Monthly Archives: October 2015

Quintessential life in Spain

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El Vaso de Oro (Cup of Gold)

Cervecería El Vaso de Oro (Cup of Gold)

Tapas and drinks are the typical stuff of daily life in Spain, and we’ve not come across a better example of Spaniards enjoying their two favorite pastimes than El Vaso de Oro (Cup of Gold) cervecería (beer establishment, not that they don’t serve every imaginable type of refreshment as well).

We had spent the day hiking up Montjüic, bypassing the funicular to hike back down, and walking across the waterfront to the other side of the harbor to find this place. All I wanted was a place to sit and rest my tootsies and a cup of something gold and cold. There wasn’t a seat to be found in the place, which was predominantly a long, narrow bar with stools, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves so much we couldn’t leave. We ordered beers and tapas and hunched against a shelf hanging on the wall. Ten minutes later two people left, and we grabbed their stools.

and this is a Monday afternoon!

…and this is a Monday afternoon!

The food was delicious; we had these little pork filets on toast drenched in olive oil and some chorizitos (little chorizo sausages) with a basket of bread to soak up the drippings. The beer really quenched. We also enjoyed watching the crew behind the counter interact. There is so little room to navigate back there that they each had their stations, calling out orders to each other and passing food and drinks back and forth – always with a sarcastic comment or shout. Fun!

Park Güell

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the terrace overlooking Barcelona

the terrace overlooking Barcelona

Of all the things on my list to see in Barcelona, Park Güell was the most anticipated – even more so than La Sagrada Familia. And it was also the most disappointing.

Marcus and I were taking a day off on a Sunday. After hanging out at the apartment paying bills, writing blogs, and being generally lazy, we needed some activity. Let’s go for a walk in the park!

wild parrots build nests in the palm trees

wild parrots build nests in the palm trees

Park Güell was originally a business venture commissioned of Gaudí by his patron, Count Eusebi Güell. It was designed as a commercial center in the suburbs of Barcelona where the well-to-do could live, socialize, and shop. Unfortunately the enterprise failed, but Gaudí so loved the area he designed that he spent the last twenty years of his life living there. I had seen photos of the serpentine mosaic benches on the terrace overlooking Barcelona, and I couldn’t wait to sit there and take in the view.

We approached the park from a side entrance, so we didn’t see the busloads of tourist entering at the main entrance. As we approached the terrace, we saw a long Disney-esque line snaking back from a ticket booth. Ticket booth? What is there to buy in a public park? Well, it turns out that they control the number of people who are on the terrace at any given time by selling tickets ($9 per person) for appointed time slots. So you stand in line to buy your tickets, and then you stand in line to wait for your time slot. I was incensed and refused to buy a ticket on principle.

Gaudí designed the columns that support the terraces to look like tree roots

Gaudí designed the columns that support the terraces to look like tree roots

There were plenty of other terraces to enjoy on our own time and at no expense. The park had many levels as it wound its way uphill, and we started to hike in search of views of Barcelona. As we achieved each level and admired the view, there was always a higher level with a better view. So up we’d go again. I hadn’t dressed appropriately for the 85° weather. Wunderground told me it was only going to be in the low 70s. The entrance to our apartment building is in an urban canyon that sees no daylight, so it was quite cool when we left the apartment. I wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and boots. Everyone else was in capris or shorts and sandals. How is it that everyone always seems more in tune with the weather than I am? I don’t think I got the weather right a single day in Barcelona. Isn’t this October? Isn’t it supposed to be fall now?

the entrance to Park Güell

the entrance to Park Güell

Long story short, I couldn’t get the Disney effect out of my head. By the time we walked down to the main entrance to the park, I didn’t have the patience to fight my way through the mob to look at Gaudí’s mosaic creatures and ceramic buildings. The photo-snapping swarm and the heat had done their worst, and I couldn’t wait to go. We walked home on souvenir-lined streets that seemed to go on for miles. I mean, really, how many mosaic lizards and frogs can tourists consume? It wasn’t until we reached the square near our apartment that I could finally breathe freely – and put that sweatshirt back on.

