Saturday, December 26 – Salamanca to Madrid to Barcelona
As I write this, we are on the train on the way from Salamanca to Madrid. From there we will take a different train to Barcelona.
Eric’s full out sick today, poor thing. Chest congestion, stuffy nose, droopy…the whole bit. We’ve gotten some drugs into him and he’s sleeping a little now. We’re grateful for another fairly slow-paced day. We’ll see how he does tomorrow, but I might do a little exploring in Barcelona on my own during the day.
Tomorrow night we’re meeting up with my friend Marta and her boyfriend for dinner. When I was 16, I stayed with Marta and her family for a month just outside of Barcelona, then Marta came to NC with me for a month. I had the pleasure of visiting her house and her family again when I was studying in Sevilla in 2003 (age 20) when 3 friends and I traveled up to Barcelona. This time, it’s been 12 years since we’ve seen each other, but I’m finally getting to the point where I’ll feel comfortable speaking to her! We’ve been so awkward around each other in the past, so I’m excited about the possibility of reminiscing and hearing how things were for her in NC all those years ago.
Three Days Later:
We’re now on the train back from Barcelona to Madrid on Tuesday night, December 29th. We arrived in Barcelona on Saturday night, the 26th, found our hotel, called Hotel Curious, and pretty quickly set out to find food. We ended up a few doors down from the hotel at this wonderful little place where I had the most amazing salad I’ve had in quite a while. I think I’ve mentioned before that Panamá doesn’t have much in the way of lettuce or salad. Anytime you hear about salad, they’re talking about potato salad or something else mixed with mayo. Not Spain. Spain means lettuce! And tomatoes! And in my case this time, a sweet and sour chicken, sprouts, pomegranate, corn nuts (which I could’ve done without) and some kind of soy and sesame dressing. Amazing. I also had a Eric-like craving for bourbon, so I ordered a copita de Four Roses and we settled in for a little while. Eric wasn’t quite as fond of his dinner, but he had a beer and as usual, the potatoes were pretty good, so he was happy. Plus, he won a bet over the “Bubbles!!!!! Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles!” fish in Finding Nemo. I didn’t remember that he was the one to close the chest and make the bubbles stop. Silly me. Anyway, as most of you know, when Eric is right, Eric is happy.
The next morning, we slept in, a la España, missed breakfast and found a café just off Las Ramblas for lunch. Las Ramblas is a beautiful street…or boulevard seems like a more appropriate term…where people stroll among flower carts, souvenir stands, cafés, artists, living statues and other street performers down towards a statue of Colón (Christopher Columbus), which stands high over the harbor. Sadly, our café was not quite as lovely. I depended mostly on the patatas bravas, as usual, to tide me over.
We then headed towards Sagrada Familia. If you haven’t heard of it, hold on…I’ll get to it in a bit. Unfortunately, when we showed up on Sunday, we found out that it’s closed to visitors on Sundays (good call…should’ve realized that’d be the case!), and that we couldn’t get tickets until 12:15 on Tuesday. We were lucky we could fit it in before heading back to Madrid! Sadly, there were no more tickets available to go up in the towers, so Eric will have to come back to have his chance to see those views. I’ve been up before, so I wasn’t quite as bummed out as he was, but I still had wanted to go again!
We decided our next step would be to go to another work by Antonin Gaudí, the architect of Sagrada Familia, called Parc Güell. It’s a beautiful park up on a mountain overlooking Barcelona. It’s hard to describe, but there is a lot of colorful, playful mosaic work in the long benches around the area and in the nearby gingerbread house-looking buildings. It was free to get it when I was last there, but this time they wanted 7 or 9 euros for a 30-minute visit. We said no thank you because you could get a decent enough look from outside and Eric wasn’t dying to go up close.
By this time, Eric had survived his worst day of whatever bronchitis, flu, cold thing that he had and had passed it on to me. Since neither of us were feeling great, we went back to the hotel for a nap.
