On Monday, April 7, we headed for the airport around 9 AM. Our flight to Barcelona wasn't until 2, but we had decided to take public transport instead of a taxi and we didn't know how long it would take.
Not very long, it turns out. For
a little over 8€ you can take the Metro & RER from Gare
du Nord, Paris
to Aeroport Charles
de Gaulle. In case you ever decide to
try it yourself, a regular 1.1€ Metro ticket will get you
into the RER station at Gare du Nord, but you won't be able to
get out of the station at the airport.
As I mentioned in a short email a while back, it actually SNOWED the night before we left. So on the way to CDG we passed fields of the stuff melting in the early "sunshine" (well, they CALL it sunshine here, but we haven't seen much of it).
The flight was uneventful and on time. We arrived at the Barcelonaairport about 4 PM. Roger met us at the airport
and drove us to Vic, Spainwhich
is about 60 kilometers (or 38 miles) north of Barcelona.
Now I have to make a confession.
I seem to be quite averse to taking pictures of anyone but Karen.
So I scoured the hundreds of photos I took in Vic and discovered
ONE that barely showed Roger in the background (behind Karen).
It was in a hallway at the Dali Museum. Roger is a great guy and
deserves much better representation on this leg of the trip than
this one lousy photo, but it's all I got. Sorry, Roger.
For the record, Roger is my sister Yakshi's husband. They've been together as long as have Karen and I. Roger works as a translator of medical, legal and technical documents from Japanese into English. It's a task that can be done anywhere thanks to the Internet and he's working mainly in Vic to be near Raimon Panikkar, his mentor and teacher from his Santa Barbara college days. He and Yakshi work together on the translations despite the distance separating them. We stayed with Roger from Monday through Thursday night. On Friday we transferred to a hotel in Barcelona.
Vic
is an old city, with a walled, inner city dating back to the Roman
era. Roger lives in a fairly modern apartment on a cobblestoned
street that leads to the old bridge over the river that runs outside
of the walls of the old city. Both of these pictures were taken
on our walk to the plaza for dinner on Monday night. I was trying
out the "low light" setting on the camera and we were
all amazed at just how much detail the little camera could capture
without a flash. It was a pretty dark night.
We never knew it before, but Roger informed us that the cobblestones that make up a cobblestone street are actually laid vertically - their longest dimension is downward. You learn something new every day.
The building visible across the bridge is actually where the
original wall of the old city stood. The bridge itself dates to
Roman times, but has been destroyed and rebuilt several times
over the centuries - most recently during the Spanish Civil War
of the 1930s.
The plaza is higher up and has been the home to a continuous weekly market since the 900s and it has never been paved. That darker sand-colored area inside of the tiled patio IS sand. (for the technically curious among you, this was taken as two shots from the same position and put together automatically via Photoshop CS3's "photomerge" feature. Took about 30 seconds.)
On Tuesday, we drove further north
to Figueres, Spain, to visit the
Dali
Museum there. Figueres is a 60 mile trip east and north from Vic.
It's Dali's own museum that he designed and built. It was wonderful.
You begin your tour in what Roger
describes as the subconscious. You enter a courtyard where Dali's
own automobile is on prominent display, as is the EXTRA-prominent
hood ornament. The tower in the background is made up of large
tractor tires and is surmounted by a yellow boat festooned with
large blue "drops" to confirm that you're down under.
Below the front bumper of the Cadillac is a coin box where you
can insert one euro to see what Dali would make happen.
What else? It starts raining INSIDE the car, which one can view through a conveniently broken window.
There were so many wonderful images there, as well as a playful environment in which to view them. The galleries are numbered and, although the tour is self-directed, you can feel that there's a progression to be felt through following Dali's numerical guide.
And some little treasures that I'd not seen before, including this one titled "Study for the Battle of Tetuan."
