Springtime, for Smithies, in Barcelona...

Rachel, Maggie, Gwen and I just spent our spring break together in Barcelona.  Gwen and Maggie and I arrived on Thursday (and Rachel arrived Saturday) to SPRING, complete with blue sky, sunshine, and pleasantly cool temperatures in the morning that warmed up to hot, short-sleeve weather by mid-afternoon.  We rented an apartment for the week, so we had our own space and our own kitchen, and discovered that between the four of us we cook really good meals.  On Friday morning I woke up around 7:45 to the sound of someone playing Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme on the accordion.  The week was off to a good start. 

Somehow, for the three days until Rachel (aka walking GPS) arrived, I got put in charge of navigation.  [I will now pause until those of you who have ever tried to go anywhere with me quit laughing and get back into your chairs.]  And I did pretty well, too, thank you very much.  Mostly.  Except for maybe Friday morning, when I meant for us to arrive at Placa Espana (and from there to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya), lead us confidently and accurately at least half-way there, and then wound up at the port instead (ie, the wrong end of a very long boulevard).  My first clue that I'd messed up was the enormous cruise ship poking up over the top of the building.  For a minute I thought Oh look, how nice, a boat, until I pictured the map in my head, and realized that there shouldn't BE any body of water large enough to float a boat that big anywhere near Placa Espana.  I sheepishly admitted this to my friends, and at that point it was nearly lunch time, since we'd already taken several detours to peruse markets and admire palm trees, so we found a bench, ate the lunch we brought, and explored the port, as long as we were there.

I recalculated our route, and we wound along towards the art museum, detouring (intentionally) along the way to scenic viewpoints and playgrounds.  By the time we got to the museum, got up the many steps and escalators (yes, outdoor escalators) to the top, sat and listened to the guitar player there for a while, and finally arrived triumphantly at the entrance, the museum had closed.  Literally five minutes before we got there.  So we felt a little silly, but not too disappointed, because the 4+ hour ramble to get there was beautiful, and we enjoyed everything along the way.  And, since the approach to the Catalan art museum is one of the most green and gorgeous I have every seen, we wandered around it a bit more, and then wandered through the grounds of the 1992 Olympics on the hill behind it, and then found a small, shady grove with benches to nap on for ten minutes or so.  We did finally make it to the art museum the next day, and caught the fountains dancing to classical music on our way out.


We saw lots of Gaudi architecture, and I fell in love with it.  I expected to, but it was more than just the visual whimsical-ness and appeal of the architecture itself: the mosaics, the stained glass, the sculpture-y curves, the spiral staircases, the natural light, and all the honey-colored wood and shades of blue at Casa Batlò (which was my favorite).  What I didn't realize was that he wasn't just an architect; he was something of an engineer and an inventor.  He thought about the practicality and comfort of everything: the brass doorhandles were molded to fit his (and therefore most people's) hand naturally, and the doors and walls had shuttering vents built in that you could open or close to allow or block the flow of warm/cold air.  In the central air/light well at Casa Batlò, he made the tiles at the top a gradually more vivid shade of blue than those lower down, so that when it is lit up by bright sunlight, the shades of blue appears consistent from top to bottom.  It was simultaneously whimsical, mathematical, and incredibly satisfying not just to my eye, but also to touch (the banisters were also shaped to naturally fit your hand).

The whole week was filled with street preformers: a very talented accordion player who drifted from one improvised, melancholy melody to the next, and originally fooled us into thinking he was a distant church organ; a flamenco dancer on a piece of plywood, making it up as he went along, accompanied by a friend drumming on a plywood box.  We also kept running into other Smithies, since at least half the JYA Florence crew wound up spending at least of few days of their break in Barcelona.  On Friday evening, after tapas for dinner with Camilla and Allison (two other Florence Smithies), we stumbled on a Good Friday procession, complete with giant religious floats carried on the shoulders of about 12 people under the curtain around the base; the floats rocked gently side to side as they moved veeeeerry sloooowly down the street, making the candles flicker and the fringe sway.

On Easter we woke up to pouring rain (after a gloriously sunny Good Friday: isn't that kind of backwards?), and, after sitting in on a bit of the mass (in Catalan) in what we had by then started to think of as "our" Cathedral (because it was so close to our apartment), we spent the grey, rainy morning in the Catalan history museum, which was an interactive ramble through Catalan history from prehistoric times up through the present--and also free, since it was the first sunday of the month.   Always a plus.  When we left the museum, the clouds had cleared up completely, and we were able to have our Easter picnic in Parc Guell (Gaudi's park) after all--along with about half of Barcelona.  Apparently it's the thing to do.  We spent a few blissful hours lounging on the grass in the sun and dappled shade, with a picnic that included:

- Sandwiches (build your own with ingredients of your choice from: bread, salami, thinly sliced onions, unidentified but delicious cheese, fresh avocado, olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, mushrooms, and tomatoes)
- Strawberries, oranges, rice cakes and strawberry jam, marshmallow peeps, Easter Snails (candied jelly, not actual snails), water, and a bottle of fruit juice we picked up on the way.

After which naps were in order.

We packed it up just in time.  As we were starting to wander the rest of the park, Rachel noticed an increasingly ominous bank of deep, deep blue-black clouds rolling in FAST out of nowhere, so we climbed quickly up to see the view from the highest point, and then beat a hasty retreat back down and out of the park, accompanied by about half of Barcelona.  We didn't quite make it to the metro stop before the sky opened up, so the metro was packed with hoards of soggy but cheerful picnickers.

It was  a good spring break.

Pictures are here:

Barcelona