Soviet Jesus and the Gulag work brigade

Sagrada Familia

In the end, we decided that it was impossible to visit Barcelona and not go inside the Sagrada Familia. At first, I was ambivalent - I'm cheaper than most and at 15 euros, I'm even willing to pass up an entry into Heaven - assuming a corporation has bought it and turned it into a private enterprise these days. Some corporate sponsors I'm expecting to see are Starbucks, H&M and Home Depot, maybe a few banks, and in order to get to the more premium parts of Heaven, you've got to pay for the more premium tickets, because as we know, service and quality ain't free folks. Expect St. Peter with a bar code reader; he makes no exceptions when it comes to the mercy of the direct deposit - no less than two a month or your access will be barred. You'll be left sipping your chai tea latte at a grey, run-down has been mom and pop 70s diner over there on Purgatory Street, full of all the people not quite exciting enough to be sent to the Inferno.

However, with two votes a yes and only me being ambivalent, I quickly became ready to enter the eccentric cathedral, always willing to loosen the strings of my money bags when other people are involved - for at least if the experience sucks I can blame someone else for losing my money. Purchase the tickets online and pair the tickets with the entry to the Gaudi House Museum over at Park Guell. Buy this ticket even before seeing the park, though it's best to see the park first, as it was something of his architectural playground where he perfected the techniques he would use in the church.

The Sagrada Familia was designed principally by Antoni Gaudi, from whom we get the term in English "gaudy", which means grossly out of place or extravagant, a meaning that ideally describes his projects scattered across Barcelona like a strong cayenne pepper seasoning on Cajun jambalaya. Gaudi was the 19th/20th centuries' foremost modernist architect, using the new artistic themes of art nouveau and melding them with influences of nature - creating truly bizarre, unique, functional and beautiful places, a convergence of art and architecture that seems to have been lost in today's warehouse chic world. One of his favorite artistic touches was the mosaic - a truly Spanish art - from which he often used recycled materials.

Gaudi took over the Sagrada Familia project in 1886, and though he was the chief architect, he continued on other projects as well, in some ways perhaps to experiment with various techniques and ideas that he had in store for the church. The church was originally conceived as a standard Gothic style church, but when Gaudi inherited it he decided to make it a true landmark and statement of the art nouveau movement. 

Much of his plans were lost during the Spanish Civil War and much of what we see today is actually the work of later architects somewhat inspired by Gaudi. His plans have been recovered though, and now there's been a longstanding debate as to whether to redo much of the work in order to follow his plans faithfully, or continue accordingly. Of course, if they scrap what they've done, it would also mean that there would be no way to meet the latest construction deadline of 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death. Interestingly, if technology from Gaudi's time were only used, the completion date wouldn't be for few hundred more years. Gaudi mentioned as to why construction was taking such a long time, he replied, "My Client is in no hurry."

Sagrada Familia rear facade

The facade of the church is - like most Gothic churches - covered in an array of sculptures. But unlike most Gothic churches, the sculptures appear as though they are hanging from the walls of a cave, as though they themselves were stalagmites and stalactites of an enormous entry to a mysterious subterranean complex. The sculptures have been added over the one hundred plus year period of construction, so they have a slight variance of style, but all of most of them seem to follow the harsh lines and angles of the early avant-garde movement, as though to show us a Soviet Jesus, who plans for the salvation of our souls in five year schedules.

Soviet Jesus and his Gulag work brigade

Though the exterior is tremendous and amazing to behold in person - indeed, no picture can truly capture the beauty of the work - it's the interior that's the real beauty. Inside, immense white columns reach up hundreds of meters, as though they were meant to hold the sky. Each column is shaped as an angular tree, with branches coming out to aid in the support of the cieling far above. Everything inside the church is white - not just the columns - but color is added by the huge stain glass windows on either side. Each array of glass follows a particular color, so that the colors beam in, coloring the columns and the ground below, almost in the same way how in a forest the sun beams in its light through the leaves of the trees above, except instead of just being a brilliant yellow, this sun is bright red or blue or green, creating such a rich ephemeral play of colors that I've only seen in animated films.