Another thrill was seeing the original
to this portrait of Gala seen from the rear looking over a cruciform
sunset. It appears almost pixelated because it IS. There's a tiny
clue to the puzzle just to the left of Gala's left leg. When viewed
across the courtyard (or through some strategically placed optical
reducers for 0.20 euros) it renders into a portrait of Abraham
Lincoln.
Done in the 1940s (I think), it certainly predated the common
pixel manipulations that are commonplace today. What a treat!
And the other great surprise was
to turn the corner at the top of a staircase and encounter this
stunning original Bouguereau. Totally unexpected, although I
knew he was an influence. I just never expected to see him in
the Museum. I could go on and on, and we did, but it was getting
on towards 1:30 and we had a luncheon date with Ron Puppo.
Ron lives in the small village
of Cabanes, Spain, about seven
or eight miles from Figueres. He lives on the edge of town and
I think I managed to find his house on Google Earth, so here's
an aerial view of the house and sumptuous garden:
Ron is a teacher and friend of Roger's, who also happens to own the apartment in which Roger lives. During one of our conversations, Roger happened to mention that he shopped at a particular grocery store chain in Vic and Ron opined that if Roger shopped there, perhaps it was time to lower his rent.
Ron welcomed us with a lunch of calçots, sausages, lamb, salad, wine and beer. What a feast! And, due to complaints from many of the followers of these chronicles of too many photos of food, you can only imagine it.
Calçots, for those of you like us who had never heard of them, are a relative of the green onion. They are huge and appear to be totally inedible, but, after being roasted over a high flame/high heat fire, the tender central shoot can be teased out of the blackened outer mass and savored - especially when dipped in a sauce of almond and olive oil (and spices). Again, due to too many complaints about food photos, you are being left to your own devices and imaginations.
Ron has recently selected and translated the first anthology of Jacinto Verdaguer’s poetry into English and treated us to a reading from his book along with the ice cream and brandy. Above he has just set the book down and is regaling us with little known facts about Catalunya poetry. We left Ron our email addresses but haven't heard from him. I hope that you'll forward these links to him, Roger.
Wednesday,
Roger had to work. He'd been neglecting a large translating job
somewhat in deference to our visit, but needed to buckle down
and get caught up. We simply took the day to explore the old city
of Vic. We walked back up to the plaza and visited the tourist
center there. We got some audioguide sets which took us around
the ancient part of town with a running commentary.
At right is the highest point of the plaza with the town hall and clock tower prominent. The contrast of the never-paved packed-dirt plaza and the surrounding patios is more marked here. The tour starts in the plaza and then winds around narrow cobblestone streets down to the outer wall and the old Roman bridge and then back up. Along the way are such sights as the Cathedral de Sant Pere at left. Built in Roman style in the 11th century, its attraction to me turned out to be inside.
While I usually find old church
murals to be much earlier than my tastes, these were done by Jose
Maria Sert, an artist who also provided some of the Rockefeller Center Murals. I wish my friend
Ken Steacy, of Ken
Steacy Publishing, could have been there with us as he is
a huge Sert fan - AND a much better photographer. As it was, I
relied heavily on our little digital camera's "low light"
setting and was able to get a couple of reasonably clear shots
under VERY dim light. In fact, the main reason I'm even showing
these, despite the limited resolution and visibility is purely
for Ken's edification. Looks like you need to plan a trip to Vic,
Ken.
It seems that Sert decorated this church three times - the first and second times with finished murals that were then destroyed with the church during wars. After rebuilding the second time, Sert never was able to finish his compositions and these were executed from his designs, but not by Sert, himself. There are about 20 pieces of various sizes and they cover nearly every wall.
Another, more ancient, surprise
on the tour was this Roman temple. It's been restored in unlikely
proportions (the second tier of columns is probably much too near
the front row), but the ruins existed for centuries behind the
walls of the garden of a private residence in the town. By the
time it was (re)discovered, the streets of the town were firmly
in place and so the reconstruction had to take them into consideration.
