Barcelona2 – Thursday – La Rambla

With the apartment and fridge and stove and oven and microwave, we’ve cut down on eating out and are mostly eating in.  Kate’s been making scrambled eggs (though the stove tops have been highly unpredictable) and cereal and toast and yogurts and pizza and good home family meals.  And that’s how we started what we thought was our Sagrada Familia day.  Oh how little we knew.

After breakfast and the morning ritual of sunscreen, brush teeth, bathrooms, and shoes (which is somehow yet to become a routine that any of the kids independently remember!), we headed out to find Sagrada Familia.  On the map it looked entirely walkable.  Maybe only 8 blocks.  The question was which direction.  Let me explain…

We were stayin in Le’Eixample district of Barcelona.  also known as the expansion.  It was an extension of the old city of Barcelona that would fill the empty space between the neighboring villages of Gracia, Sarria and Les Corts and eventuallly incorporate them as neighborhoods into the city of Barcelona in the 1800s.  The planners at that time had mapped things out very deliberately but in so doing every block looked like the next block.  Even when I went for my run in the morning, having nearly gotten lost in Seville, I was very careful to go straight out one direction and straight back.  And still, when I left I thought I was heading towards the ocean (south) but ended up going West.  On the return half of my run, I knew I was going the right direction and would eventually bump into our plaza Tetuan.  But didn’t recognize much except for the homeless folks who were sleeping on the bench and an occasional construction site, e.g. sidewalk repair. Just a continuous line of interesting, though non-descript, 8 story building after 8 story building.  What’s amazing is that I rarely saw a building under 8 stories and rarely over 8 stories.  It seemed the entire Le’Eixample district was mandated to be 8 stories tall.  No skyscrapers in a city of this size bar a few notable exceptions at the shoreline and of course, the big pickle.  I’ve learned to spot a few of the other exceptions that help locate myself on a map.  I’ve learned that there’s often several blocks of normal roads until you hit a superwide road that allows for pedestrian walkways in the middle and also a couple of roads, for example Diagonal, that are cut at an angle and are therefore helpful to get your bearings on a map.  Also of use are the frequent green spaces incorporated into the town.

Anyway, I’d spent the morning studying the map and our relative position on the map and was pretty certain of the direction we needed to head.  We struck out on foot and despite seeing a few street names that made sense, I was still nervous because we hadn’t yet sighted Sagrada Familia and I knew it was a very tall building.  Well, I shouldn’t have been so nervous.  8 stories is a little hard to see out of.  We eventually did turn a corner to see a spire of the Sagrada Familia.  I’d noticed that Zeke hadn’t yet noticed it and was facing the opposite direction, so I pointed him in the right direction and enjoyed his face of awe as he first laid eyes on it.  It’s surrounded on the Southwest side and Northeast side by big parks.  We approached from the southwest and unfortunately the entire southwest park was under construction and closed.  After gawking at it as we approached