The organs resemble bishop mitres

The yellow windows of the Sagrada

The ceiling of the Sagrada Familia

Red windows of the Sagrada Familia

Is it worth the 15 euros? Absolutely. I would probably even go again, paying the same amount. I guess if that's all St. Peter were charging to his celestial Disneyland, then it'd be worth it. Not that I'm looking forward to paying for 10 dollar coffee brewed with overcooked beans and served in paper cups for the rest of eternity.  

drinking coffee from a paper cup

The second day of Barcelona still consisted of our gang of four staying at the hobbit-sized Pension Miami - whose location was excellent - not premium - decor was charming, and size was miniature, run by friendly and considerate enough employees who dealt with us despite our despairing level of Spanish. 

A clean restaurant kitchen

Day 2 was a full day. We started off with breakfast at a Spanish McDonald's type place, all the while with me complaining about drinking coffee from a paper cup. "But it's clean," my wife insisted. "But you've never had to work fast food. Sometimes those places that look a little dirty on the outside are a lot cleaner than fast food. But anyways, there is no cleanliness in restaurants as it is, my friend Joseph has taught me that enough."

Next stop was Park Guell, which was an old Catalan noble family who had hired none other than Anthony Gaudi to design the property around his house. Gaudi built pavilions for events, a viaduct for walking, some statues, and some houses, including his own. Half the property - which is now a garden - was planned to be a subdivision of houses designed by the eccentric architect, but they never got around to starting the construction. After Franco took power, the place was turned into a park and Guell's home into a school, while Gaudi's house was turned into a museum.  

No fitness required!

Park Guell is easily reached from Placa Catalunya on the L3 metro line, getting off at the Vallcarca stop - don't listen to tourist guide books, they lie, the other stop has a lot of uphill walking. The metro in Barcelona - though the general plan of the metro is about as confusing as quantum mechanics - is fairly easy to use, since each station and line is fairly simple. Leaving the metro at Vallcarca, it's pretty easy to follow the signage to the Park. The signage takes one to a series of outdoor escalators that go right up the mountainside, making the ascent easy enough for even our fattest of friends.

At the top, one is confronted with going up the hill to the place of three crosses, or going downhill to the actual park. We decided to go up the hill, see the amazing overlook, then descend along the viaduct that winds down to the pavillions. The viaduct itself looks something like a mix between a prehistoric construction and the remnants of dinosaur fossils, built with crawling and sprawling vegetation in mind, perfectly moulded to the sides of the hill. The viaduct utilizes the Catenary arch that Gaudi was famous for perfecting, which only increases the appearance and feeling that your walking through a graveyard of giant lizards, especially with how the viaduct winds its way down the hill like the route a snake might take.

The view from the three crosses

On top of the viaduct

A "leaning" Catenary arch below a viaduct

The viaduct ends at the pavillion, where also is located the official entrance to the park. Tickets are 7 euros and can be purchased online, or about a 100 meter walk away from this spot. It's probably best to buy it online, and then you can also buy the Gaudi House and Sagrada Familia ticket bundle and hit all of this stuff without waiting, if you're your good with your timing. The tickets operate on a time band basis, meaning the park sells a certain amount of tickets for a certain period of time, so that the crowds are never too large and you never really have to wait in line, especially if you purchased your tickets previously online. It's actually quite a brilliant system.

The paid area of the park includes as I said, the pavilion, a walk around the school and the backside of the entrance. It's probably actually not worth the 7 euros, since most of that can be seen from the outside almost as easily, and you can take your Facebook picture in front of the gates without actually paying admission. Besides all that, the viaducts are really the most impressive Gaudi-designed part.

View of the pavilions from the free area

View of the pavilions from the paid area

The porter's house

From there, we took about a thirty minute walk to the Sagrada Familia, the great cathedral designed by Gaudi - a tour of Barcelona really is mostly just a tour of Gaudi's work, as the city itself was a canvass for the architect.

After one look at the line, we decided to look online for tickets, and found that the next available time bands wouldn't be until the next day around noon. This meant that even those people waiting in line for hours wouldn't be able to get in that day. So again, best to book online. At the moment, we decided not to go, since it was 15 euros just to walk around inside. 

Houses on the "Block of Discord", Casa Batllo and Casa Amatller

Instead we decided to go walk down the Passeig de Gracia and see the rest of Gaudi's buildings, in what they call the Block of Discord (in Catalan, Illa de la Discordia, or Bone of Discord), because of all the out of place buildings designed by various modernist architects of various ideas. Most of the buildings have a 5 or so euro charge to enter, where you get to see one or two rooms. At Casa Batllo though - the one designed by Gaudi - you can walk around most of the house, and though it's empty of the furniture (which Gaudi also designed), you at least get to see the basics of his interior design ideas. More on that later.

