Spain Days 2 through 6

2. Silas and I were up at the crack of dawn as usual. Which was OK by me because I was already hungry. We sat down to cornflakes and bananas and raced cars around while everyone else slept in. By the time everyone else was up and ready to go, we needed another snack. Ian and Silas were always fired up in the morning and every day when we'd open the front door of the building they would be off like rockets, racing around the sidewalk in all directions.
This morning we decided to head back down Las Ramblas and stop at the fish market again. Progress was slow since we had two toddlers wandering aimlessly around, but we eventually made it around 10:30 or so. The street was packed with people and we saw even more street performers this time. A woman covered in wax fruit, puppeteers, trick soccer players, statues, angels, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, a man dressed as a cat in a trashcan, and, my favorite, a woman who looked like she was mid step with the breeze blowing back her hair and dress. The market was packed again so I departed to make the days selection while the others entertained the kids and bought some strawberries and fresh juice. I wondered amazed through the seafood area; it was huge, with an unbelievable selection. I had no idea there were that many shrimp-like creatures. I wish I knew a bit more about a seafood and could recognize the fish and shellfish better, but except for the most common, or things that had cognate names, I was clueless. I did find some shrimp, fresh scallops, (still in the shell), and tuna. I collected a loaf of bread and some cookies, a few other herbs, and some fruits and veggies before rejoining the others. I passed a candy booth that had some delicious looking chocolate, including chocolate boobs like we had seen in Brugges, but my hands were too full for anything else.
We decided that I would run the groceries back to the apartment and they would scope out lunch places (because, surprise! I was hungry again) and we'd meet up again at Placa de Catalunya. It took me about an hour to get home and back again, although I did discover the trick to opening the apartment door. I knew the key was difficult to turn, but had never opened the door before, after at least 5 minutes of trying to turn the key I was ready to give up and walk all the way back, but then as I shook the door in frustration I found that you just have to pull the door toward you while turning the key. Meanwhile, everyone else walked through Las Ramblas, located lunch, an organic veggie place with falafel, salad, bean burritos, and rice stuffed peppers, and the babies fell asleep. We ate our yummy lunch under the the shade of some sycamore trees in the square, and I was pooped on by a pigeon. At least it didn't hit Orrin. I had forgotten it was his birthday until then.
Next we headed to the Old Town to see the Catherdral. Unfortunelty, the outside was covered in scaffolding. Still the inside was an beautiful and ornate as you'd expect. Silas wanted to light candles as he does everytime we visit a church, but at this church you had to buy the candles to light not just deposit a coin (half the fun as far as Silas is concerned) and light one already set out. The churchyard or cloister area was really peaceful and nice with fountains and birds.
After the cathedral we walked to the Palau de Musica, a modernisme building by Lluís Domènech i Montaner around the turn of the century. The facade was filled with columns and sculpture and mosaics, but half was covered by the scourge of sight-seers everywhere, scaffolding. We had seen pictures in guide books of the gorgeous stained glass and mosaics inside the building but admission was by guided tour or concert ticket only, so we decided to buy tickets for the tour the following afternoon. We let Silas and Ian run around in the courtyard outside, they had fun playing hide and seek around a set of doors, while we decided what to do next.
We settled on the Museo Picasso. As we walked there Silas and I spied a pastry shop selling apple empanadas, so we had to stop for a sweet bite. I don't actually remember too much from the Picasso museum except that Silas and Ian were being total pills through the entire thing, and while the rest of us waited outside the museum Orrin took his sweet time through the exhibits with the bag check ticket so we were without access to diapers or crackers. There was one really interesting room that I raced through chasing Silas where Picasso had done many studies of this painting. It was, or would have been, really interesting to see how Picasso shifted the perspective and enhanced certain elements of the composition, while ignoring others. I also didn't realize that Picasso made ceramics, but there were some that were really beautiful.
After the museum we all headed home, exhausted. Sonja and Orrin cleaned the shrimp, I pried the scallops out of their shells and cut away the disgusting bits, and managed to get a decent seafood alfredo on the table for dinner.

