Barcelona + Valencia

BARCELONA

We ended up spending five nights in Barcelona. This is more than we planned but at this point, we are getting tired. We aren't necessarily up for the jam-packed sightseeing days that we have been having quite often on this trip, but we did want to see a lot of this city. After we leave a city, we are in the habit of evaluating it. Would we reccommend it for vacation? How was their intercity transportation? Could we live here? Barcelona gets the highest reviews for places that we would actually want to live (with Amsterdam also in the running). I was immediatly excited to be here because I no longer felt out of place wearing my bright purple tights (coming from Italy, where the majority of the populace is dressed in black, or dark brown leather). Although Barcelona doesn't come to mind when you hear the word "fashion," the city has a style of its own, and it is bright, vibrant, and happy. Even their mannequins are happier than anywhere we've been (seiously- they are grinning insanely). There is also a great mix of people here- those who were born and raised here, and speak Catalan, those who transplanted from elsewhere in Spain, speaking traditional Spanish, plenty of European students doing an exchange from their home colleges called Erasmus, a lot of Americans, living here to teach English, and a myriad of ofter transplants from all over the world.

Many of the sights here center around Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi, whose unique architectual design comes off as something between Dr. Suess imagery, Salvadore Dali paintings, and those muddy "castles" kids create on beaches by letting soggy sand drip from their hands. It was refreshing to see his contemory architecture that defied conventional rules. There are several houses around the city that he designed, as well as a architectual conrtibutions to a beautiful public park, and La Segrada Familia, a church that has been under construction for over ____ years, and is scheduled for completion not until 2026. Unfortunately, we were not able to tour the interior of the houses or La Sagrada Familia as they were incredible expensive (17 euro to tour a house!- about $23!), but they were very impressive from the outside and we admired them for free. We were able to walk around the (free) park that he designed, which we would highly reccommend. Throughout the park musicians played their instruments, playing everything from raw, emotional blues on a banjo to dreamy "eastern" music on an instrument that I couldn't name, to soothing, seductive Spanish guitar. It would not be hard to spend many afternoons in this unique habitat.

One of the more fascinating places for a foodie, is La Boqueria - an immense market, open daily. Dizzying amounts of food of every variety are to be found as far as you can see. The quarters are tight and this place is always busy, and the buzz of people whizzing by is endless. For every variety of ingestible things, there are at least ten differents stands - produce, poulty, fish, beef, pork, cheeses, nuts/dried fruits, olives, baked goods as well as a few stands where one can sit down within the market and watch his or her meal prepared before them. Everything was immaculate: the fish was practically still swimming, not a bruise to be found on any fruit, everything neatly separated and artfully displayed to send your salvatory glands into overdrive; quite litereally a feast for the eyes. We made a lunch of a deep magenta colored cactus flower, a few fresh rolls, a variety of olives, mixed nuts, mixed meats, and a custard dessert, all for about 12 Euro total.

We took a nice walk up Montjuic, visiting the Olympic Park that hosted the '92 Olympics. Atop the hill, we climed a castle that once guared the harbor and enjoyed spectacular views of the city. Later, we made our way to a Picasso museum and, due to a change in exhibitions, enjoyed only a limitied quantity of his works, but at a greatly reduced admission fee. It was still great to see many of his works from his "blue period" and also collections from other periods in his life, centering around brothels, pigeons, and even interpretations of other painters' works. Other highlights from Barcelona include drinking sangria while eating tapas (of course), getting lost in an enormous flea market, and Andy catching a pickpocket in his jacket on the Subway. We also attended a few different couchsurfing meetups while in Barcelona, meeting several locals as well as people from Estonia, Greece, Romania, Germany, and the US.

Valencia

Our host, Salva, lived outside the city, but was just a short metro ride away from the train station/city center. Our first day was rainy and dismal, but we managed to eat some delicious paella, check out some of the old architecture in the city, and La Catedral de Santa Maria. It was here where we found the Holy Grail! We're a little confused as to why the search is still going on, when it has been in a church in Valencia this whole time... Mainly we just wandered around, looking at all of the different buildings. That night we, for some reason, decided to eat at a Chinese restaurant. The menu was translated into English, but when the item listed was "Rice three delicious," it didn't really help. Despite being the only customers other than a lone guy quietly smoking a few tables away, our qualms were quickly put to easy when the food arrived, in generous, delicious portions. Our second day in the city it was much nicer mainly because the weather cleared up, and decided to start the day with a visit to a botanical garden. We leisurely strolled up and down the aisles of vegetation, a pleasant break from the jungle of metropolitan life outside the walls. There were strange species of cacti, palm trees, and some fruits and vegetables growing that we couldn't recognize. After spending about an hour and a half here, we took advantage of the persistant beautiful weather and walked through another park. This was one of the more unique parks that we have visited. According to Salva, the Rio Turia running through Valencia flooded badly about ten to fifteen years ago. Apparently it had been a problem in the past, and they decided to finally do something about it. They diverted the entrie river to go around the city (Providence, anyone?)* and made the former route into a park, weaving through the entire city filled with sports fields, walking and biking paths, and playgrounds. We walked through the entire park to the end, where we found "the city of arts and sciences," a large park with some stunning modern architecture (think Jetsons arcitecture) housing a science museum and an imax theater, as well as other buildings that housed arts and science exhibitions. Although it certainly was not typically Valencian or even typically Spanish, we spent about 3 hours in the science museum. It was quite fascinating, and we explored exhibits centering on memory/perception, sound, energy, light, and design - most of them interactive. One exhibit consisted of about 30 chicken eggs, ready to hatch in incubators. It's funny how captivating a chick pecking its way out of a shell can be for people of any age (translation: we watched for about 40 minutes before tearing ourselves away, staying longer than the children). We decided that watching a live baby chick birth is so much cuter than a live human birth. The museum closed before we had a chance to visit the rest of the floor that we started on, let alone the next two above us. We blame the chickens. Later, we met Salva at a bar for a beer where he took us to a going away party for someone that he had just met a few weeks ago. Yet again, because of couchsurfing, we found ourselves at some improbable social event that we had no direct connection with. We noted a funny observation. When we arrived, we were certain that Salva and ourselves we the only three in an apartment of 30 that could speak English. However, the more this crowd drank, the more English speakers we found. Soon, we were sipping wine while chowing on finger food and cake with lots of friendly, interesting people eager to share travel stories and cultural differences. We left the next day, with a few mandarin oranges in our packs, picked by Salva the previous day from his families orange groves.

*The river in Providence's river was re-directed for aesthetic pupose in the mid nineties.