Last up for the day was the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, which looks far cooler on its pamphlet than it actually is - which is unfortunately all too often the case with touristic sites, the longer I travel, the more I wonder if I should just leave things in the grandeur of my imagination than being let down by the great weight of reality and universal insignificance. What I was imagining was that the shipyard-converted-to-museum would have a bunch of massive 17th century frigates on display that you could walk around on and pretend your a pirate or fighting with pirates - I'll here admit that my mind never matured past the age of 12. But as we started walking around the Drassanes in the south part of Raval, I realized that there weren't any buildings there large enough to contain my dreams.

Be sure to take a look inside!

Outside had a little wooden submarine reminiscent of the Beatles song. You can't go inside, but you can look in the windows and see what's going on inside. In the museum, there is a large royal barge, but you can't go on it, you can only admire the view of the body of the vessel from below. Then there's a large collection of various types of small fishing boats and a section about cruise liners and pirates that has some pictures and lots and lots of reading. It took me a really long time to get through this part, because I end up trying to read everything no matter how not actually interesting the information is - don't get me wrong, the section on defending Barcelona from the dreaded Berber pirate Barbarossa was actually quite awesome.  

Also included is a small shipping vessel that's sitting out in the marina near the marina shopping mall. You get to go inside and all, but if you've been on a boat before, it's not that terribly interesting, except to take pictures at the wheel. For all of that it's 7 euros. To me it's worth it, but then I'm a fan of history museums, from the life of quixotic writers to the maritime adventures of temporarily independant ports. But if you're only going to be excited by swinging on the ropes of the riggings - something I would have enjoyed a bit more - better to find a ropes' course somewhere. The past is dead, and reliving the past seems to be left to Renaissance Faires and Dungeons and Dragons.

on quick greetings and the economics of restaurants

At the end of December, our honeymoon was finally due. We had traveled all across Bohemia for weekends away from the bustle of our new city life in Prague, but we hadn't yet had a trip where our sole focus of attention would be each other and where we could cement together our new marital bond. It was my wife's dream to go to Morocco - and also to go to see Barcelona and a flamenco show - so it was with an easy glance at flight patterns that we decided that we could do both. And to boot, we could also include a short visit with one of her best friends - the mutual friend who had original brought us together in that now defunct smokey Tbilisi bar, Amarcord, where the walls were covered with strange colorful paintings that were coated in a slightly grey nicotine ash and the tables were made from Soviet era sewing machines, which is now an apparently chic thing to do in Tbilisi bars.

After a careful study of the price variations of dates and cities, and some discussion with my wife, we had agreed that we would go to Barcelona for nights days, then fly to Tangers, travel to Chefchouan, then to Fes, spend New Years in Fes, and fly back to Barcelona for another two nights. On the first leg of the trip, we would see my wife's best friend and husband, who stay at the same hotel we would be in.

While walking along a nearly empty sidewalk, headed to the Sagrada Familia, my wife's friend Salome noted, "We all make good travel companions. It's hard to find an agreement with who you're traveling with. Sometimes a person wants to walk everywhere and see as much as possible - like us - other people just want to shop, and others want to eat and drink." As she was saying this, I was imagining sitting down for a cup of coffee and watching people out the window hurry by with their time-dependent consistency, a hobby I had formed and loved since the days of my wandering Europe with no aim or vision or schedule - possibly the freest time of my life. Salome was right, there needs to be consistency on how people travel to make a good trip. I tried best to suit my companions' needs, also wanting to see as much of Barcelona as I could, though I preferred my snails' coffee drinking, wine sipping pace.

