BARCELONA
Barcelona is an assault on the senses! Especially after a relatively quiet few days in Coullioure, stepping out in Barcelona, the night was lively with music, lights, and hordes of people. And very good looking people indeed. One of the most famous sights in Barcelona is the Ramblas, a one kilometer promenade filled with people, shops, cafes, performance artists (silver and gold spraypaint seems to be a favorite costume choice), and people (mostly desis) trying to sell you single cans of beer, cigarettes, and roses. At all hours of the day and night, the street is happening. Our first night in Spain, we walked up and down the Ramblas before heading to a recommended (by Lonely Planet) tapas bar called Irati.
We had fun watching our waitress try to pour the cider over her head and behind her back-it is apparently a traditional way to serve the cider. The thing about tapas bars here is that while there is some seating, it is more lively to do all your eating standing up at the bar. You just pick what you want from the dishes out on display, and when it comes time to settle the bill, the waitress counts the number of toothpicks on your plate. Typically there are over 10 tapas being offered at any one time. Here was our count of different tapas for the first night...which was eeriely echoed in tapas bar throughout Spain: Smruti -2 (asparagus seemed to be one of the only vegetables used on tapas, and manchego cheese) Dev -pretty much every type of tapa-(cured ham, blood sausage, shrimp, etc. except for the bull tail. He decided to skip that one.) On the other hand, we did find a pretty cool vegetarian restaurant called Ra- great gazpacho and paella.
We had no trouble communicating with folks, although since Barcelona is in Catalunya, they speak Catalan which is a little bit different from what I had learned back in Sra. Amstrup's class.
One of the landmarks I had been looking forward to seeing was Sagrada Familia. As you come out of the metro station, you see it towering above you. I had seen pictures, but it was nothing like staring at all the carvings in detail on the different facades. As you look at it, you keep discovering new things like how the sequence of events of the life of Jesus on the Passion facade go chronologically in an S shape, from bottom to top, representing Subirach, the sculptor of this facade which is inconsistent with Gaudi's original plans. We also saw carvings of turtles and tortoises supporting columns, which represented Barcelona's place between the mountains and the sea.
We took a guided tour in English and also learned that the only source of funding for Sagrada Familia is through private donations so work is estimated to be done in about 50 years if funding stays constant! One of the additional interesting things here is how Gaudi's style was essentially Art Nouveau (or Modernism as it was called here in Spain). The pillars and towers and lattices all are based on nature, including things such as trees and coral.
You also see Gaudi's stamp throughout Barcelona on various buildings (one of which is now a Chupa Chup lollipop factory...go figure), but my favorite was in Parc Guell.....up near the moutains and full of fantastic creations-this undulating park bench , buildings that aren't built with straight lines, and my favorite sculpture-a mosaic lizard.
. This lizard was so popular, that there were tons of people jostling to get their picture with it.
Picasso was did much of his work here. The Picasso museum in Barcelona is fantastic......over 1000 of his works are kept here...many of which I had never seen before and wouldn't have recognized as a Picasso. They had paintings from his Blue period as well as the Pink period (acrobats and dancers) between approximately 1901-1910. He started the Cubism period soon after this.
Walking through the museum, I admit I gained a new appreciation for Picasso's breadth of work. He had dabbled in painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramics.
We also hit the bars in Barcelona along with the open market and the Museum of Chocolate! A big part of the fun was to walk through the narrow streets late at night. In fact, the night only gets going at midnight in Barcelona... people eat at about 10 or 11 and then go out for drinks after that until the wee hours of the morning!
MADRID
The capital city was our next stop in Espana. Here we hit the Prado and the Reina Sofia. The Prado has an amazing collection of Flemish and Spanish painters. And at the Reina Sofia, the museum of modern art, was Guernica, Picasso's entry into the Spanish Pavilion for the 1937 World Fair. The history of this painting goes back to April 27th, 1937, when unprecedented atrocities were perpetrated on behalf of Franco against the civilian population of a little Basque village in northern Spain. Chosen for bombing practice by Hitler, the town is pounded with high-explosive and incendiary bombs for over three hours. Townspeople are cut down as they run from the crumbling buildings. Guernica burns for three days. Sixteen hundred civilians are killed or wounded. By May 1st, news of the massacre at Guernica reaches Paris, where more than a million protesters flood the streets to voice their outrage in the largest May Day demonstration the city has ever seen. Appalled and enraged, Picasso rushes through the crowded streets to his studio, where he quickly sketches the first images for Guernica.
We also got a chance to meet up with Dev's friends, Aquilino & Carmen and Carlos & Joy. It was great to catch up and see everybody after such a long time!
- Smruti
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