and getting information for the hop-on/off bus tour that we would be taking the following days we ventured up to the entry gate.  A line had already formed.  We spent more time gawking at the southwest facade of the church, the passion of christ facade, which is all about Christ’s death.   Then decided to join the line.  It looked a little long, but we were well sun screened and thought we could wait it out, until we turned the corner of the block and saw that the line seemed to continue on without end.  Our jaws just dropped and we abandoned our wait in line plan.  We’d seen an entry that had no line and Kate took her Spanish skills to go ask about it.  Turns out it’s a special line for pre-purchase tix that had no waiting and there were kiosks right at the corner to purchase tix for the following day, so we gave that a go.  The kids attempted to wait patiently as Kate navigated the kiosk.  She called me in when she thought she’d figured things out.  The kiosk sure could of used some User Interface help!  Kate showed me the series of buttons she had to click to get to the point of buying Sagrada Familia tix.  Buy tix, buy other tix, more tix, and finally still more tix.  At which point the last button was ‘Sagrada Famila tix’.  This was after the options for buying soccer event tickets and concert tickets and you name it.  For cryin’ eye, I’m at the kiosk that’s directly adjacent to the HUGE long line at Sagrada Familia, what tix do you think I’m trying to buy.  Then we had to figure out why there was only a 7 pm ticket offered.  Didn’t make sense, after a few trips through the series of buttons we realized the listing was a button itself and if you clicked it more times would appear.  So we’d solved the kiosk puzzle.  I felt like I’d earned the right to enter Sagrada Familia!  Only catch was that when we finally attempted the purchase we needed to enter a pin for our credit card and didn’t have one.  So I tried my ATM card.  Despite being on the proper network, the readers on the machine didn’t pickup my worn out magnetic strip. Strike 2.  Kate boldly asked an English speaking couple at the kiosk next to us and they were willing to purchase the tix on their credit card if we paid them cash.  They were from Belgium and we were in their debt (amazing how many other people are able to speak additional languages and not just get by, but speak them well!!!).  Kate helped them navigate the ridiculous series of buttons for their own purchase and they ran through the series 2 more times for us, once for audio guides and once for non-audio guides, which we needed to do separately as the audio-guide didn’t offer an option for our youngest kids who were supposed to be free.  With the help of our Belgian friends, we finally got our tix purchased for Monday, 3 days out.I was very very happy to leave the kiosk behind us.  We thanked the Belgian couple by overpaying them and promising them good charma! 

While we were in the kiosk I had to step out several times to discipline our kids.  It’s embarrassing always having the loudest kids anywhere.  We are the ugly Americans.  On the other hand, we’ve asked a lot of our kids on this trip and for the most part, they’ve met our expectations.  I was in the kiosk again, when Maeve came in screaming.  Now what?  It’s raining, it’s raining.  WOW, that was worth yelling about.  For the 3 weeks we’d been in Spain we hadn’t seen a trace of rain.  Not even a threatening cloud.  I enjoyed the kids enjoying the rain and was very surprised that some of the people in the huge line had been prepared enough to bring umbrellas! (look closely at the line in the background on the left and you can see 2 umbrellas)   Maybe the northern climate of Barcelona was more apt to rain?  “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the Plain” or maybe not??

We had our Barcelona guidebook with us (thanks Jenna) and I’d half read up on it the night before so I had a few ideas to formulate a new plan in that area.   We broke out our laminated, and rain proofed map (thanks Marty and Mary) and headed in the direction of a few Modernist landmarks including the 2 most famous Gaudi buildings, La Pedrera and La Battla.  La Pedrera means quarry.  The name describes the outside of the building with its distinctive wavy front end (Gaudi eschewed straight lines, preferring curves whenever possible, probably because you rarely see a straight line in nature.)  La Pedrera, like Sagrada Familia, had a large line, so we simply took it in from the outside and bravely snuck a peak at the exit.   A few blocks down we found La Battla nicknamed manzana for its colorful facade and also double meaning block referring to the 3 other modernista buildings on the block of 4 buildings.  It also had a significant line, but shorter than the previous lines.

  Our kids stamina, with all the walking, had waned and we moved on.  We’d read that August was a busy tourist season in Barcelona, but didn’t expect things to be this busy.  We checked out a few more modernista buildings along the way.  That pretty much burned our morning and early afternoon, at which point it was time to head home for lunch and Siesta.  Sort of a wasted morning, but at least we had solid Sagrada Familia plans and knew we would avoid the lines.