Holy Cathedral!

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La Sagrada Familia

La Sagrada Familia

So many people I know have been to Barcelona. If they’ve been to Europe, and especially if they’ve been on a Mediterranean cruise, they’ve been to Barcelona. And all of these people, when they heard about our trip to Spain, asked if we were going to see Antoni Gaudí’s famous cathedral, La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family), while we are here. ¡Claro que sí!

columns grow to the ceiling like trees

columns grow to the ceiling like trees

I had high expectations when I entered the cathedral, and I must confess they were exceeded. Oh! My! Goodness! Gaudí was so outside the box on this one. This is like no cathedral ever built. Where did he come up with his designs? Nature, they say. Beginning as a young boy, he studied the shape of natural things: the angle of the roots at the base of a tree trunk, the angle at which the branches extend from the trunk, the arc of palm fronds hanging from branches. There are no straight lines or right angles in nature, he determined, so there aren’t any in his cathedral. Why not make the columns that support the massive roof grow like trees from the floor right to the lofty ceiling? The spreading branches eliminate the need for buttresses, and you feel like you’re in a forest. For him, religion and nature were one. He also loved mathematics, especially the geometry of paraboloids and hyperboloids. I have to agree with him: There is nothing more aesthetically pleasing than a curve.

light streaming through hidden colored windows

light streaming through hidden colored windows

Gaudí loved color as well. The gradations of the rainbow, from reds to blues and violets, as you progress around the side aisles of the cathedral are phenomenal. There is the beautiful, visible stained glass, but he also included colored windows you can’t see that allow light suffused with color to strike the white, interior side walls.

IMG_5439And the crucifix suspended at the heart of the cathedral under an umbrella of light is visible from every angle. It is like nothing I have ever seen before, and truly awe-inspiring!

Gaudí used visual allegory throughout his design, but especially on the exterior. Each of the three façades; the Nativity, the Passion, and the Glory; is covered in flora, fauna, and Biblical characters rich in significance. The two columns on the Nativity façade are supported by a tortoise and a sea turtle representing the land and the sea. Only the Nativity façade was complete when Gaudí died at the age of 73 in 1926. He was hit by a tram as he was crossing the street to go to work at the cathedral, but after a short hiatus the work continued under his assistant’s guidance. The Passion façade was completed in 1976, and now they’re working on the Glory.

the Nativity façade

the Nativity façade

Sant Jordí (St. George)

Sant Jordí (St. George)

They are hoping to have the cathedral finished in 2026, the centennial of Gaudí’s death, but I’m hearing whispers of 2040. What they’ve accomplished so far is literally fantastic, and if the Glory façade has as much detail as the other two, then they’ve got a ways to go yet.

From any hill in Barcelona you can see Gaudí’s cathedral sailing on the sea of buildings and watch the cranes hard at work. It’s so exciting to think that one day this masterpiece will be complete and we were there to watch it unfold.

the choir surrounds the interior

the choir lines the interior so that music surrounds

Ham on Wheels

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Ham on Wheels!

Ham on Wheels!

Jamón iberico, or Iberian ham, is the national meat. Not sure that Spain officially has a national meat, but if they did, this would be it. Every bar, café, and restaurant in the country serves it, and every tenth shop is a ham shop. There are so many different grades, starting with what the pig ate (the best hams are said to come from pigs whose diet is exclusively acorns, and the best acorns come from a region in southwest Spain called Huelva) and ending with what part of the leg you’re cutting from (the top side of the “wrist” is best) and what you’re cutting with (hand-carved is considered better quality than machine-cut).

Love the logo of this ham store we saw in Barcelona, Ham on Wheels. They deliver!

