Our Barcelona Adventure: Day One

"Cheap airfare" means something very different in London than it does in Vancouver--when we were deciding where to go during this half-term break, we had some places in mind, but ultimately let the airfares and schedules decide for us. We flew with the bargain-basement of the European discount airlines, Ryanair, which seems to continually excel at new ways of redefining "no-frill," but for a base fare of one pence each way, we can't complain about flying to Barcelona return (with all the taxes added in) for a mere CAD$60 each. We passed over some spectacular scenery during the two-hour flight,

and found ourselves in the centre of Barcelona before noon, a bit amazed to be in Spain with such little effort. (As Canadians for whom getting anywhere within or out of North America generally takes a lot of travel time, we definitely feel our citizenship when it comes to travelling in Europe, where distances are so much shorter.) Our hotel turned out to be pretty perfect, with an amazing location in the heart of the primarily pedestrianised Barri Gòtic (the Gothic quarter, filled with many 14th- and 15th-century buildings). The hotel entrance is marked by the potted plants on the right-hand side of this photo:

With a more comfortable bed and swankier bathroom than we have at home, a bit of a balcony view,

an interior courtyard,

free internet terminal in the lobby, and a bar area with all-day complimentary coffee, tea, water, and snacks (not to mention complimentary cava at check-in), we couldn't ask for anything more, especially considering the very reasonable off-season rates. After a quick freshening up, we left the hotel in search of lunch, passing this cute bar at the end of our street, whose roll shutter was almost better than seeing the place filled with people!

While the streets of Barcelona definitely encourage a lot of looking up while you walk, if you look down, you'll also be rewarded with these plaques, dotted all over the city as markers of historic businesses that have been in the same family for a substantial amount of time. The images that surround the plaque denote various trade guilds, and the dates mark the establishment of the business at that location and the date the plaque was awarded. I would love to wander around the city, searching for storefronts from each of the guilds.

Escribà offers an amazing selection of treats

with a beautiful Art Nouveau building to match.

Originally the premises of the Figueras family's pasta business, the shop is a striking sight whose corner relief of a female harvester seems appropriate to both businesses:

A short distance away was our lunch destination, Mercat Sant Josep, known as La Boqueria, the largest market in Europe. Since it was so close to our hotel, we returned in the early evening as well to check out businesses that weren't open earlier in the day, so the next few photos include some nighttime shots:

Built between 1836 and 1840 on the site of the convent from which it takes its name, the market contains a mouth-watering array of foodstuffs, often displayed with a sense of style.

But we weren't here to browse; we were here to eat, and after a short wait for some in-demand counter space, we sat down at Bar Pinotxo, a market stall that seemed to be popular with locals and tourists alike. We soon found out why! After a quick rundown of today's specials (as in many Barcelona restaurants, there is no written menu), we ordered two dishes to share and watched our food being prepared with the sounds of the market all around us.

The senior member of the Pinotxo team was all smiles and chatter, bouncing from customer to customer with enthusiasm.

With a substantial amount of crusty baguette to sop up the delicious sauces, our grilled venison

and deep-fried cod really hit the spot.

In a way, we couldn't have had a better experience for our first meal in Barcelona, and we left the market glowing with that type of culinary travel happiness that we'll hopefully find on every trip! With no real plans for this first day, we decided to wander around the Barri Gòtic and La Ribera (just east of the Barri Gòtic), letting our route be decided by the streets we encountered. We started by walking down part of La Rambla, whose name is a derivation of the Arabic ramla ("sand"). The former seasonal riverbed is now the most famous strolling street in Barcelona, with a number of historic sights directly on or just off the street. Of course, the usual touristy blights that come along with any pedestrian street (souvenir shops, living statues, overpriced cafés) also mark La Rambla, but we still found enough charm on the street to return. This cartoon bee on La Rambla has obviously been doing an excellent job watering his plant, because he's been rewarded with a living ship!

There's a bird and pet market on La Rambla, and although most of the creatures looked a bit cramped and unhappy, this tank of wee turtles made me want to take one home.

Off the main street, we started making our way along the seemingly endless narrow alleyways that make up the Barri Gòtic. We often stopped to admire the layers of structures that filled almost every corner of this atmospheric area.

