the summit lies a fairly recently-constructed cathedral, very modernisme (as they say in Catalan), with brightly-colored mosaics and pay-to-ride elevators to reach the basilica (I always thought the Catholic Church had muchisimo dinero?). However, on the interior walls, panels depicting the Passion surrounded the entire church about 10 feet above the ground. I took pictures of most of the panels. After taking some great landscape pictures of Barcelona set against the Mediterranean as well as the Spanish countryside, we headed down into the small carnival that shares the peak with the church...none of us really approved of the contrasting dynamic of modern religion and "ancient" carnival rides. Marc and Kaitlin rode the Ferris wheel for a little while as Becca and I contentedly chomped on some Doritos Tex-Mex (Trademark). We grabbed lunch after that on a cafe on the summit (I had a frankfurter and a plate of fries with a Coke). From there, we decided to descend on foot, which we were told was a 7km hike. Due to a few fortunate shortcuts and a generally rapid pace (we were going downhill thank god) we made it down in less than an hour, and with much less than 7km worth of walking. We went back to the hostel from there, messing around for a few hours, before eating another Italian dinner cooked by the lovely ladies (fusili with garlic bread tonight). Afterward, I packed up my stuff, checked out, and headed for the airport. Just my luck, I miss the last train for the airport by less than 2 minutes (grrrr) so I had to take a cab for 24 Euros to get there (exactly the outcome I didn't want). And now I sit in the airport awaiting my flight in a few hours.

May tomorrow bring me more rest than today.

(This post written on a long night but I didn't have any problems getting home and I was able to get a few hours of real sleep in my own bed. Small miracles eh?)