Barcelona – brewsalablog

We telephoned for a taxi — itself a minor adventure in utilizing country codes on a cell phone and communicating our location to the fast-talking Spanish-speaking dispatcher — after realizing we’d hopelessly missed the public transit option to get to the train station in time. But by mid-afternoon we’d arrived in Barcelona at our glorious, wrap-around rooftop terrace apartment known as “the Attic!”

With such a gorgeous view of the city and its many mopeds we were overcome with the desire to phone our mothers to thank them for our wonderful lives, which it turned out was surprisingly cheap all across western Europe for Sprint wireless customers — only twenty cents per minute!

Wine and chat accomplished, we descended into the neighborhood below for dinner and drinks. Yana discovered her new favorite drink, vermouth, and Mark continued to enjoy the delicious and plentiful olives.

The next morning we took a Fat Tire bicycle tour of the city which hit upon a number of Barcelona landmarks and ended with a delicious lunch on the beach.

After some discussion, the people of Barcelona went ahead with an arch even though they had lost their war. They turned down an aspiring young architect named Eiffel who had some wild notion of building a tower. He went further up the continent instead.

Even the dogs here are too cool for school.

After the tour, we went to Sagrada Familia, a massive cathedral designed by the famous Barcelona architect Gaudí which has been under construction since the late eighteenth century. The Vatican has taken an interest in this “minor basilica” and has sped its construction, now targeted for completion in 2026.

The gospel according to Mark can be found at our sister site, afewbitsmore.com.

On the walk home we happened by a cocktail bar with perhaps the most skilled mixologist either of us have ever encountered. Along with free pizza and the characteristically solid pop music which blends the Spanish and French influences in fashion in Barcelona, we enjoyed an utterly responsible and prudent number of delicious drinks.

Old fashioned and a cosmopolitan. Just a gal out with her Mr. Big.

The next morning, Yana slept in while Mark went back to take a closer look at some of the sights we’d seen on the bike tour. He walked Las Ramblas — which at least at that time of day seemed little more than a giant, glorified strip mall of souvenir and food carts — and also visited the Cathedral of Barcelona.

When Yana first saw a mass of young men carrying Santa-like sacks over their shoulders, she thought, “How nice, they’re all going to do their laundry together!” Nope. Illegal designer knockoff bag salesmen. Though she didn’t buy one, she can attest to their seeming authenticity.

The Cathedral of Barcelona is open to the public before noon and after five. Otherwise though, be prepared to give alms.

But the goal of the morning was the National Museum, housed next door to the Cathedral within the same old castle from which Ferdinand and Isabella sent Columbus to pillage the new world for Spain.

The castle was built atop the ruins of the ancient Roman city Barcino, and one can now walk through them underground. The tour circuit goes through a laundry, a public square, a wine making facility, a fish sauce manufactory, and later in history through a Gothic church and baptistry (upon which the Cathedral was built).

Passersby were encouraged to urinate into sewers outside the laundries so it could be used as a disinfectant. The value was so great that eventually the Roman authorities imposed a tax on its collection and use, leading to the phrase “Pecunia non olet” or, “Money does not stink.”

Clothes were dyed after being bleached in the dye room. The light is roughly the shade of the dye used.

Wine was fermented in spherical vestibules that were partly underground.

More of the later Gothic Christian structures survive today, but they’re much less interesting.

After the ruins, the museum feeds back into galleries inside the castle and a couple adjacent chambers, including this massive hall from the medieval period.

Yana and Mark reunited for the train to the nearby city of Figueres, both joining the platform with only a few minutes to spare. After a lunch of tapas and seafood paella, we visited the home of Salvador Dalí, now a museum with a large collection of his work.

Yana loves the spark in this gal’s eye. Also…she totes gets the notion of #moreblush

This piece was viewable only through a peephole. A little boy exclaimed to his mother (in a beautiful Spanish-speaking-English accent), “The ear is sleeping! Look, Mama, the ear is taking a nap!”

While clearly a thing in Spanish art, this is somewhat more tongue-in-cheek than what we saw at the Prado in Madrid.

That day trip completed, we took the train back to Barcelona to get ready for a doubleheader museum visit the next day. First up was Picasso!

Meet Margot. Art historians agree she was a morphine addict. Yana loved how Picasso used big bold brush blobs to convey so much light, detail, and life.

Mujer con Mantilla, possibly incomplete (and possibly intentionally so) makes further use of pointillism. The photograph doesn’t really capture the detail.

Picasso made a series of reinterpretations of a famous Velásquez painting, Las Meninas, in the late summer of 1957. Picasso was fascinated with the piece from a young age after seeing it during a stay in Madrid in the early 1900s. Here is the original, which we also saw at the Prado in Madrid.

Of all the variations, both in whole and of single individuals from the original, we liked best this first, and only grayscale, reimagining.

We walked along the beach and lunched on the pier, then took a breathtaking gondola ride up the side of Montjuïc, Barcelona’s tallest hill. It is Montjuïc, in fact, which had dictated the height of Sagrada Familia: Gaudí designed it to be 172m, just a few meters lowers than Montjuïc, since Gaudí believed that man’s work should never supersede God’s. Presumably a willful indication that man’s work could easily do so is another form of worship?

Anyhow, the skyline was amazing even though visibility was limited by a thunderstorm, but that made the ride that much more thrilling! And that ride took us nearly to the door of the second museum of the day, that of Joan Miró, one of Yana’s favorite artists.

Mercury, rather than water, flows in a loop in this fountain. Designed by a friend of Miró’s, Alexander Calder, it was exhibited along with work of Miró at the 1937 World’s Fair. Commissioned by the Spanish government to celebrate what were then the World’s foremost mercury mines at Almadén, Spain, this piece was displayed directly in front of Picasso’s “Guernica” and secretly protested Franco’s ongoing siege and eventual regime, as did much of Miró’s work.

Following Miró we walked home in the rain, dried off at our AirBnB, and prepared for the early flight the following morning. Just as we’d left Valencia by cab in a hurry, we wound up doing the same in Barcelona to join the airport. Next stop Berlin!

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