We met our host at The Cathedral and realized real quick that our location was prime. We walked 2 minutes from the Cathedral and were at our place. We had our own big room with couch, fridge, microwave, etc. As soon as we had our bags down, Luis gave us our tour which ended up in the kitchen where he presented us with something to eat. He said "it being so late I knew you would be hungry". I was internally thinking oh NO, in Spain you eat what is prepared for you no questions asked and to do otherwise is considered more rude even than in America. I remember this from my study abroad and living with a family for 2 months. BUT - out came my favorite thing from Spain that I hadn't had in so many years - Spanish Tortilla! YES!! You just can't get this in America - Its like a pie, but consists 90% of Potatoes and Eggs and doesn't taste like either. I was definitely warming up to this Luis character real quick. We gladly ate all the tortilla we could, and saved the rest for bxfast as we crashed and got ready for -
EPIC DAY -
I did my morning workout and Candace joined in. She called me her personal trainer so I told her different things to do and it was fun. We ate the rest of the leftover Spanish tortilla and then headed out to the Cathedral literally in view like 1 minute away. It was a beautiful Cathedral and we realized why we like them so much - they are all so different, massive, and beautiful. Again, reading Pillars of the Earth lended me my strength to be able to endure viewing Cathedral after Cathedral, and for Candace the artistic appeal is obvious. If you just haven't been to one of these, they are just ridiculous in the scope and size - Meant to inspire men and women with their beauty to create and strengthen belief in God, to be a symbol of strength and greatness + more. So if you take it for that and just soak in the ancientness of a lot of these buildings it can be pretty cool.
Outside the Cathedral was an antique market so Candace checked it out while I searched for Wifi spots on my phone. Soon, after finding out that it was not easy locating one, we bought a new camera and had some PAELLA, a famous spanish dish that comes in a huge iron skillet full of rice, peas, full-shelled large crawfish and mussles and fish, + spice and more. To top it off we had some Gazpacho, a special Spanish soup served cold with vegetables in it. Sanchez in Grand Rapids, MI, serves great Tapas and Paella, etc but other than that nothing in the US has lived up to the recreation of good, authentic, Spanish food.
Without Wifi I just had to ask a local for the directions we needed to get to La Familia, one of the coolest architectural buildings in the world. Originally concepted by Gaudí, it is one of the most interesting buildings in Europe. It's a work in progress, as Gaudi was actually killed in a Tram accident after about 20 years of work on the building. Nowadays it is being worked on with a goal of completion in 2030. Since I was last there when I studied abroad, not much has changed, but I HAD to show Candace PLUS this time I wanted to go inside.
Before we got there on the Metro though, I sparked up a conversation with some locals (all in Spanish) and before we knew it, this super kind lady was all excited about showing us this old-school hospital. We diverted our stop to there, since we HAD heard about it, and because of her enthusiasm, we checked it out and had a good look inside while I pretended to be a pre-med student. =)
Back to the metro and onto the walk over to La Familia. It was a beautiful walk, and we enjoyed the weather as it was a gorgeous day.
Soon the building came into view… The structure is a combination of art and religion as Gaudi strove to combine new and innovative artistic designs with old traditions and grandeur to create with his vision, and in his mind, the greatest and one of the last cathedrals ever to be built.
We started at the ticket office, purchasing a ticket for entrance and also for the "lift" to the top. The lady said it would be "cinquenta minutos". "50 minutes!?" I said. Hmm I donno I think that we might just be waiting around forever once we see inside. Candace chimed in and said - "don't worry about it", so we purchased the "lift" to the top, which supposedly yielded a great view of Barcelona and allowed you to see some of the towers first hand… an hour later and we were like "oh crap, we gotta get on that lift!". We had seen the outside of the Cathedral on both front and back, the museum inside describing the history of it, videos of the visit of the Pope, the inside of the Cathedral itself,
different drawing by Gaudi from back in the day with his visions of the building, and stories of fires and obstacles that were overcome.
It was cool seeing pictures depicting the past, present, and future of what the cathedral looks like.
Once on the lift and at the top, we had to hike up some more stairs and were rewarded with a view of the city of Barcelona that was awesome.
We began winding through the towers of Gaudi, grabbing snapshots here and there and enjoying the architecture up close, while checking out the workers building the new sections.
We then descended the towers in the coolest spiral staircase EVER. From the top you could peer into the center and see the bottom, which is never the case. The hole literally went all the way down hundreds and hundreds of feet rather than like 10 feet.
Once done, we finished our tour of the inside, checked out the outside one more time and a cool brass door covered in carvings and imbedded with cool pieces. I took like 10 pictures of it, breaking it into random sections and have since posted one of them as my background on my labtop.
