Here's a better way to procrastinate from doing work than Facebooking

Thu, 8 Mar 2007

It’s been over a week since I’ve returned from Barcelona. “Over a week?!??” Yes, that’s right. “You evil person… that means you’ve been withholding your wonderful stories
for 8 days.” I had a midterm, okay?

I’ll start with Barcelona.

First thing we did [we being Jake and Emma (my fellow travelers in crime) and I] was drop our stuff off at the hostel. Oh, the hostel. It was love at first sight; we’re getting married in August. Save the date. His neon green lobby was adorned with funky, multi-colored, paper-maché, phallic-looking lamps dripping from the ceiling like jungle vines. Upstairs he was all artsy too, bedecked in wall murals. Plus, he fed me free buffet breakfast each morning. Not your Hyatt continental breakfast with croissants and eggs, but good enough for me, even if I had to get out of bed for my meal.

We set out from the hostel to do some exploring through the narrow streets of the gothic quarter. Houses loomed precariously overhead as though each side was trying to reach out and touch the other in the middle of the cobble-stoned street. We came upon a parade, drums pounding, people dancing, confetti flying. The parade was mostly school kids dressed up with themes as varied as le Petite Prince to a deck of cards. The kiddos did a little dance in front of a judges stand, that is if they were old enough to. If not, they stood around looking lost in a cute way. Someone handed me a flyer with the Spanish or Catalan equivalent of “Pluto is toooo a planet!” written on it. After the excitement with met up with a friend of Jake’s and went for Tapas. Tapas are a wonderful idea. They do well as a snack, unlike the meals they’re tried to be sold off as in America. Each was on a toothpick and you paid by the pick. Long pick 1.50 Euro, short ones a plain ole a Euro. Dinner was a traditional Spanish Payella, good but a bit lacking in the lovely greenness known as vegetable. The evening we passed at the birthday party of a friend of Nat, (who is Jake’s friend) in the basement of a bar mosaic-ed with bits of mirror so that the light danced around like the summer sunshine of Seneca Lake.

At breakfast the following morning we met Geo, a hostel photographer from Alaska who lives in Poland and used to be a monster on the set of… POWER RANGERS! Or so he said; no good reason to believe it a falsehood. We set out with our new adventurer for Montjuif, as Geo babbled on with stories about Tiffany the pink ranger and crazy costumes. En route we came across the thing that tops my “best things seen in Barcelona list.” An old man was walking around in his underwear… his TATOOED ON underwear! Snazzy. He was wearing sneakers and dress socks and his tatooed panties. Now that’s classy style. Parisian designers ought to take note. After this exciting (not sexually, as excitant implies in French) event, we passed through an antique market and went up Mountjuif where we were rewarded with a view of Barcelona, it’s sand and rose colored housed blending into a sea of city punctuated by the sand castle of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. After a late Chinese food lunch (yes Chinese), we went to the
Musee Picasso, a surprising good museum considering I don’t always find P-ster’s work aesthetic, despite its originality.

The evening, we spent… drum roll please… at a strip club! No just kidding. It’s better…
an FC Barcelona football (soccer for all you silly Americans) match! Way up high in the nosebleed seats, we watched foosball-sized men run around the field as we cheered with the crowd and threw paper airplanes. It seemed to be the hip thing to do, paper airplaning. The makeshift fliers soared around the stadium like seagulls, and I counted 9 on the field during the second half. That wouldn’t annoy me if I was a player! (sense the sarcasm?) ha. Barca Barca Barca! Home team won 3-0 and we poured on down like rapids with the happy crowd to the metro which was more packed with people than a popular bar. It took 30 minutes to get on the train.

DAY 3: A hommage to Gaudi. We started out the morning with another park, Gaudi’s Park Guiell. This park contains some of Antoni’s imaginative, dripping work as well as the world’s longest park bench covered prettily with mosaics. From there we hiked on down to Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, a cathedral 100 years in the making that has an estimated 50 years more before it will be finished. Good work ethic everybody! It rivals mine right now. The cathedral was ‘impressionant’ with its melting (appearance only) façade. We decided not to spring the 8 Euros to go inside, as many told us it not worth it to see the bear innards and ribs of the unfinished cathedral. From there to Passage de Gracia where more of Gaudi fantastical works are housed. Houses that are housed. We broke for the rather expensive tour of his Casa Batillo, and boy was it worth it. The undulating walls and stained glass bubbly windows were accompanied by an amusingly pompous, yet informative audioguide. I really like Gaudi’s work. It’s funky and colorful and interesting. I met Gaudi at the end. He found me so charming that he agreed to build me a house free of charge. I’m going to live there with the hostel after we wed in August.

Next we rambled on down to the Mediterranean and believed in the sand beneath our toes like in the song ‘Semi-charmed Kind of Life.’ That evening we met a Texan guy and Irish girl at the hostel and went out with them to Barcelona’s oldest bar, a large square room illuminated with warm-colored lights and decorated with statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. I’ll let you decide if that’s sac religious.

Last day, Emma and I were on the solo as Jake had departed that morning. We tried to see the Palaca de Musica the morning only to find out that all tours were sold out already - AT 11 am. Not cool. They had tours left, in Catalan. Yo no comprendo Cataylan. So, we wandered about another park and the in justice building and stopped by the museum of Catalan history. Lunch we passed at the Boqueria, a sprawling, roofed market selling fruit and meat and your occasional pre-prepared pasta salad. We followed up with the chocolate museum and the famous El 4 Gats, Picasso’s old digs, a cute warm café that was happily not too ruined by the plague of tourism. It was still cheap and has managed to hold on to some of its charm. Dinner was at an amazing restaurant. Don’t know exactly what it was, maybe a cooking school, but it was cheap and delicious. We arrived early as we saw the line that forms outside when we’d walked by the previous night, a line that snakes out into the plaza like the Seine River. Post dinner, we went clubbing with the Texan and Irish girl. We went to a club they’d been to Saturday night which
They’d liked. Tuesday night is evidently not a big outing night in Barca apparently, as we walked down into the club to discover it as empty as Wyoming. More empty in fact. We made the best of it and had a blast cavorting over the whole dance floor and having an unstated “I can dance stupider than you” contest.

The next morning we returned to Paris and Thomas picked me up at the airport. He spoke French to me. You see that’s funny because I’d had a ‘petite cauchemar’ the previous night in which I’d arrived here in Paris, was talking with Thomas and after 30 minutes I realized he was speaking English to me. In my dream I said “HEY! You can’t speak English to me! Don’t do that!” And he continued doing so despite my panicked assertion. Obviously I’d OD-ed on English and UD-ed (underdosed) on French those past few days.


In Paris life continues to be as beautiful as the view from Sacre Couer. I had a ‘to be left unnamed’ special event a week ago and went out to Egyptian food and casual drinks with some friends to celebrate. Sylvie, mom host mom, gave me a ticket to a show of the school of dance at the Opera Garnier for the aforesaid event.

That performance was Tuesday, and it was a surprisingly entertaining considering I’m not a big ballet fan. It helped that a lot was more modern dance than usual. The Garnier is incredible and its decoration is richer than all the French pastries in the world combined. I’ll be going back there a week from tomorrow for the Polytechnique ball. YAY! Really excited for that, yes I am s’I’am. It should be like a Bar Mitzvah times 10. The night starts with a ballet and then there will be dinner (I think) followed by the transformation of the beautiful classic opera house into a discotheque. Even the most uptight of the French population gush “oh-la-la” at the thought of going to this ball.

Je vous embrasse,
Hannah