This building houses a beautiful-looking restaurant, Els Quatre Gats, whose menu del dia (fixed-price, multi-course lunch menu) was amazingly inexpensive, considering the lush surroundings. I later found out that the restaurant's name, "the four cats," is Catalan slang for a gathering of people, and that the restaurant has been known as a gathering place for artists since its inception in 1897, with Picasso and Gaudí being regulars--in fact, Picasso's first art exhibition was held in the restaurant in 1900. The building was designed by Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, and we would see several of his most famous buildings later in our visit. All this is a good example of the type of place you can just walk past in Barcelona, without knowing it!

The sounds from this melodic guitar reverberated off the stone surroundings near La Seu (Barcelona's cathedral, which we would visit on our last day here), creating a dreamy result.

We entered this nearby courtyard, not sure what to expect, and found a lovely garden area

along with an intricately carved wooden ceiling:

The Palau del Lloctinent was built in 1550 as the official residence of the viceroy in Barcelona. It subsequently housed a convent and since 1853 has held the Archives of the Crown of Aragon (9th-19th-century documents relating to the counts and kings of Barcelona). Another striking sight in the courtyard is this bronze door of Saint George, sculpted in 1975 by famed Catalan sculptor Josep Maria Subirachs:

Tomorrow we would see Subirachs's most famous and controversial work, which graces one side of Gaudí's La Sagrada Família. The next part of our walk was filled with sights typical of the area:

The elevated passageway over Carrer Bisbe is much younger than it looks, having been built in 1928, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful.

As we walked, we continued looking at sights, both small

and large.

Plaça de Sant Felip Neri is a peaceful square built over a medieval cemetery; the square's 17th-century church shows eerie damage from a 1938 Fascist-forces bomb which killed twenty children from the neighbouring school.

During our visit, we came across a few pieces of evidence that Space Invader's been to Barcelona:

The narrow streets meant that we were often surprised when we rounded a corner and came across an unexpectedly lovely view.

The Collegi d'Arquitectes (College of Architects) features murals created in 1960 from sketches supplied by Picasso, who refused to return to Spain while Franco was still in power. The left side represents the "joy of life" while the centre shows giant festival figures and people holding palm leaves. (The hidden side in this photo represents the Catalan flag.)

My dad would love this shop!

This street was lined with attractive street lamps:

Here's a typical view from today--a narrow street, lined with tall buildings, and us walking and wondering what will be around the corner up ahead . . .

Plaça Reial is just off La Rambla, and makes for a pretty sight with its palm trees, fountain,

and iron street lamps. 26-year-old Gaudí was a new graduate when he won a competition to design the street lamps, one of his first commissions.

Plaça de Sant Just features this charming (restored) fourteenth-century fountain:

A lot of Barcelona buildings take the meaning of "ramshackle" to new heights, and it's sometimes difficult to tell which buildings are abandoned and which are inhabited. Whatever the case, I quite liked the use of leaves to weigh down this exterior blind:

One thing that neither of us really knew about Barcelona before coming here was the degree to which pastries, chocolates, and all manner of desserts seem to pervade shops of every sort. Barcelona's sweet tooth makes for some enjoyable window shopping:

Carrer de Montcada is a lovely street filled with medieval palaces, including the five that house the Museu Picasso and its collection of the artist's early works. We didn't have time for a visit to the museum on this short trip, but if we make it back to this wonderful city, it's definitely on our list.

This embedded face gazed at us as we passed:

The nearby Santa María del Mar is considered an important specimen of Catalan Gothic style, with its "characteristic horizontal lines, large bare surfaces, square buttresses and flat-topped octagonal towers." Analysis aside, it's a pretty spectacular place.

We exited the church on the opposite side

and continued heading south toward the water. Along the way, we stopped to admire this doorway of a private residence, which featured a long, flat stone as a knocker.

Once we reached the harbour, we spotted Roy Lichtenstein's Barcelona's Head, made for the 1992 Olympics,

which isn't far from Xavier Mariscal's 1987 piece Gamba ("Prawn") with its cute, smiling face.

