Kazan — summer 2012

By odd coincidence an old acquaintance of mine, Dale, who lives in Berlin, is also in Barcelona for a few days. Today we touristed together. We met at La Plaça de Catalunya, picked up his tourist bus ticket, and then headed down Las Ramblas to see the huge market there, El Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria. The entrance is just off La Rambla:

The place is enormous; picture Pike's Place Market on steroids, but with incredible amounts of beef and ham since they are not constrained by Seattle's whiny vegetarians. I only took two pictures there. The first was of a surprising display of chiles that was beautiful:

The second was a shop that sold nuts and candied fruit:

I have never seen so much candied fruit in my life. Tomorrow I'll go back to one of the chocolate stands for a gift for a friend in Russia.

From there we hopped on the bus that took us to La Sagrada Familia, a church that was re-envisioned by Gaudí in 1883 and has been under construction ever since. To say the place is astonishing simply doesn't capture it. It's enormous and playful and solemn and awe-inspiring and tacky all at the same time. (The tacky is due to some retail I spotted through the windows.) Many of the figures in the main entry way have a bit of a cubist look to them; think Picasso's "The Old Guitar Player"; it gives that section a kind of "Christianity meets the Lord of the Rings" feel. Other parts have an organic feel that produce a "Christianity meets Disney Castles" feel. (For some reason it gave me "Little Mermaid" flashbacks.)

We wanted to go in, but the line seemed endless, so we instead we just circumambulated the place. It was amazing from all angles. Dale departs tomorrow, but I will try to get there first thing in the morning to see if I can actually get in. I really want to see the interior.

After that we headed to Parc Güell, a beautiful park also designed by Gaudí. I had particularly wanted to get a picture of the lizard near the entrance:

Why did I want a lizard picture? Because of a similar lizard in Oracle, AZ, right near the church where my parents married and not far from where many family members are buried. (I'll try to add that picture here in a month or two.) The park is a marvelous place to walk. Weirdly enough, there are parrots flying around and nesting in the trees of the park. No cages. They just live there.

After the park we headed back to Las Ramblas. We grabbed some tapas in a pleasant restaurant while we waited for a coffee/chocolate shop to open. The coffee at the later place was quite good. Dale's was covered with a German style Schlagsahne, a whipped cream that was thick nigh to approaching the consistency of butter. You can't think of a better topping for coffee. None of this namby-pamby non-fat foam that the misinformed health-conscious customers order at Starbucks. It's better than any American whipped cream I've ever head. I had a straight ol' bitter European coffee, along with a Sachertorte that, just like the apple tart at breakfast, made a sweet/alkaloid contrast that is a delight to experience.

It was time for Dale and me to part ways, so I returned to the hotel where the mirror confirmed my suspicion that I had become as sun-burned as an albino at day camp. My face is astoundingly red. Others less patriotic than I might regret this happenstance, but my red neck and face contrasting with the rest of my white skin and blue eyes are a source of pride to me. Color me American!

Enough blogging! It's rest time. I have a curious message from my brother. I have half a hope he might join me here tomorrow.