We arrived at the Ideal Youth Hostel in Barcelona around 4PM after a pleasant ride on a very fast train through the Spanish countryside, and a not so pleasant journey on the BCN subway with our heavy bags on our backs. Our hostel was located on Las Ramblas, which we chose because of its central location. Unfortunately Las Ramblas is also the main street for the many tourists who come to Barcelona and ‘oo’ and ‘ah’ past things such as human statues and people dressed as famous movie characters. This wouldn’t be so bad, but the street is so crowded that one can hardly breathe. Still, we persevered, and first went to La Boqueria, a huge market on Las Ramblas which has good fruit, vegetables, as well as some unidentifiable animal parts.Armed with some strawberries we walked down towards the water to look at the sailboats and eat. Then we walked about a ½ mile to Barceloneta—the closest beach to the city. Along the way we saw several funky craft markets and street performers. We had previously considered doing a beach day, but the sand was packed and kind of lackluster, and the city itself would come to wow us so much that a beach day would prove unnecessary.
We walked back towards the city, and found perhaps our favorite part of Barcelona—a very old area of the city just off of Las Ramblas. We walked the winding streets flanked by apartments with uniquely colored shudders and quaint flower boxes. The streets opened into charming squares with out door cafes underneath walls which were sometimes shrouded in flowers. It was very easy to get lost in this area of town, for a pretty good while we used the sound of an accordion or a Spanish guitar as our only compass.
And then once again, we were hungry. We found a supermarket and had perhaps the best supermarket meal we have had to date. We chanced it with a jar of squid, a jar of olives, and a baguette. The olives weren’t much of a chance, but the very oily, jarred squid certainly made us a bit uneasy. Nearby was La Sagrada Familia, an amazing church which is still a work in progress (and has been since 1883), by Antoni Gaudi. It is definitely the most unique church that I’ve ever seen, and sitting under it is quite awesome. I won’t go into too much detail though, the pictures can better describe it.
We then continued to wander a bit. I was curious about Barcelona’s nightlife as it is spoken very highly of by many people who go to Europe. However, I think we were a bit too early, as its been said that people stay out until 5 or 6 in the morning there. We settled for a glass of wine at a café where they were very nice to us. This also gave us a chance to try patatas bravas, a tapa which was recommended to me as being cheap, local, and delicious by someone who had lived in Barcelona for a while. They were almost like homefries with a somewhat spicy, tomatoey sauce on them, the sauce could probably be found in Amsterdam at one of the French fry places with all of the crazy sauces on top. They were pretty good, but even sharing just the one tapa weighed us down, it was a bit like eating a plate of home fries from Scotty’s in Branford, or a plate of Carly’s cheese fries. We sauntered home and collapsed into bed.
The next morning was to be our cooking class. We woke up and had what might be called an interesting breakfast at our hostel. It consisted of crouton-like bread/toast, butter, a single muffing the size of a minimuffin, a Dixie cup of orange juice and a Dixie cup of coffee, which I believe was actually tea. It was ok though because we were about to be stuffed full from the cooking class we had scheduled. The class was in a nice kitchen with lots of stone everywhere right in the old part of town we liked so much. There were about 10 other people, mostly young couples, so it was pretty fun, and we got to talk to most of them. Most were either Canadians or Americans. We made a four course meal—the first course was a refreshing Gazpacho garnished with a smokey Idiazabal cheese, something called ali oli (which we didn’t so much like), and an amazing walnut pesto. We followed this up with La tortilla de espana, better known as a Spanish omelette. This we could certainly replicate easily, and it is quite tasty. Tim was in charge of fthis part of the meal, and he successfully flipped the omelette in the pan as the crowd went wild. The main course was a delightful seafood paella. This would be more difficult to make as our teacher used an enormous pan to cook a relatively thin layer of rice and fish to perfection. She told us how in the south of Spain, where paella originated, at festivals it is not uncommon to see Paella pans as large as a room. The last course was called catalan cream, a variant of crème brulee. Allie volunteered to make this course. She skillfully separated the egg yolks and whites as our cooking teacher (Theresa) and classmates praised her. Allie just liked the cream, and as there was a bunch of it left over after everyone’s serving was doled out, she ate it out of a huge vat with a spoon. Of course she did politely ask everyone if they wanted anymore first. It was a very good experience though, and although Tim is still partial to the Italian food he learned to cook, many will certainly enjoy the Spanish dishes we learned to prepare.
We needed to walk off the ridiculous meal we’d just eaten, so we walked to Parc Guell, a park designed entirely by the funkadelic Gaudi sitting high above the city, giving great views of La Sagrada Familia, which towers over its surroundings, and the expanse of Barca diving into the sea. The Parc is also home to a couple of very whimsical Gaudi buildings, one of which has a large flat roof where we sat and listened to some live Spanish music.
We hurried home, as earlier in the day we had found tickets to a Spanish guitar concert taking place in an old and historical church in the old part of town. With a student discount which dropped the price from 21 euros to 10 we couldn’t refuse, especially since the guitarists had supposedly been given great reviews by the New York Times. He played about 4 songs, each of which was quite moving in its own way. The setting was amazing as the huge church carried the sound well. For an encore, he played a creation of his own called Romance, Interrupted, during which he would alternate between playing extremely melodramatic Spanish Guitar parts with carefree songs such as “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, mixing these elements seamlessly and adding some humorous gestures to complete the act. Refreshed, we walked home for a nice early night.
Sunday morning we woke and went to the nearby Train station in hopes of securing a reservation for the overnight train to Paris that evening. Unfortunately, it was not to be. The train was booked, so we decided to stay another night in Barcelona and try for Paris the next day. It took us the morning and a bit of the afternoon to figure out lodging and train stuff, so we didn’t get started until around 2 or 3. We decided to simply stroll through the old part of town as we had on Friday, and make our way again towards La Sagrada Familia, as we hadn’t been able to get any quality pictures of the astonishing structure on Friday. We took the afternoon slow, and eventually came back to our hostel pretty tired. We tried to explore another part of town, but were a bit too tired, and settled for sharing a kebab and a glass of sangria, and went to bed early. We loved Barcelona, it was definitely one of the best cities either of us had been to yet, but we went to bed excited for Paris. Little did we know what the next day would bring….
No comments:
Post a Comment