Looking west, we caught a glimpse of the mountain of Montjuïc,

one of several Barcelona neighbourhoods that we wouldn't be able to visit on such a short trip. Filled with buildings and stadia associated with the 1992 Olympics, gardens, museums, galleries, and a replica of Mies van der Rohe's German pavilion for the 1929 Universal Exhibition (featuring his iconic Barcelona chair, created for the exhibition), the hilltop attractions of Montjuïc could probably take up an entire day. We kept wandering southeast, through the neighbourhood of Barceloneta, a primarily residential neighbourhood situated between the harbour and the Mediterranean, with working-class origins and a slow shift toward the gentrification that seems to come inevitably with such waterfront locations. We passed this unusual sculpture near the water, and although I was intrigued, I wasn't able to learn anything about the suspended sacks of coffee beans that graced the square.

In a rather surreal moment, we soon found ourselves at the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean! Sometimes there are places where you just don't think you'll ever stand, and at the edge of the Mediterranean was one of those places for us. Of course, when you're facing the water, it doesn't really look much different that the Pacific Ocean just five minutes' walk from our old Vancouver apartment, but still . . .

By now we were ready for a break, and we took the bus back up to La Boqueria where we picked up some fruit and headed back to the hotel for a bit of freshening up and a pre-dinner snack of our market purchases along with a sampling of the hotel's coffee (which was unexpectedly good, considering it was hotel coffee) and some pastries in the comfy bar. You may be wondering why we didn't just go and have dinner instead of snacking at 7:00 P.M. Well, Barcelona operates on a very different rhythm that we're used to, with most independent businesses closing for a midday siesta (from about 1:30-4:30 P.M.), and many restaurants opening for dinner around 8:30 P.M. After our little break, we left the hotel and returned to the streets of the Barri Gòtic.

Although Barcelona has its share of chain stores, I was impressed with the number of independent shops that filled most parts of the city, including a large number of small, specialised bookshops that seemed to be universally attractive spots.

I never knew that Barcelona was so chocolate-crazy, and we weren't alone in finding ourselves stopping quite often to peer into yet another chocolate shop.

I read somewhere that Barcelona has the highest concentration of shops in Europe, and even though I'm by no means a shopaholic, I can see how a three-day break in the city could be entirely filled with shopping. Along with all things chocolate, shoes were an extremely popular item, which seems to make sense in the city in which Camper opened its first shop in 1981. Still, the selection was staggering, often with charming window displays to draw you into a particular shop.

As someone who likes nosing around buildings, I really enjoyed the fact that many residential and public buildings propped open their main entrances, allowing free access to their central courtyards--because of this, we ended up seeing a lot of lovely spots that we may not have seen in another city.

This shop specialises in a wide range of treats made by nuns from all over Spain, with an attached café where you can sample the delicious-looking delights.

The night lights brought out textural details that we hadn't seen in the day, and we walked down some streets we had earlier visited with a new appreciation for the buildings around us.

The cream-coloured candles in this window are the type that I always think look beautiful, but could I ever bring myself to use them?

This stationery shop had a window display in keeping with the historical feel of the neighbourhood, and everyone who passed by joined us in peering into the window.

By now we were rather hungry, and we wandered down quite a few narrow lanes before choosing this cosy spot. Although we arrived at 9:00 P.M., we were among the first people in the restaurant, which was positively packed with people ready for dinner by the time we left around 10:30 P.M.

We started with salads (rocket and ham for me,

and avocado for Bob)

and followed with satisfying dishes of fish stew for me

and seared tuna for Bob.

Full, happy, and tired after a long day of walking (compounded by an early Ryanair start to the day which meant that we left the house before 3:00 A.M.), we began sauntering toward our hotel, still not quite believing we were in Barcelona, and impressed with what we had seen so far. My last photo of the night is of the Palau de la Generalitat, the traditional site of the Catalan government.

Although we were interested to visit the interiors of the Palau de la Generalitat and the Ajuntament ("town hall") directly opposite, both buildings are only open to the public on Sundays, so those are two things that we'll have to save for another visit. For now, we were happy that we still had two more days in what was increasingly proving itself to be an intoxicating city.