I am now sitting in Park Guell in Barcelona, enjoying a beautiful day, and
relaxing and doing a bit of people watching.
After the seventh day of riding in France, Zen and I decided to take a break and
head down into Spain. We spent about half a day in Avignon trying to figure out
what to do with our bikes, and ended up leaving them at a bike shop that said
they would store our bikes for a dollar per bike per day. The next day, we
hopped onto a train, and headed down for Barcelona.
We got into Barcelona early in the evening, and my initial impression was not
that great. However, after spending a day checking out the city, I've grown to
like it more and more. We spent time wandering around the gothic quarter, saw
the work of the architect Antoni Gaudi (and learned the origin of the word
"gaudy"), ambled down the boulevard "Los Ramblas", and sat
along the waterfront watching a skuller.
We also spent some time practicing our Spanish skills, and have added yet
another language where we can order coffee and pastries (although the Spanish
pastries don't live up to the high standards that the French set). We have also
had many opportunities to practice our pointing skills (I'll have one of those).
The interesting part of practicing Spanish in Spain is getting down the lisp
(and getting uthed to hearing all of the lithpth around uth). Its a good thing
that the Spanish king with the lisp didn't also have a stutter :-)
We also sampled a little bit of the local cuisine, sampling a fine pizza from
Pizza Hut on our first day, and then trying out the local Pakistani restaurant
last night.
Kidding aside, yesterday we decided to try a typical Spanish lunch (a large meal
eaten in the mid afternoon). We went into a small little place that was well off
the tourist track. The waiter got a kick out of having two "gringos"
try their pathetic Spanish. We ordered the "menu del dia" which
consisted of an appetizer, a main course, dessert, in addition to bread and what
seemed about a liter of wine for the two of us. After a big bowl of thick (and
meaty) lentil soup, fried bananas, french fries, some very garlicky hake (a
white fish), flan, wine, bread, and an espresso, I was definitely done eating
for the day. It was quite a meal - very tasty, although I'm not sure I will be
able to repeat it for a few days.
. . .
Well, it is now about 5 days later, and I haven't had a good opportunity to
connect and send this. I am currently sitting on a train that is about to leave
Madrid for Toledo. To break the trip from Barcelona to Madrid, we spent a night
in Zaragosa. Zaragoza is a lot less visited than either Madrid or Barcelona, and
had a nice atmosphere to it. We went for a walk in the evening and sat on a
bridge watching the comet over top of the huge basilica. The basilica itself was
kind of interesting in that it was filled mostly with locals attending services,
as opposed to the usual old churches that I've seen that have been full of
tourists taking pictures.
The huge plaza in front of the basilica was a great place for watching people
and pigeons. Zen pointed out to me that the women selling bird seed for the
pigeons were most likely gypsies. One of them had a little 2-3 year old
daughter, and what a fiesty little girl she was. When she wasn't beating up the
little boys in the plaza, she was terrorizing the pigeons. At one point she
caught one of the pigeons, and was carrying it around upside down by its feet
until her mother made her let it go.
Sitting in plazas and coffee shops doing some people watching has been a
favourite pastime of ours. The Europeans definitely seem to be more into fashion
than North Americans, and each country seems to have their own style. For
example, the Italians school kids always seem to be impeccably dressed with the
latest fashions, and are always wearing their sunglasses. However, they all wear
these incredibly loud and ugly Invicta backpacks.
Madrid greeted us with our first bad weather of the trip - overcast drizzly
weather. However, this didn't matter too much as the sights that interested us
the most were a trio of art galleries. We visited all three of the galleries
(pacing ourselves at one a day), and they were all magnificent. The modern art
gallery interested me the least (other than a few good Picassos and several
Dali's). However, both of the other galleries were amazing and very easy to get
lost in for a day (or several).
Just before entering one of the galleries, we were approached by some women that
were giving out carnations, supposedly in celebration of a festival. All they
asked for in return was for some money (just a few cents) from my home country.
I didn't have any, so I didn't give her anything. At that point Zen told me that
they were gypsies, and I left them and headed for the gallery. After hearing
that they were gypsies, I put 2 + 2 together and recognized their scam. They
gave flowers and asked for home country coins in return in the hopes that you
would reveal where your wallet was. They also kept putting flowers directly into
your pockets. A very subtle way of checking what was in your pockets by probing
with the flower stem, and getting their hands there in the hopes of
pick-pocketing you. When I got into the gallery, I checked all of my pockets,
and thankfully everything was there.
Its been fun touring the art galleries with Zen as she has taken a lot of art
history classes and was able to put a lot of it in context. She was able to tell
me what the traditional styles of the times were, what techniques were
revolutionary (and controversial), and also what the financial, political, and
romantic motivations were behind a lot of the paintings. It makes the art a lot
more interesting, and has sparked an interest in me to read and learn more about
the history of art.
Traveling through foreign countries also sparks an interest in the political
history of the regions. I have been learning a lot more about the history of
Spain through the historical buildings that I've seen. For example, I never
realized (or I had forgotten) what a Moorish stronghold Spain was for over 700
years. It has also been interesting learning more about the more recent events
in Spain, from the civil war in the 30's through Franco's rule, through more
recent times.
For food, the tapas bars have been a great place to sample Spanish cuisine. They
are great for those of us that have trouble reading menus, as you can see what
is available and simply point to what looks good.
The Spaniard diet seems to involve eating a lot of meat, and this can be seen in
any of the bars/restaurants where there are usually huge legs of ham (hooves and
all) hanging from the walls and ceilings (often as many as 40 or 50 of them). As
neither Zen nor I are used to eating much meat, we decided to stray from eating
the local cuisine and instead tried out some of Madrid's vegetarian restaurants.
We wandered through town to one restaurant that was recommended by the Rough
Guide. On the way there, we noticed large amounts of students wandering around
the streets drinking coke out of 2-liter coke bottles (most likely spiked with
rum). It was Friday night, and my guess is that it was a warm up before heading
to the bars which don't really get going until 1:00 am or so. We got to the
restaurant at 8:45 pm, only to find out that the restaurant didn't open until
9:00. We're slowly getting adjusted to the Spanish clock, although we always
seem to end up being hungry when all of the restaurants (and even grocery
stores) are closed.
Hopefully, I'll get a chance to send this in Toledo. Otherwise, I guess I'll
queue it up and send it when I can.
