Barcelona

Barcelona:

We ended our trip in Spain in Barcelona. This was my least favorite place that we visited in Spain. That is not to say that we did not have a good time here.

Barcelona is a huge city. Half the people we ran into were either tourists or residence that were not originally from Spain. The main thing to do here is go shopping, which is expensive. Of course there are museums to see, Cathedral’s to visit, great architecture to view, food to eat and nightlife to experience.

People:

I may not actually be able to speak Spanish, but in most places I was able to say enough to get my point across. This was not true in Barcelona. That is because the dialect of Spanish is completely different. Most of the other places we visited spoke a dialect of Spanish called Castilian, whereas here they spoke Catalan. Much of the signs where spelled similarly (but usually not the same). At one point I tried to order orange chocolate gelato. I had ordered orange juice several times in Spanish with no problem, but my pronunciation of “Naranja” was so off here in Catalina that I ended up pointing at what I wanted instead of reading it off the label. The name was right there, spelled exactly like I learned it in Spanish class, but the when the clerk pronounced the word back to me it was like nothing I had ever heard before.

Catalans are very proud of their state. Here they hung the Catalina Flag instead of the Spanish flag (the flag they hung in every other city we visited. I even saw jokes on t-shirts that made of fun of the rest of Spain in comparison of Catalina.  

Buildings:

This cities great buildings great buildings where quite a bit more modern then in previous cities. Many of these are works by Antoni Gaudí, a 19^th/ 20^th century architect known for his artistic and often whimsical designs. We were able to visit three of his works, include the Barcelona Catedral, the Casa Bartlló, and the Passion Façade of the Sagrada Família. The last of which has been in construction for the last 150 years. All of which were awe inspiring.

Food:

Much of the food was really over priced for what we got. We did go to one place where the food was great, and though a little pricey was definitely worth it. It was a little restaurant on the pier with some of the best seafood. It also had the best sangria I had while in Spain. I had the grilled cuddle fish (Sepia a la Plancha). We also got roasted peppers (Pimientos del Pedrón), and Fried Calamari rings (Calamares a la Romana).

The pier was filled with restaurant after restaurant, and on these two slow nights there were only two places that were packed, and one of them was a burger joint. This other one had what tasted like traditional Spanish food. When we ate there we found out that it was owned and managed by Pakistanis. They probably changed the dish just enough to make it a favorite with the locals. When looking at the reviews of the restaurant, we noticed that this place had great reviews for all its seafood dishes and horrible reviews from the people that ordered non-sea food meats. So, I guess we know what they’re good at.

Night Life:

I am not a late night person, but the main thing that I heard about this place was: “Oh, it has excellent night life”. I cannot attest to the truth of this statement, because Arvind and I were in on the two worst nights of the year for night life: the Monday before Christmas, and Christmas Eve (which is a day people work in Spain).  This was probably poor planning on our part.

We did manage to find a really cool bar, one of the only bars where we found a crowd on a slow Monday night. This bar was a place where both Hemingway and Salidor Dali had hung out. Basically, this bar had been around for the past 150 years, and it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since its start up. I tried going to the ladies room here only to be laughed at because the ladies room had nothing in it. There were just pipes where the toilet should have been. Outside this bar were prostitutes. People inside the bar told us it was safe, but your wallet may get stolen here: “at least they won’t stab you for your wallet”. All in all this place felt like walking back in time and truly experiencing history.

 

Hotel:

We stayed at the H10 Montcada Boutique Hotel. It was really nice. We had a great view of one of the cathedrals that were built by Gaudi. The bar on the roof of the building had an amazing view of all of almost all of the city. We got to see this view while sitting in a hot-tub.