Most of the columns are recreations, though you can see part of
one of the original columns in the middle of the one on the far
right. The marks on the other columns are from bullets during
the Spanish Civil War.
Here's
Karen next to a gnomish little statue in one of the smaller plazas
just off the main square. Such odd little sculptures were commonplace.
One such reminded Roger of W.C. Fields and we found it while searching
for the leatherworks museum. The museum was closed for the 14:00
to 17:00 afternoon break, but the statue was still available.
What they mean and why these lighthearted creations exist is a
pleasant mystery to us.
On Thursday, Roger took us to the bus station where we caught
the 10:30 bus direct to Barcelona. We had decided to spend Thursday
night in Vic and we wanted to get a sense of Barcelona before
we transferred lodging there. Roger had suggested that we take
a tourist bus around the city just to get the lay of the land
and to plan what we'd like to do on Friday and on Saturday morning.
It made eminent sense to us, so off we went to Barcelona.
What we found in Barcelona were PEOPLE - lots and lots of people. What had sounded like a good idea in principle, "grab a tourist bus and explore the city," turned out to be not quite so simple in practice. Below is the line to get ON the bus (and, yes, the guy on the left with the red backpack is the end of the line which stretches all the way down the block, across the plaza at the end, and back up the plaza on the right):
Granted, this is the Place de Cataluya, the very center of the city, but STILL... Fortunately the busses came every five minutes (there are actually two of them at the loading station in the photo), and most people wanted to sit on top. By the time we were half-way through the line, the tour operators were canvasing our portion of the line to see if anyone would consent to ride down below on the next bus. We said yes, and transferred upstairs at about the second stop, Gaudi's Sacrada Familia.
Here, again, the crowds
were unbelievable and, as much as we might have enjoyed visiting
the cathedral, it seemed like the majority of the time would have
been spent waiting in line and much of the interior is "in
progress." Now, we know that this church was not finished
in Gaudi's lifetime (and, at the rate the constuction is going,
may NEVER be finished), so the presence of cranes and scaffolding
is understandable. BUT, everywhere we went in Barcelona (and,
to some extent, in Vic) there were cranes and construction.
The entire city seems to be "in progress" - or in
the process of becoming something else. On the bus tour, we'd
often hear something like "and you can see this wonderful
thing, but it's closed now" or "you can take this tram
to the top, except it isn't running right now." There's fabulous
architecture, but adjoining buildings are often jarringly diverse.
Long avenues that look timeless in places turn out to be less
than 100 years old, while places that look TOO modern turn out
to be over 100 years old. It's a somehow disquieting city. Granted,
we were primarily in heavily-traveled tourist spots, but we also
got off the bus and walked along streets devoid of tourists. If
you are a fan of Barcelona, and there must be many as it is the
second most popular tourist destination after Paris in Europe,
perhaps you can provide a counterpoint to our experiences. I'd
like to know what attracts people so strongly to this city.
Here are some diverse shots taken from the bus on Thursday:
 
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FYI, Ken, the third picture on the second row is the Miro Museum and it was (supposedly, if I understood the audio-guide correctlyl) designed by Sert.
Catalunya is in the midst of a severe drought, but we brought some rain with us. On the bus trip back to Vic we ran into a pretty massive thunderstorm, so the trip took a little longer than expected, but we still got back in time to take Roger out to dinner and to see a rainbow set against the omnipresent cranes of progress.
Friday, April 11, we bid farewell to Roger and grabbed the same bus with the same driver for the same ride to Barcelona. We didn't have any rain (it seems that the rain in Spain falls mainly on Paris), but we had the leftover clouds from the storm. Great addition to the ride to the city.
We'd made a reservation via the Internet on Wednesday and tried to pick a hotel close to where the bus dropped us off. We did good, as we only had to walk about 150 feet from the bus stop to the hotel front door. Beginners' luck, we supposed.
