Saying Howdy to Gaudi in Barcelona

I have ALWAYS wanted to go to Spain and have been excited about this trip for months!  We started our four-day Thanksgiving weekend in the resort town of Alicante on the southern coast.  The end of November is way past tourist season, but it was warm enough to spend a lazy day walking barefoot on the beach and watch the wind surfers for a couple hours.  After a nap (it’s okay to be lazy on Thanksgiving, right?!) we went into town to try to watch the Packers game.  Finding American football is NOT easy, but Google got us to an American bar, the bartender found the game, and we found ourselves playing out a new version of our old tradition.  For for the past many years (and hopefully the next twenty) all the Schmidts gather on sofas in Chris’ parents’ house to watch the Packers play while the Thanksgiving turkey cooks.  On this day, I would have traded Barcelona for their den in a heartbeat, but we enjoyed ourselves despite the distance.  To balance all the relaxing, we dealt with two bits of self-induced panic:  one from waking up only 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave the house to catch the plane that morning (rookie mistake) and the second from Chris having to sprint back to a restaurant to recover the purse I had left there (oops).  All’s well that ends well, right?  We made the flight with about seven minutes to spare and nobody had taken my purse. Phew!

Wind Surfer in Alicante, Spain

Chris watching the Packers game on Thanksgiving at Bar Austin in Alicante, Spain

Friday morning we were up early to take a five-hour train to Barcelona. Chris slept almost the entire way (My brother is the only person who can fall asleep faster!) and I read enough of the book “That Used to Be Us” to get me scared about the future of our economy. I know it’s an inflammatory book, but still think it’s worth a read. (Just an aside: trains have assigned seats labeled by train-car and seat number. So you can, for example, have a ticket for car eight, row six, seat C. For our first train ride from Marseille to Nice we didn’t realize that and just hopped on the car that stopped in front of us and sat in the two seats that looked most appealing because the train was almost empty. About three stops down the line we realized that everyone was looking at their ticket to find the proper seats so immediately took our out tickets to correct our error. I am not kidding; from that entire train we had somehow chosen our exact two seats. Totally strange, isn’t it?! )

After checking into our Barcelona hotel we walked down La Rambla (shoppers beware: you could drop your next paycheck in an instant on this street) to Casa Batllo (www.casabatllo.cat), a home the famous architect Antoni Gaudi (Gow-di) built for a rich textile merchant around 1900. Gaudi was born and raised near Barcelona, and lived there most of his life. He designed and built homes, monuments, and parks throughout the city and spent the last fourteen years of his life dedicated to his ultimate project: a church called La Sagrada Familia. The church is… outrageous. To me the outside is a monstrosity but the inside is breathtaking. Gaudi’s works are IMPRESSIVELY unique. The joke is that Gaudi was gaudy, which I would totally agree with, but after spending hours learning him and the architecture he created I have to say Chris and I are both fans. Gaudi was a nature lover, and incorporated as many elements of the natural world into his architecture as possible. He was also inventive, and picky about capturing the perfect amount of natural light, blending textures, shapes, and materials, making spaces ergonomic and useful, and in my opinion adding weirdness wherever possible.

Casa Mila, aka La Pedrera (The Stone Quarry), a Gaudi apartment complex.  Cal, you thought mom's house was hard to build because of its weird corners...

Looking up at the facade of Casa Batllo.  The curving windows "represent waves on a stormy day" to Gaudi and the iron balconies look remarkably like skulls to me.  This picture doesn't do it justice, but the facade is covered with thousands of colored tiles.

Chris standing in the main drawing room of Casa Batllo.  It was totally worth the 18 Euro to take the audio tour and get to see inside the house!  The attention to detail is amazing - everything down to the handrails was designed to be comfortable!

On the roof of Casa Ballo, with one of Gaudi's crazy chimneys and The Dragon's Back - a colorfully tiled cap above the facade.

The attic of Casa Batllo - the arches look like a rib cage, don't they?

The Passion Facade of La Sagrada Familia

Inside La Sagrada Familia.  The columns and stained glass were stunning!