After siesta we had a few hours left to salvage the day.  We decided to metro to the ocean end of Las Ramblas, the pedestrian street in Barcelona that is central to its identity.  Like state street in Madison, times 10.  We’d read there were numerous street performers here regularly and thought that would provide a great interactive break for the kids.  The subway ride is still a thrill for the kids and me, noticing new nuances like the wind being sucked into the tunnel as the train leaves and the wind being pushed out of the tunnel as the train enters (always a good indicator to pickup your pace so as not to miss the arriving train), and the mesmerizing bend of the spine of the metro train cars as the tracks bend right, left and even up and down.  Soon we were at the bottom of Las Ramblas and decided to venture the extra block down to the ocean front toward the tall Christopher Columbus monument ringed by lions.  Here’s our guys riding the lion, take special note of Theo’s scared face.  He pulls this expression out of his repertoire of contorted faces now and again, I think it’s one of his best.  

I’m sure you’ve heard about the distinctive regions of Spain, sort of like the states, but more so.  For the greater part of their life the separate regions have been literally separate nations/kingdoms and have long histories as such.  In Barcelona, you feel that more than any other region we visited.  They have their own language, Catalan (coming from Latin and more closely resembling french than Castillian Spanish) and a history of independence from Spain.  At one point Catalan was banned in order to assimilate the people into Spain proper.  These days it is back with a vengeance with Catalan being the primary language and Castillian Spanish the second language, leaving English as the third.  Often museums had only Catalan and Castillian and no English.  Anyway, back to Columbus.  It’s ironic that they even have a monument honoring him (and the largest monument at that)  as his discoveries did not affect Barcelona at the time.  They were banned by Spain from participating in the trade routes to the Americas because of Catalans poor behavior in not wanting to be part of a unified Spain.  I read later that some say this is where Columbus first landed when returning from the Americas.  Maybe? 

We headed across the foot bridge that was newly added (since Barcelona became a tourist town in the last 20 years, including the fact that it is the single largest cruise line destination on the Mediteranean) and is called the Rambla de Mar (ocean),  Here’s a panorama of the area looking back up at Columbus (dead center in the photo)

We made it across the bridge to the pier that held the aquarium and reversed direction to see what we could see on La Rambla proper.  The first thing we hit was a vendor (kid) selling these led rubber band launched helicopter toys.  I knew I had to buy a couple for my nephews.  And the kids each bought one.  The kids also learned how to bargain in the street… just keep walking.  The price started at 5 euros each, and as we walked away, dropped to 4 euros, then 3 euros then 2 for 5.  We noticed another vendor further up, so new we had other opportunities to purchase and mentioned the price we’d heard from the first vendor.  He easily matched the price and probably would’ve gone lower.  (Found out later that another vendor was selling for 2 euros each!)

Then we bumped into our first street performers… the weakest type… they would put a headless manequin next to a table and then stick their head through the table top and make facial expressions at you.  Sometimes still, sometimes trying to scare you.  Not impressive.  This couple was impressive however, they danced together and then stopped every few seconds until someone dropped another coin in the hat at which point they would continue their dance.  Some of the positions they stopped in were elegant and just fun to look at.  Afterward they asked the kids to take a photo with them.

There were some caricaturists that would do your portrait and other more realistic artists that would do your portraits.  Very talented and always fun to watch their talent.  Then there were these painted people who would stick in a permanent pose and attempt not to move.  If you looked close you could see them breathing, but the wonder of the performance was how they were able to stay still so long in awkward positions.  We theorized that he had some sort of support up his pant leg that he could sit much of his weight on. 

Other common performers were those folks that paint with enamels, often firing their work by igniting the cans of paint for show.  They often paint a color then lay covering mats over that color and paint over all but that layer.  Then they unveil by lifting the mask and you get to see their creation.  Fun to see how they create their final paintings.  We saw about 6 to 7 of these folks, my favorites were those who were reproducing original album covers on old LP records.  These were our favorites however.  We saw them at the top of the street just after we’d purchase our ice cream and sat down.  They came in and started playing their boom box music which was an announcement that the performance was about to begin. They were obviously experienced gymnasts and treated us to this final show (only after they passed the hat)  

We finished our ice creams and walked the final 6 blocks home.  Zeke suggested as we reached home that we finish with the metro ride and start with the walk.  Not a bad idea.