2009.07.08

Barcelona Day One

Well, we are here in lovely Barcelona. The trip, though long, was largely uneventful. Security in San Francisco was easy; security at Frankfurt was less so (though much more polite). I kind of wonder what they would have thought it I’d shown up in Germany with the pocket knife I found for sale at SFO. Isn’t that sort of a weird security breach, that you can buy a knife at an airport and board the plane with it because you’ve already passed all the security checks?

Last night was kind of rough. After all that traveling we didn’t want to sleep until the local bedtime. Besides, we were hungry. So we went up to a place in the El Poblenou neighborhood and ate awesome tapas and drank local red wine. The octopus was very nice…

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Incidentally, this was taken at almost midnight. On a Tuesday night. Yep, these folks have the right idea! But today was my first “real” day here. After seeing RMCA off to her conference I loaded up and walked from the hotel at the very bottom of Avinguda Diagonal, up to Carrer de Llull and along that entire street to the La Ribera and Cuitat Vella neighborhoods. I stopped myself just short of heading over to the very famous La Rambla so I have something to do tomorrow.

As you can see, the older part of Barcelona has old, narrow medieval streets.

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A lot of the buildings are suffering graffiti. I saw quite a few people working to paint over spots on their buildings or businesses because most of it is crap tagging. Some if it is quite good as art, though, like this one…

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Each corner has the street name, much like in every other European country I’ve visited. Unfortunately they are usually impossible to read here unless you get right up next to them. I was looking at this street sign because it looked a bit different and noticed that there was an old stone marking, too. Pretty cool, neh?

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Like most European countries, Barcelona has a dearth of old churches. This one is the Eglésia de Santa Maria del Mar. I visited this one in specific thinking of my Navy brother.

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There’s also old Roman ruins in town. This is a wall the Romans built in the 4th century. Though it is shored up with modern brick it’s amazing to look at the old stone that remains and think of all that’s happened since it was was erected. Incidentally, Barcelona was founded by the Romans at least 300 years BC.

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Before heading back to the hotel I stopped by the Parc de la Ciutadella. I’d walked past it on my way to the old part of town and figured I would check it out. There were tons of kids on school excursions, all wearing the same color t-shirts (and sometimes hats). One group was getting Catalan pronunciation lessons from their teacher; I should have joined them!

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Now I’m back at the hotel and writing all of this. The thing is that it’s only 7:30PM here, so there’s a whole evening to go before the day is over. I just wanted to update the blog and share a bit.

2 Comments Categorized: catalonia  life  photos

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2 Responses to “Barcelona Day One”

  1. Graham says  (July 8th, 2009 at 12:26:36 )

    Hey Doug,

    If you two get a chance, be sure to check out MACBA (http://www.macba.cat) at Plaça dels Àngels, 1. Enjoy!

    Cheers,

    Graham

    —Sent from my iPhone—

  2. Melchoir says  (July 8th, 2009 at 16:02:09 )

    Great photos. Love your composition. keep up the good work. So we can travel w/ you vicariously.

    -Andy