Ready to Ramblas? - Barcelona

This video will provide some gooood tunes while you read about BCN. Please take advantage :)

Arriving in Barcelona without a hostel, without a map, and without our brains (yes, really), we slowly trudged up to the mini tourism office in the airport. I was beginning to become especially aware of my lack of Spanish vocabulary. We were kindly pointed towards the inexpensive train (at least I knew of its existence), and given a map with some hostels. A lack of signs greeted us at one lone train waiting for us at the end of a lot of steps and long abandoned hallways. We bumped into a large group of southern american girls (one kept drawling "ya'll" and had red ringlets) who were quite as wide-eyed as we were. We all shrugged and hopped on the train. After a couple of minutes of small talk, I turned to a spanish woman and began to use my best "I don't know your language" speak. After a lot of pointing and raised eyebrows, we finally came to the conclusion that she would lead us to the city centre, bless her. 

The lovely spanish woman pointed us down the biggest tourist street, Las Ramblas. I instantly fell in love with the city. It was rugged, outspoken, and simultaneously, oddly dainty. The hostel, well spotted by Michelle, afforded us our own balcony and couch, and luckily some wifi. We changed and went to explore. 

Determined to visit the beach, we did not consider cloudy skies part of the package deal. A forced change of plans afforded us the Picasso Museum. Young artists walked around with notepads, sucking on the end of their pens, rendering their own editions of pictures which made me contort my own face, mirroring the cubist confusion. Do you remember how you felt watching "Black Swan"? A bit confused, maybe, a bit horror-stuck, in awe of beauty you didn't understand, or maybe didn't want to? I have to say my jaw dropped several times walking the stone mansion. But I loved it. Much more than I had planned.

Picasso walked these streets, oh yes he did!

Living on a tourist street familiarized us quickly with the common souvenirs. My bargaining became quite fine-tuned. We finally went in search of the oh-so-famous Sagrada Familia, being told, "You'll love it...or you'll hate it." I was terribly curious for my own reaction. The maze of metro lines finally allowed us to emerge out of the underground and upon turning around, my life suddenly felt so small, so inconspicuous and unnecessary. I decided this must be a good reaction. I told Michelle, "I want to worship this thing. I don't need a religion, I just need this church. I want a mini one in my room to light candles around." And she thought I was joking..

After 120+ years of construction

Projected Finished Result

After walking around the pond for pictures, suddenly Coldplay's Viva la Vida began to fill the air (later figured out it came from a tour bus). My mind was suddenly quieted and I could almost literally see those Roman cavalry choirs singing...


Anxious to keep living the life, one night we trotted off to see something from a fairy tale. The magic fountain of Montjuïc played whimsical, strong classics like such from the Nutcracker, while the water playfully lit up in a bright fluid rainbow. The National Art Museum glowed in the background, behind a waterfall of stairs. We sat on the concrete and tried to remember to keep breathing.

Barcelona was not without its quirks. One building stuck out like a bullet in a painting. Actually...that's almost exactly what this building was...

On our final day, luckily we took some more couchsurfer-volunteered advice to visit Park Guell. We sighed, thinking, alright, some more trees, wonderful, why not. The rain had been stubborn enough to force us to see the sights rather than coming out of Spain a lovely bronze color. Another labyrinth of metros led us to a long long road going up a great big hill...so great in fact, it had at least 4 outdoor escalators. We stared at each other, puzzled, as if suddenly given a really obvious treasure map. If this park was so damn difficult to reach, the end result had to be magnificent, at the very least. But it was a....park? Right?

Please press "play" for my reaction 

Park Guell was the end-all, be-all of parks. Masses of pine trees, trails leading to little caves, a view of the entire city with the sea in the far distance. The perfect portrait playground. A real Spanish jungle, with Gaudi buildings to boot. Divinity at its perfection.

The Goudi seats

A view of Barcelona

The mosaic ceilings

We did get mind-blogglingly lost trying to walk home and found ourselves surrounded by a sort of industrial port, the rain splattering around our flip-flops. Luckily the effects of some good red spanish wine softened the disaster, and we gradually found our way back to civilization.


And we did enjoy the sea. It was terrifically cold, and we were offered a massage by lovely Thai women every five minutes. But I'm not complaining...