Our plan for the day was to drop off the luggage and walk down the Rambla to see what it was like and then visit the zoo and whatever else we had time and energy for. FYI, Barcelona is part of Catalunya, a part of Spain which has a language of its own. They don't say, buenas dias, they say bon dia. It's an unique blend that seems to be 1/3 French, 1/3 Spanish, and 1/3 all its own. Having barely learned to get by in French, trying to remember to use the few Catalunya words Roger taught us instead of French or Spanish was quite a trial.
La Rambla was crowded and we veered
off very early on to take a similar pedestrian street just to
the east. We had fun window shopping, though almost all of the
stores were for clothes, jewelry or perfume - in none of which
we had any interest. One delightful exception was the Happy Pills
store. We were relieved to find that it sold candy, though we
didn't buy any. They had many amusing packages all "doctored"
up to assuage any symptom or hunger pang you might come down with.
Still, candy was one of the last things WE needed.
One of the things that had been pointed out on the bus tour was a market east of La Rambla. It had a Gaudi-esque roof (in that it was brightly colored and curvy), so we ambled (we're not up to rambling) over to visit it. It was one of the more down to earth sites we saw in Barcelona. Fresh produce and fish and meat and poultry and olives and vinegar and wine and just about everything. Think 50 kinds of tomatoes in just one stall...
We were off the bus route and going the wrong direction. We had purchased two-day passes, so we could have ridden had we been near the tour bus stop, but even then we would have had to endure a long, circuitous detour around the city before we arrived, so we decided to walk to the zoo. We are nothing if not ambitious. It turned out to be a pretty long walk, but we made it.
We
could show you lots of pictures of animals as we took a little
train ride around the entire zoo. I told you it was a long walk
and by the time we actually arrived, we were pretty tuckered out.
The most interesting thing we saw was a male peacock in full display
for four or five peahens - none of which showed the slightest
interest so the cock just kept on displaying - long enough, in
fact, for me to remember that our camera has a movie setting and
for me to figure out (sort of) how to use it. Click on the pic
or below to see if I really learned anything.
The other surprise was when the driver of the train stopped and motioned everyone to quietly come forward to a certain exhibit. It turns out that it was feeding time for the porcupines. These shy animals are almost never actually seen at the zoo, but we watched as two of them left the safety of their burrows to have lunch.
After
the train ride, we walked around some more and revisited some
of the animals that seemed the most interesting. We took some
funny pictures and then left the zoo by the wrong exit so that
we had to REALLY walk an extra long way to find the tour bus stop
to get a ride back to Place de Catalunya. But that's what we did.
We had dinner (don't worry, no pictures!) at a little place near our hotel, but the paella that Karen had wasn't as good as those we had on Thursday at a little restaurant far off the beaten track when we had disembarked from the tour bus to wander on our own. The pizza I had sounded good, but the crust wasn't thoroughly cooked and certainly didn't measure up or even come CLOSE to what we get here at Da Pietro. In fact, of all the pizzas we've had on this trip, Da Pietro is by far the best. (But now we're exploring the rest of their menu, so we do try pizzas elsewhere - though it hasn't been a very enjoyable exploration...)
After dinner, we simply gave up. Karen found a book the next morning called Donde Est Bin Laden? that is modeled on the Where is Waldo? books. We had fun on the bus to airport on Saturday trying to find him and his terrorists in London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, and Afganistan, to name a few locales. The trip home was uneventful (with the exception, as always, of Karen's artificial knee wreaking havok at the metal detectors). We took the Metro back from Charles de Gaulle and picked up some Chinese take-out from the place around the corner on Avenue de Clichy. We joke that there is a "Chinese Mafia" that supplies ALL of the 'emporter' places in Paris since they basically all sell the same things.
Sunday was resting. I put together the pre-Barcelona reportage and got a start on this phase of the trip. Monday was laundry and shopping.
More to come.
