Barcelona, Spain
February 20-24, 2008

From skiing in Austria we drove to Bratislava, Slovakia to board a flight to Barcelona, Spain. We decided to identify another place to spend the last part of our vacation, and considering we could quite easily choose any airport between Klagenfurt and Budapest, we settled on the Bratislava airport (only about 1 1/2 hours from Budapest anyway) which had a 45 Euro flight to Barcelona. We made our early afternoon flight and were landed in Barcelona by late afternoon and were checked into our apartment by early evening. A friend of mine recommended an apartment about 10 minutes walk from the Sagrada Familia Cathedral (more on that later) which we were able to book for 85 Euro/night. It looked nice in the website (spacious, clean, and in a good location), but I figured SOMETHING must be wrong with this because of the price. We would often spend 100 Euro/night stopping at a roadside hotel on other drives we have made, so I was not expecting much. But to our surprise this was a PERFECT accomodation; three bedrooms, a large living area and a kitchen overlooking the living area. We had plenty of room and considering we were with the girls, we were in at night early, so we spent enough time in the apartment to be glad that it was as spacious and comfortable as it was.
After picking up the keys and dropping our stuff off, we took a walk to find dinner. On the way back we picked up some groceries at a small grocery store for breakfasts and snacks over the next few days, then went right to sleep.

We woke up Thursday morning quite leisurely, leaving late morning to walk to the Cathedral "Sagrada Familia". The most famous architect of Barcelona, Antoni Gaudi, designed this Cathedral, which began construction in 1882, with a very unique style of wavy lines. It is hard to spot a straight line in this design. Unfortunately, in 1926, while the Cathedral was not yet fully completed (the outside structure, XXX, and XXX were the only parts complete, leaving most of the inside unfinished), Gaudi was hit by a street tram and killed. The plans for the rest of the completion were destroyed by Catalin Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War (1936) and to this day it is still only partially complete. We went inside and it is a construcion zone inside, as they work to finish it. Supposedly it won't be fully built for many more years (I heard 2026!). It is a beautiful structure and from any point of Barcelona you can see it protruding into the skyline.

From the Cathedral we took the metro down to the Mediterrenean shore, strolled past the Columbus statue, honoring Christopher Columbus' relationship with the Spanish monarchy who financed his trip to "India", and found a place to eat Tapas, the famous Spanish food type. We were wrong about what Tapas were. It turns out that they are just appetizers, or finger foods of different sorts, from beef, to pork, to chicken or seafood. What we had was not that good, to be honest.

We then walked through the Gothic Quarter, meandered through its cobblestone/narrow streets until we found the Picasso Museum, which contains both works of Picasso as well as art that Picasso himself collected (some Monets, Rembrandts, etc.). I think it was particularly interesting to notice that Picasso ACTUALLY could paint. As Heather put it so well, he actually DOES paint better than Ashley, even though you wouldn't realize it based on his later works! I don't know how he went from real art to his cubic kindergarten method of painting. And if you look at some of his ceramics that he created at the end of his career, it is actually embarrasing to think that people actually think this is art. That being said, looking at his early work, he was a talented artist after all!

And with our new strategy of bringing the ipod with us to museums, we can actually enjoy them. The girls can spend a few minutes getting their cultural fill and then can be entertained when they are full of culture. And considering they usually watch Little Einsteins, we don't feel too badly about this method of seeing museums.

From the museum we made our way to Las Ramblas, the famous Barcelona streets where the restaurants, shops, and street performers make for a VERY exciting walk. We passed by a number of fun street performers (including our "silver man" from Berlin...see next post). Our Futbol star was our favorite. We probably watched him for at least ten minutes and he just kept that ball bouncing in the air, either with his foot, his shoulders, his head, or his knees. He put on and took off a shirt all the while keeping the ball moving through the air. He balanced it on his head and he juggled it through his legs over and over again. It was quite amazing. It did help that he was actually the only street performer with an actual talent, the others merely dressed up in interesting costumes and were able to stand perfectly still (I guess that is a talent, but not nearly as impressive).

Right off La Rambla is La Boqueria, a large outdoor market full of fresh seafood, fresh fruits and vegetables, and other food sorts and fishmongers and meatmongers all over the place. If we lived here we would for sure do our best to frequent this place. It looked fantastic.
At this point, it had been a long day and we retired back to our apartment to spend the rest of the evening.
Friday morning we again woke up and slowly got ready, leaving for the docks again mid-morning, to visit the Barcelona aquarium. It is the largest aquarium in Europe, and although pretty interesting, it did not seem that large to me, but the girls had a great time. I learned there are fish in the world that look like leafy sticks. I would have actually thought they were leafy sticks if they were not in an aquarium all by themselves with a big sign that says "leafy stick fish" (or something of that sort).
We walked back to Las Ramblas, this time starting from the beginning (yesterday we came out of the Gothic Quarter in the middle of the walk). We went back to La Boqueria outdoor market and bought some fresh prawns before heading back to the apartment, calling it a day. Heather used the prawns to make a delicious prawn spaghetti meal for dinner.

Saturday morning we took the metro and the Funicular, and then a cable car up to Montjuïc (Hill of the Jews) and the Montjuïc Castle, which sits up on the hill just off the coast and has a spectacular view of the city. We spent a little time walking around the grounds and enjoying the view before taking the cable car back down. We walked to the National Museum of Art of Catalonia, located within the Palau Nacional, a beautiful building built for the 1929 World's Fair. We didn't pass the lobby of this one, but enjoyed the architecture of the building if not the art inside. We made our way down the 314 steps (Katie counted) from the Museum to the Plaza Espana where we took the metro BACK to Las Ramblas, where we finished the walk from Las Ramblas de Catalanya to the Diagonal metro station.

We ended our Barcelona adventure with a trip to Park Guell, a very large (and HILLY!) park that was commissioned to Antonio Gaudi to design a park that would attract a high end neighborhood. Although the commercial aspect of this venture failed, the park is now a World Heritage landmark. To get there from the metro stop closest to the park, it still required almost two kilometers of walking, much of it uphill. It was a challenge, considering my broken shoulder (so only one handed to help with the girls) and Heather six months pregnant trying to manage a stroller up these hills. FORTUNATELY many of the most difficult parts of the journey employed escalators built into the side of the hills, so we were at least able to demand some reprieve once in a while. The reality is, we had no idea what we were in store for while making this trek, but we were very glad we endured it, as the park was fascinating. After walking through some more "natural" trails and more natural areas of the park, we came to the area where Gaudi had built what from the top looks like a large clearing with his trademark artistic benches surrounding an open space where kids can run around, where vendors sell their Spanish wares, and where most everyone can just enjoy the natural beauty of the area. But walking down from the clearing is when you realize that this "clearing" has been artificially built and sits on top a large number of columns that support the entire structure. And as you continue to walk, you come across a couple buildings also designed by Gaudi that are also quite intriguing and unique. The two kilometer trek back to the metro didn't seem as bad, obviously, since it was mostly downhill. But all of the walking and lugging the girls around with one arm and a less than completely mobile wife, was completely worth the effort for the sight that we enjoyed.

We left early Sunday morning for the airport and it was a pretty easy trip back to Bratislava and then to Budapest (although after waiting FOREVER at passport control at the Bratislava airport, the border guard made a phone call, mumbled something to us about "go to Box 1". I didn't understand her at all, and decided to just ignore her. So we just walked out, got into our car and drove off. I hope that we are not put on the Slovakian "Watch list"!). It was a fantastic trip, despite four weeks of use of only one arm!