"Water-Food Restaurant" was the start of our education in how European restaurants work. The two key elements that we deduced over weeks of travelling were: 1) Sit wherever the hell you feel like it, the servers really don't care; 2) Once you've got your food, the servers will leave you alone. Really, really, alone. None of this foolish "checking on you to make sure you're okay." Also, none of the "bringing you your bill" either. It took us a quite a few 45-minute sessions waiting for our cheque before it occurred to us that we were the problem. Gotta be proactive if you wanna give away your money in these parts. This restaurant was also the beginning of our sangria tour of the Iberian Peninsula. Marg would sip her sangria daintily, savouring the experience of the sun and the sea and the fruity flavours. I, on the other hand, had been dreaming of sangria on a patio ever since Ottawa hit -20° this past winter, so my preferred method of sangria consumption was 1 glass = 1 mouthful. Generally it worked out that Margaret would get 1/4 of a pitcher and the rest would go to me. Re-order and repeat as necessary.
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| Livin'... |
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| the... |
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| Liiiife. Aww yeah. |
Of course, sangria is by no means the only culinary delight that Barcelona has to offer. It is also a hotbed of tapas production. For our first legitimate tapas experience, we decided to do as the locals do: stroll aimlessly through the city in the middle of the night until an acceptable venue for food is located or until you're too beat to care. That night, the finding of the restaurant was easy enough. The ordering of the food was a little more difficult. We had wandered a little bit out of the main tourist zone, so the menus weren't in English. "But Mickie," you're thinking, "You speak Spanish, do you not? Surely reading a menu would be no problem for you?" Ahh, my well-meaning but ill-informed friends, you forget (or perhaps you never knew) that Spain is made up of several "Autonomous Communities," each with its own culture and several with their own languages. Barcelona is located in the region known as Catalonia, where Catalan is the official language. The Catalan language looks kinda like Spanish and French had a baby, dressed it up in Portuguese clothes and then got it drunk. I mean that in a nice way.
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| The flag of Catalonia |
Now, most people in Barcelona do also speak a fair bit of what we know as "Spanish" (Castellano) - however our server at the tapas place spoke it in a very Catalan sort of way. And I spoke it in a very poor sort of way. All of this to say that Marg and I unwittingly ended up being served two tables' worth of food, including (but not limited to) potatoes with spicy mayo (patatas bravas), giant bugs of the sea (gambas) a vat of sangria (naturally), olives, cocktail onions and toasted bread with fresh tomato rubbed on top called "pan con tomate." I knew from my previous adventure in Spain that pan con tomate is scrumptious, so when the server asked if we wanted two servings of it, I said "sin duda!" (of course!). Little did I know that a 'serving' was not one slice of bread, but rather a full tray of slices of pan con tomate. It was, essentially, a loaf of bread each. Con tomate. So. Much. Eats. All I can say is that I'm lucky to have had Marg in my corner - never one to back down from a challenge to consume an ungodly amount of food, she revved up her engine and between the two of us, we cleaned every last plate. Painful? Yes. Embarassing? Most certainly. The right thing to do? I have no doubt.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, eating is not the only thing we did in Barcelona. We rode the "teleferico" (a much more fun word for 'cable car') up a mini city-centre mountain called Montjuic. Atop this moutainette is a neat castle-y/fort thingy that we spent an afternoon exploring. Among other delights contained within the castle walls were an archery range (with real arching archers!) and - I am not making this up - a little 'driving park' made up of a jumble of small streets with a bunch of traffic signs where children could ride their bikes and trikes and practise the rules of the road. Way to raise responsible young citizens, Barcelona!
This was not the archer at Montjuic. Which was probably for the best.
We also did a couple different types of city tours. We rode one of the hop-on-hop-off buses which, despite being unabashedly touristy, was actually quite a lovely way to see the city. It gave us a sense of the layout of the streets and neighbourhoods that we couldn't have picked up while on foot. It also, through its gently swaying motion and soothingly informative multilingual commentary, gave each of us a good 25-minute nap that worked wonders for staving off the lingering effects of jet lag.
The other tour we did was an architectural walking tour with a cheerful English lad named Tommy. Barcelona has got oodles of unusual and funky buildings, the most famous of which were designed by the architect Gaudí. Gaudí was all about using shapes of nature to express the perfection of God because God designed nature. Or something like that. His most well-known building is the still-unfinished Sagrada Familia cathedral. Marg and I got to visit the cathedral after our tour (Tommy hooked us up with 'skip-the-line' tickets - hollah!). Construction started on the cathedral in 1882 and is still very much ongoing. There are meant to eventually be four façades on each face of the church, each depicting a different part of the Tale O' Jesus. At the moment, there are just the Nativity Façade (by Gaudí himself) and the Passion Facade (sculptures by Josep Maria Subirachs). General opinion is divided about which facade is the better. A lot of people like the Nativity because it kept to Gaudí 's original style - more curvy and gentle. Marg agrees with the Nativity side. I myself am on Team Passion Façade. The style of the sculptures on this side are angular, austere and kinda scary. And in this way, the form reflects the subject. And the cross Jesus is hanging from is made of unadorned I-beams, which I think is a pretty cool idea.