Santa María del Mar

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Santa María del Mar, Barcelona

Santa María del Mar, Barcelona

This church, built in the 14th century in the Catalan Gothic style, is simple in style but strikingly beautiful. There must be something to the theory that geometric proportion is aesthetically pleasingly because this church was designed around units of eight, the numerical symbol for the Virgin Mary, and it is heart-achingly symmetrical.

the nave

the nave

The first impression is that the church is incredibly light and lofty inside for a church built in the Middle Ages. Some claim that the columns supporting the roof are the most slender of any Gothic church ever built. Where you notice this most is in the apse. I don’t know if the eight columns behind the altar are physically taller or more slender than the columns in the nave, or if it’s the light coming in from the windows there, or just an optical illusion, but certainly the eye is drawn upward toward heaven, as was intended by the architects.

 

I don’t ever remember being in a church with an open ambulatory – no walls, no screen, no closed doors behind the altar; the openess invites you to walk behind the altar and explore it from every angle. Now that’s my kind of church!

the rose window above the entrance

the rose window above the entrance

painting in the keystone of one of the arches

painting in the keystone of one of the arches

Laundry woes

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clothes horse in Bilbão

clothes horse in Bilbão

The next time you toss a load of laundry in your clothes dryer, consider this: While all of the apartments we’ve rented in Spain have had washing machines, none has had a dryer. Some have had a clothes horse, as the British call them – those marvelous drying racks that hold a boatload of laundry.

Our most recent apartment in Zaragoza had a little drying rack outside the kitchen window that hung out over what I can only call a clothes drying shaft. If you stick your head out the window and look up and down the shaft, you will see all the clothes drying racks of the apartments above and below you. And if you peer all the way down into the bottom of the murky shaft, you will see a cemetery of lost clothes and clothespins. (I wonder who is responsible for cleaning out the bottom of the drying shaft.)

We scoffed at the outdoor drying rack in Zaragoza and bypassed washing clothes until we got to Barcelona where the hosts of our current apartment would surely have a sophisticated indoor clothes horse.

Never scoff; you’re only asking for something worse. I once scoffed at a sink in England with the hot and cold taps so far apart it was impossible to get warm water. Our next apartment had the same situation with the additional challenge of a basin so small you couldn’t wash your hands without getting the entire bathroom wet. (The bathroom was the size of a broom closet.)

outdoor laundry area in Barcelona

outdoor laundry area in Barcelona – laundry hanging four floors above ground

My payment for scoffing at the outdoors drying rack in Zaragoza is a full outdoor laundry area in Barcelona. The washer and clothesline are out on the balcony. Note the shower curtain draped over it all to keep the rain and bird droppings off!

We used it (we were desperate for clean clothes by this time), and it worked even though it’s rained almost every day we’ve been here. I can tell you that we hung on tightly to every article of clothing until the clothespin was secure. And we brought everything in for a final air-dry in the apartment. (A pair of jeans is going on three days of dampness.)

typical Spanish clothes dryer

typical Spanish clothes dryer

As with the Brits and their two-tap sinks, I have to wonder why the Spanish don’t spoil themselves a bit and buy a dryer. Is it the cost of the appliance, or the cost of electricity? Or just a cultural thing? I’m hoping that in their own apartments they’ve splurged on themselves and bought a dryer. But something tells me, from all the laundry we’ve seen hanging outside windows, that that’s not the case. How is it that their knit tops don’t look as if they’ve been slept in like mine do? I took a closer look when we were people watching at a café: They do!

So next time you pull those fluffy, warm clothes out of the dryer, think of my T-shirts whose necklines will probably never go back to their original shapes – and enjoy something we often take for granted!

The gateway to the Pyrenees

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Los Mallos

Los Mallos

We drove up into the Pyrenees from Zaragoza. On our way back from the little town of Jaca we came across these fabulous rocks, Los Mallos. (I can’t find a translation.) They are called “La Puerta del Pirineo,” or the Gateway to the Pyrenees. Perfect name!

The Gateway to the Pyrenees

The Gateway to the Pyrenees