The Nativity Facade is on the opposite side of the church and in stark style contrast to the Passion Facade.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Montjuic, a large hill overlooking the southwest part of the city that is home to some beautiful museums and stadiums from the 1992 Olympic Games.

Looking over the Placa d'Espanya from the stairs of the National Palace.

Saturday morning we failed at our attempt of a long training run. Stopping for traffic at every street corner was so annoying! The one good part was getting to see the Park Guell (designed by Gaudi) which was really cool.

Chris standing at the front of Park Guell.

Me with a Gaudi lizard.

After the run we headed to the waterfront to see the Olympic Village and watch the sand volleyball games. It felt like half of Barcelona’s families were out strolling along the boardwalk!

People lounging in concrete chairs watching other people working out on the beach gym.  I watched until some old guy started doing squats in a speedo.  LOL.  

That evening we went to watch the ‘Magic Fountain’ – a gorgeous light, sound, and water display in a massive fountain in front of the Palau Nacional. What a unique thing, we loved it!

The Magic Fountain - the color, texture, height, and shape of the fountain changed with the music. 

The Magic Fountain.

Lots going on in this photo - the Magic Fountain lit up pink, behind it is the National Palace with its rays of light.

I’d say the only somewhat disappointing part of the weekend was the food which was hit or miss. Tapas bars are really common, and I absolutely love the idea of serving small portions of a wide range of dishes, but we don’t love all our food swimming in oil. A bit of olive oil makes most things taste better, but for me, an inch-thick pool at the bottom of every plate takes away from a dish. Our favorite bites were actually from little markets: fresh smoked tuna, crisp runner beans, good bread, etc. Oh, and the Cava, their sparkling wine, is so yummy. I went for the midrange €5 (the cheapest I saw was€1 which was far less expensive than a bottle of water!) ‘Extra Brut’ Cordorniu at the grocery store and it was perfect with our grocery store dinner!

Sunday we took an unimpressive tour of Barcelona’s Old Town and then ate some decent seafood paella for lunch. The most fun part of the day was meeting Cassie, who had ditched her San Fran job and was on the third month of bumming around Europe. She convinced us that parts of Turkey (the country, not the bird) shouldn’t be missed, so now I’m trying to figure out how to make that trip happen. We didn’t have time to tour Barca’s (the muy famous soccer club) stadium or go to any museums but all in all we saw a lot of Barcelona in the three days we had there. The amazingly efficient, clean, and user-friendly transit system helped get us from area to area but I swear we also must’ve walked ten miles a day... we were tired and glad to be heading home by Sunday night!

We got lucky with the customs line this time around. Sometimes it takes more than an hour to get through, but the line was short when we landed Sunday. No clue why, but I am always nervous going through customs even though I never do or carry anything illegal. Occasionally watching the reality TV show ‘Nothing to Declare’ (about the UK and Australian Border Patrol) apparently hasn’t helped me either. The agents being interviewed for the show talk about what makes people look suspicious and instead of helping me avoid doing those things it has just made me more self conscious! The border agent we encountered on this return to London was absolutely intimidating. He didn’t ask any questions, but scrutinized each of our passports page by page. After about an eternity he looked me in the eye and said: “You came from Barcelona?” Me: “Yes sir.” Stern Agent: “Did you say howdy to Gaudi?” It took a couple seconds for the joke to sink in and when it did, I just… squawked? It just escaped out of me… an awkward and too loud one-syllable laugh. Instantly I thought “Did that just make me look suspicious? “, then “Why am I holding my hand in this weird position?”, then in an instant my thoughts unraveled to “Oh my gosh, do I look guilty of something? Are they going to take me for more questioning? Are they going to put me through one of those crazy scanners to see if I’m smuggling drugs?” Hahahaha, wow. None of those things happened; Stern Agent just looked at me funny and let us through.

Well, the next planned trip isn’t until Amsterdam for New Years but I may be heading back to Tennessee in the mean time to be with my sweet, amazing sister-to-be who is going through surgery in the next weeks to help her beat cancer. Keep her in your thoughts and prayers, please!

A few days late, but still so applicable; here’s an amazing Thanksgiving prayer from my old pastor: http://revjameshowell.blogspot.com

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!