A street in the Raval district

We found our hotel with ease. There is a bus that costs 5 pounds 40 one way, or 11 pounds 20 two ways, from terminals 1 and 2 of the Barcelona airport to the city center, with stops at Placa de Espanya and Universitat, ending at Placa de Catalunya, which is the aortic heart of Barcelona, the primary arteries of Passeig de Gracia and Las Ramblas both stemming out of that plaza's ventricles. Our hotel was called Pension Miami, located in the Raval district, about a 5 minute walk from Placa de Catalunya and 2 minutes from Universitat, right behind the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art. The rooms are tiny, but with nice touches of character, like carefully carved woodwork making a kind of mantel over the otherwise Spartan bed. The room isn't much bigger than the bed, the bathroom follows suit, and the Russian couple staying next door could easily be heard with every entry and exit, and one could take pleasure in their snoring while using the toilet with the window to the bathroom's sunwell open. Our bedroom window opened to another sunwell, so we had no view of the street - which after visiting Spain with my parents earlier in the year, I discovered was a wonderful thing. The Spanish don't start their partying until around 11 and finish up at 7 in the morning, every day of the week, and since typical Spanish bars are about the size of that Pension Miami hotel room, most of the partying happens on the street.

In the Gothic quarter

As soon as we arrived at the hotel, we met Salome and her husband Avto, and immediately went out for a walk through the Gothic district. The Gothic district - so-called because of the Germanic influence on the cathedrals of the area - is a tightly packed district of narrow winding corridors and tall, five story buildings. Many corridors can't fit even two or three people shoulder-to-shoulder, so that much of the area is pedestrian only by default. A walk through this large area can show you how people have been living in Europe for centuries, and because of how large the district is, more successfully than any other district in perhaps any other place on the Continent.

It was good seeing Salome again, both because she's a smart woman who's nice to talk to and because of the joy her company brings to my wife. It was a pity that we were in such a rush everywhere, with such a short time for each other and for the city, and we had to balance the time like a man might balance his illegitimate lovers - our spending time exploring the city almost felt like cheating on each other. But we take what we are given and sought to enjoy our march through those Catalonian alleyways.

First up was dinner, and while in Spain, I wasn't going to miss paella - a rice based dish of various sea creatures - which I had fallen in love with while traveling with my seafood-faring parents. This was my one culinary requirement. And we passed one restaurant serving it - indeed, as we'd later see, there are plenty of restaurants serving it - with a guy standing outside, inviting people in. We opted against it. Salome's reasoning for her negative vote, "Restaurants that need someone on the street to convince people to come in can't be good."

Walking along La Rambla

In Spain though, this is the standard regime. It might be something carried on down from their Moroccan heritage, since the Arabs seem to have the same habit about getting people inside, since certainly nowhere else in Europe has this annoying habit of trying to invite people to come in - except maybe in certain, tourist heavy places. Outside of every restaurant stands a "tout", telling you about how delicious their food is, offering discounts, and often blocking your way with their menus and bodies so that you'd quit walking and come inside. Of course, for most people, this has the effect of frightening them off - like in my companions' case, and it would in my case too had I not seen the practice before.

We ended up at a restaurant on La Rambla. I'm convinced that every restaurant on La Rambla is exactly the same and with somewhat poor quality. "But there are a lot of people in them," Salome protested my rambling on La Rambla while we waited for our food.

"Here's something I especially learned in Prague," I said. "Often the most touristic restaurants are the worst. This is because of what they have to compete on. You can compete on location, atmosphere, food quality, service, and probably a few other things. Touristic restaurants are competing on location and often atmosphere. Because they have the location, they know that the thousands of tourists in Barcelona every weekend are going to see their restaurant and come inside to eat, because it's easy, and they see other people in there - other tourists like them - and assume that because other people are there, it must be a decent enough place. But then, because the restaurant knows this, they don't really have to invest on the quality of the food or necessarily the service.

"Every real estate agent will tell you that value is made from 'location, location, location', and for the lazy, uninspired restaurateur, this is absolutely true. They need the location, and the steep prices the location brings, to raise up profits, rather than a strong reputation for quality service and amazing food.

"Better then, I think, the restaurants that aren't located in the primary thoroughfares. Maybe you'll get an occasional restaurant competing on food quality in a touristic location, but then they'll easily get famous being touted on Tripadvisor or Lonely Planet, they'll up their prices or down their quality to make more money. But if you can find something just outside of super easy reach - like being on La Rambla - and preferably not having been on Lonely Planet for too long, then you'll find a restaurant that might be competing on food quality."

The food that night was plain, the paella uninspiring. And to be sure on our return path through Barcelona when we again ate at a paella place on La Rambla, I found the paella equally dull as my wife found her pizza pretty flavorless. This only confirmed my suspicions about the economics of restaurants.