Finally we left and initiated a walk to the 1st place of our Barcelona party night, coming right out of our research - A famous English pub, The Loch Inn. Only a 5 minute walk from La Familia, The pub had an amazing beer on tap Franzishaner Weissbier, also a favorite of the workers at the pub.
They had internet there so we checked out the huge music festival going on in Barcelona, Sonar, and Candace went to AirBNB and checked out some places. A soccer game started up so I watched a soccer game with the locals. Halfway through the game at the break, they busted out a soccer video game on PS3 and played with the exact same teams that were on playing live. The tradition is that what happens at halftime during this "virtual game" will help to dictate what happens during the rest of the real game. The problem lies in the fact that one of the people playing the game is usually better than the other =)
The game looked so real that when Candace got back from a break, she looked at the computer game being broadcast on the main screen and made some comment about the game. When we told her it was just a video game, she was like - OH, it looks more real than the other game! Which could be true depending on the HD quality of the game being broadcast.
After a smoothie ( WISH they had a vitamix to actually blend it properly! ), we headed home, got ready and then off to Slow Barcelona we went! This place had, through our research, a bartender ranked #4 in the world. By who or what, or if it was really true we didn't know. But anyone laying claim to that should be able to put together a pretty unique and good cocktail. When we arrived it was CLOSED though, and only open Friday & Sat. So we wandered around looking for Tournesol, a cool atmosphere place that has great seating and looked worth of a checkout. Unfortunately it didn't come up on my google maps, and the phone number wasn't working… BUT they had a website so we knew they existed. Finally found them and had some Bruschetta, tuna wraps and Guac + chips & chilled,
From there we caught the Metro before it closed around 11:30 and took that to Razzmatazz, which was just opening at midnight.
See in Barcelona, things start late =) This place had 5 big rooms in which music was being spun by DJ's. When we got there we entered into Room #1 and the DJ there was playing some industrial music playing.
Moving to room #2, this was the Pop room, playing remixed popular hits with a dubstep underbeat.
We moved to room #3 and the DJ there was playing some trance music while the place was completely dead.
The DJ in room #4 was playing some interesting music kinda techno but with a lot more flavor rather than beats just building on eachother. It was this room we came back to several times.
Also there was another room not worthy of mention.
We kept wandering
There were cool projectors outside between rooms projecting stuff - one of the coolest projections was fans on the wall, because initially we actually thought they were fans for a second :)
Soon it started to get busier and busier.
Around 2am a concert started in room#1 and we sat down on the second level and looked out over the crowd as Modestep performed.
It was pretty good actually for being a concert that we didn't even know was going to happen! haha. I don't know what was more fun, watching the performance or watching all the F*#%$d up people being nutzo from whatever drugs they were on. We alternated. One dude got up on a platform with girls on it and just started dancing in front of them. After getting pushed off a few times, he charged through the crowd knocking into people everywhere and making his way to the front where he got into a shoving match with plenty of guys.
The next day after bxfast from Cat's Bar, a vegan place,
, we did some research, then headed out to the beach. The walk down was nice, as we walked by a harbor, and along the beach all the way down to where Icebar was.
Entering IceBar, one of our "things to do in Barcelona", we equipped up with winter jackets and gloves in preparation for the currently -12 degree temperature inside the bar.
Once inside we could see that everything was made of ice -> The walls, the seats, the sculptures, even the cups that we drank out of were made of pure ice. On a TV in there, IceAge 2 was playing continiously while we took pictures, enjoyed our icedrink, the tunes, and began to get colder and colder.
Only 10 feet away was the nice warm Barcelona beach, so we caved in, finished our drinks, exited the bar, and found a nice spot to lay out on the beautiful sand.
Taking a taxi back, we got dropped off at the Cathedral and did some shopping in some cool bristling alleyways. One of our friends, and also someone from Arizona and on our Fair & Show team, Mike Staley, happened to arrive in Barcelona today so I called him to see where he was and we met up for dinner at a cute little place we found. Randomness - it was pretty cool just meeting up with him randomly in Barcelona. We got to hear his Spanish skills a bit, chit chatted, and we told him what there was to do in Barcelona so that he could have a bit of an inside scoop. I emailed him my research and gave him my Map that I had plotted out where all the cool things were, then Candace & I headed to the train station to make our train to Madrid at 9pm. I definitely had more fun this time in Barcelona than last time I was here. This was one of our favorite places thus far, Jason & Candace
Jason, it looks like you both are having a great time in Barcelona, one of our favorite cities in the world. Great pictures!
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