Next up was dinner with Marta and her boyfriend, Enric. Again, Marta is the girl whose family I lived with for a month during an exchange program to Spain through the Rotary Club after my sophomore year of high school. We had briefly seen each other again in 2003, but had barely even emailed since then. I was glad to discover that conversation flowed fairly freely among all four of us once we got to dinner. As Eric pointed out, when travel is the topic of conversation, everyone is eager to share their experiences and it’s easy to come up with questions to ask. When I asked how long they had been together, both Marta and Enric responded by counting the number of trips they had taken together. Each year during August, they take a month long trip to some crazy corner of the world. The first year, and just before the war broke out there, they went to Syria. They’ve also been to the Philippines, China, Indonesia, and India, I believe. Pretty amazing. Colombia is on their list, and we’re trying to steer them to Panamá too. We may be a little biased. Anyway, Eric had his first paella for dinner, which was fairly good, then Marta and Enric graciously walked back most of the way to the hotel with us, giving us a little bit of a tour on the way. All in all, a very nice visit.
On Monday, we headed to Montserrat. Montserrat is…well…many things, from what we could tell. First of all, it is a mountain (or perhaps a cluster of them) with absolutely stunning scenery. Bazillions of years ago (or maybe not quite that long ago), some folks built a monastery up there, along with a chapel carved into this cave in the side of the mountain and some other stuff. Now, there’s also a school, which houses and teaches members of their prestigious boys’ choir, along with a whole tiny little town. There are also hours of hiking trails with incredible views. Had we been healthy, had more time, and perhaps been a tad bit warmer, I think we could’ve spent a lot more time there. As it was though, I was having my worst sick day and the hiking didn’t do much for my cough or chest and throat pain.
Oh, and to get up to this crazy place, you can either drive, take a train, or take a cable car…which I would actually call more of a gondola. It’s just one of those things that hangs from one tiny little arm that clamps onto the wires above it like a ski lift. Always has seemed a little shady on the engineering there, but I figured if a GA Tech grad trusted it, I’d go along. And it was fine. The worst part of it was the combination of people shoving us out of the way to get to the windows to take photos and the people taking US politics in the center of the thing. It was a long 5 minute ride. Or maybe my sore throat had me a tad cranky.
To get up even higher from there, we took this crazy train that sits at probably a 40 degree angle on the side of the mountain. Again, a little scary, but pretty cool once my Yellow Jacket explained the counterweight system that kept it working. There were two train cars on the track that always crossed in the middle, thereby keeping each other in place. Yes, a shoddy explanation, but if you cared about details, you’d be reading Eric’s blog, not mine.
You’re right, he doesn’t have a blog. And yes, I’ve asked him to guest blog. For the past year I’ve asked him. Obviously, no luck yet, folks. Sorry. Stuck with me for the time being.
So anyway, we got back from Montserrat, took our daily nap, then headed off to dinner at this lovely place that makes use of one portion of the old city wall as one of its walls. There I had olives so big I had to eat them like a plum, a glass of red wine, and gluten free bread with tomato and jamón serrano on it. Eric had this typical Catalonian food (that pretty much just looks like a pizza) with amazing chorizo, red peppers, and onions. I insisted upon dessert, especially once I saw that they had flourless chocolate cake. My favorite. It was every bit as amazing as you’re thinking it probably was.
So today, Tuesday, December 29, we packed up our bags, stored them at the hotel, then headed off to Sagrada Familia for our scheduled and highly anticipated visit. If you have never heard of it, it’s spectacular. This church was designed by Antonin Gaudí in the late 1800’s and is still being built. I’ve been lucky enough to visit it on 4 separate occasions – in 1998, 1999, 2003, and now in 2015. It was incredible to see the progress they’ve made since my last visit.
The inside of the church has been completed in the past 12 years, and I had managed to refrain from seeing photos of it. It was an incredible surprise to see it this time around. Last time there was scaffolding everywhere, drop cloths, workers…you really couldn’t get a feel for what it was going to look like. But this time…oh! I walked into this huge place and felt awe like I’ve never felt before in a church or cathedral. This is not your typical gothic cathedral. The stained glass windows are brilliantly designed to just bathe the interior with warmth and light. The columns are like trees, so you feel as though you’re in a huge forest. I could go on and on, but I think I’ll just show you the photos instead…
And now, we’re on our way back to Madrid where we’ll grab some dinner, rest up tonight in a hotel near the airport, then catch our 10+ hour flight back tomorrow! Then I’ll wash my jeans for the first time in 12 days.