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| Pretty Nativity Façade - Marg's pick |
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| Zoom in on angel dudes playing music for Jesus' b-day |
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| Creepy-cool Passion Façade - I like this one better |
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| Jesus of the I-beam: "Hello Detroit! Are you ready to ROCK??" |
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| Storm troopers and a lady who just wiped her face off on a towel |
My first words upon entering the cathedral were "Holy shit," the irony of which is not lost upon me. When you travel in Europe, it's almost inevitable that you visit a hecka lotta churches. They're everywhere. And most of them are pretty cool and big and old and probably gothic and lots of important historical things happened there, etc. etc. yada yada. Notre Dame, St. Patrick's, St. Peter's, St. Mungo's - all old, all cool, but all recognizably churchy. Sagrada Familia is different. It's unlike any building I've ever been in. The columns that reach up to the towering ceiling are very organic-looking, almost like bones. The stained glass doesn't have any pictures, just varying hues of red, green, yellow and blue that all carefully blend into each other. And it's HUGE. It's one of those places that photos don't do justice. You just gotta see it for yourself.
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| Big, big church |
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| A veritable churchy rainbow |
The one thing that rankled me about it was that tucked behind one of the façades was the Most Holy Gift Shop of the Sagrada Familia. I'm not churchy or religious or any such descriptor, but it just strikes me as odd that pretty much every sizeable church in Europe has a gift shop. It makes sense economically, but just seems to be a crude addition to such ethereal places. Plus, I don't think Gaudí would have like it very much.
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| And the Lord said: "Create for me a fob in the image of my church, and fashion it such that it will open my brewskis." |
Aside from the Sagrada Familia, the most-visited Gaudí work in Barcelona would probably be Park Güell. It's basically a lush park on a hill with lots of trails, jaggedy stairs and lookout points where you can easily spend an afternoon wandering. In the centre of the park, there's the 'Historical Section,' which essentially is an area of pillars and small gingerbread-esque houses that have been covered in mosaics to make them look like Candyland. And naturally you have to pay a fairly obscene levee to get into Candyland (if you try and sneak it, goddam Plumpy will send you back to square one).
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| Up yours too, Plumpy |
Regardless, what this meant is that sis and I spent the whole two hours wandering around in full sun. By luck, I had brought a sweater with me, so I managed to cover up and block most of those nasty UV buggies. By 4:00, however, poor, sweet li'l Margaret looked like the sun god Ra had descended from the heavens and sucker punched her in the torso. The guy organizing the line to the mosaics took notice and after laughing at her, shared this pearl of Catalonian wisdom: "Next time, you should make use the protect!" Well said, line guy.
After running around the mosaic pillars, getting yelled at for touching the mosaic dragon and climbing inside the mosaic gingerbread houses, we got Marg some after-sun lotion and I rubbed down her shoulders as we rode the hop-on hop-off into the sunset.
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| Touchest thou not ye olde dragonne! |
One other thing that Marg and I attempted in Barcelona was to go out to a beachfront club called Opium. It leads out right onto the actual beach! I had been in there for about 5 minutes on my trip to Barcelona last year, but a couple of the lads we were adventuring with back then didn't dress properly for a club (they wore sneakers - what a faux pas) so we ended up just drinking in a circle on the beach beside the Mediterranean. Which was actually pretty cool. But this time around, Marg and I were definitely going to the club. We were definitely going to party on the beach. That was definitely the plan.
Until we met the Scots.
They were unmissable, 9 young fellows all wearing kilts and one with a big Saltire flag draped across his back. As soon as we saw them, Marg looked me in the eye and said "No." and I said "Yesss!" and booted it in their direction. Before I had the chance to say anything to them, like "Hey, I'm moving to your country," they all noticed us and went "eeeeyyyyyyyy!!!" And that was that. Plans for the night changed. We were now part of the group.
After one of them finished spewing at the base of a palm tree, we continued towards the beach. They sang (/yelled) traditional Scottish songs at a guy who was playing guitar at the side of the boardwalk. They fed us some of their street beers (in Barcelona, there are guys who wander the streets at night selling cans of beer for a euro). They didn't fall over too much. It was loads of fun. When we arrived at the beach, we sat in a circle, put some tunes on someone's phone and swapped stories of our homelands and travels. A handful of them decided that they wanted to take a dip in the Mediterranean, so they dropped the kilts and dove in. And yes, they were wearing their kilts in the traditional style. Apparently the sea was quite chilly that night.
At a certain point, Marg realized that she really had to pee. So a few of us went on a search to find a bathroom. There were a few stalls on the beach, but they were all locked up for the night. There were no open restaurants, no convenience stores and no sufficiently dark corners. I said to Marg, "You might just have to do a beach squat." One of the lads heard me say this and started chanting "Beach. Squat. Beach. Squat. BEACH. SQUAT." Then all the boys joined in - "BEACH. SQUAT. BEACH. SQUAT. BEACH. SQUAT!!!" Ah! What mirth we shared!
When one of the boys realized he had lost their apartment key in the sand, I seized the opportunity of their distraction to hustle Marg off behind a pile of lawn chairs for the squatting of the beach. I did my best to screen her with my skirt. She had previously rejected my (incredibly clever) idea of climbing into a trash can and peeing in there, so I could only do so much. Perfectly timed as always, we returned to the lads just as the key-loser realized that the key had been in his pocket the whole time. And none of them were the wiser.
Beach. SQUAT!
