Kazan — summer 2012

One of the things that first strikes me about Barcelona is the trees. Streets often are lined with them, and the ones that seem the most common are the planteros (sycamores), with their spiky seed pods. They give a green-gold shade to the pedestrians below. But I'm particularly struck by the the number of trees in bloom right now. Everywhere you turn you see the brilliant yellow flowers of the tipuanas, a South American tree that grows well here; the flowers are the brilliant yellows of Arizona's palo verde trees.

Then there is a tree with beautiful purple flowers, whose name has eluded me so far.

From some vantage points the city seems like an indistiguished urban mass.

In the midst of it, though, you see odd building rise up unexpectedly, like the Barcelona Water Department Building that penetrates the sky like... um... a corn cob. Yes, that's it. A corn cob.

The Ciutat Vella (Old City) has narrow streets like most old European cities.

But then there is the area called L'Eixample, which was shaped by a 19th century urban planner. The gist of it is this:

The Eixample is characterized by long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide avenues, and square blocks with chamfered corners (named illes in Catalan, manzanas in Spanish). This was a visionary, pioneering design by Ildefons Cerdà, who considered traffic and transport along with sunlight and ventilation in coming up with his characteristic octagonal blocks, where the streets broaden at every intersection making for greater visibility, better ventilation and (today) some short-stay parking space. (Wikipedia)

Essentially from above it should look like this.

So when you look through Barcelona and see a long street, stretching forever, garlanded by trees, that's part of the Eixample.

Here are some shots where you see how the corners shape the experience of the whole.

The combination of old city, Eixample and modern city give Barcelona a type of fascinating grace that is unique in my experience of Europe. When thinking of next year's vacation time, I've seriously considered going to Scotland, Iceland or Greece, but having now been here, I will seriously coming back here instead. After all, it would be great fun to work on my Catalan.