3. We were committed to a 2pm tour of the Music Palace, so we decided to have a relaxing morning at the beach. We coated ourselves in sunscreen, and walked the two blocks to the Barceloneta beach. I inquired about the stacks of beach chairs and was told they were "free, but a man may come up with tickets, but I don't see a man." So we grabbed two and hoped for the best. It was nice to have a couple seats out of the sand as it was rather coarse and pebbly, but it gave me a good excuse for the dimples in my cellulite covered thighs. The water was pretty cold and there were only a few people swimming. We waded a little bit but neither Silas or Ian were too interested in the water. Instead they wanted to dig and bury the toy duck and truck we found in the sand, and point out the backhoe and trucks that were hauling rocks from further down the shore. I was a little concerned that Silas might walk over to the topless women sunbathers, pat their chests, and say "baby milk" but we were safe from that embarrassment. Meanwhile Korean women kept wandering by asking us if we would like a massage. After a couple hours in the sun we were getting packed up to head home, when who should happen along but the man asking for chair tickets. I probably should have said we didn't want them and just walked away, but since it was another language and I'm a big chicken, I paid him the 5 euro per chair before we left. En route to the apartment I stopped off at a pharmacy to buy more sunscreen, even our massive bottle was running low after three days of coating white bodies, and diapers.
While everyone else changed babies and showered themselves clean of sand, I chopped lettuce and marinated fish fora lunch of spicy tuna salad.
Next we headed to the Barceloneta metro stop and Orrin negotiated the ticket machine to buy a T10- a pass good for ten rides on the metro- it's much much cheaper than individual tickets. The metro was fairly easy to navigate even with two strollers in tow. Both Silas and Ian loved the waiting for and riding the trains.
The Palau de Musica was really gorgeous inside. The architect wanted to make the transition from outdoors to indoors as seamless as possible, and it really showed, even down to the entry lamps that mimic the lamps on the street. The stained glass in the theatre itself was breathtaking. The walls were filled with glass panels of flowers and there was a huge inverted multicolored dome, ringed with women's faces, dripping down in the center of the theatre. The tour guide told us it was the first theatre to have natural light in the performance area. He also told us that all the leaded glass made the acoustics in the hall fantastic. This was counter to everything I had read that the acoustics were generally known to be terrible in the hall. He did play the organ by computer control, and the sound was impressive, but, not being an expert in acoustics I can't say if it's just that the volume was set on 11 or all that I had read was wrong. Amazing, the whole place was built in 2 years and 10 months. According to the tour guide it was one of the first building to use steel construction, so they were able to put up the steel frame while the sculpture, glass, mosaic, surface was crafted elsewhere and added. One of the most interesting points on the tour was when he talked about how incredible it was that Franco had not done more damage to the place. Instead the only remaining legacy of that time is wooden paneling along the railing of the balcony, because it was improper to see women's legs. The Palace is now a World Heritage site, and though they have requested permission to remove the paneling, UNESCO says the paneling is as much a part of the history of the building as anything else and should stay. Sadly, no pictures were allowed, so you'll have to check out the link, or take a trip to Barcelona to see inside.
We took the scenic route back to the apartment past the Arc de Triomphe (Barcelona has one too, who knew?) and back through the Parc de la Ciutadella where we bought ice cream cones, climbed the fountain steps, marveled at another Lluís Domènech i Montaner building the Museo de Zooligico, climbed on metal lizards, and chased the kids around in the playground. We walked thorough the Olympic Park area, which housed the athletes in 1992. Other than Gehry's Fish there wasn't much of interest in the area.But the stroll along the beach back to the apartment was nice. We had planned on going out for tapas that night but found that food, even tapas, was not to be had in most place between the hours of 4 and 8 pm. Eventually, at around 6:30, we found a nice, but relaxed, place with outdoor tables, on the harbor called Cal Pinxo. Pinxo is Catalan for skewer, so just like the Minnesota State Fair, we had tapas on a stick. The waitress was English and told us about how she had come to Spain an Barcelona and mixed up some delicious sangria with wild strawberries, blueberries, and cava. Silas and Ian were mostly well behaved. They devoured the whole deep fried baby squids, and the breaded cod that had been dyed black with squid ink (making me dread the diapers that would follow). Towards the end of dinner they got a little punchy and Silas started using the tablecloth as a bib, a napkin, and finally playing hide and seek. The waitress must not have noticed this because they both received Chupa Chupps for good behavior while the rest of us ate ice cream cones on the walk back.

4. We needed to replenish the pantry and fridge but found that there was a market in our neighborhood, much less busy and colorful than the other, but much closer. Sonja and I bought some nice rolls for our planned picnic in the park, and some pastries to munch on in until then. We found a nice fruit and vegetable stall and stocked up on fruit for babies and veggies for sandwiches. We selected some perch for dinner based on the criteria that it was the only thing we recognized that was already filleted because we didn't feel up to cooking a whole fish or trying to figure out how to ask the monger to do it for us. Finally we located some cheddar cheese, important because one of the cheese criterion for the under two set is that it must be yellow. So the nice man carefully sliced and packaged a pound of cheddar cheese, some salami, provolone, and Parmesan cheese. He was painfully slow, but he threw in a yogurt cake for us which we didn't discover until we arrived back home.
We packed up our backpacks with picnic food and diapers and headed to the subway to the Parc Guell, a municipal park designed by Antoni Gaudi. I'll let you read about it on the link, because this post is getting long enough. Silas and Ian enjoyed running around, although while my lap was covered with sandwich fixings Silas tumbled over a rock border and gave himself a bloody nose and scraped his upper lip. The park was packed with people on the sunny Thursday, but the beautiful architecture, mosaics, benches, and sculpture were complemented by the musician playing sitars, accordions, and guitars. We "lost" Ben and Sonja as they perused the gift shop and we wondered around the rest of the park looking for them. Eventually we found them, bought a couple of fruit slushies, got our picture taken with a woman dressed as a a lizard, and headed to the metro station.
It was still early enough in the day, that we decided to walk back down to the Rambla del Mar, a pedestrian area out over the harbor towards a huge new shopping center and the Barcelona aquarium. We had hoped to go to the aquarium as it is the largest in Europe and we thought Silas and Ian would like to watch the sea creatures, but at 15 euros a person we decided to enjoy the sunshine instead. We found a carousel in the nearby park and bought a couple tickets. I think it's the first time Silas has been on one. He seemed to enjoy it, or at least he enjoyed making horse sounds and waving at me every time he and Orrin came around.
We ambled back home, had a simple meal of breaded perch, potatoes and onions, and green beans. The babies were put to bed by their fathers, I snuggled down with my book, Poor Miss Finch. The others decided that they had enough energy to go out for a walk along the beach and I was grateful that someone had to stay home with the babies. They had a nice evening and tried some red wine sangria, found a crepe restaurant on the beach, (that we never did end up trying), and enjoyed a baby free evening out. For my part, I read until I could not keep my eyes open any longer and crawled into a bed covered with sandy sunscreen scented sheets.

5. We made it all the way to the fifth day before we hit Barcelona's modernisme architecture hard. This was our big day to walk all around La Eixample, the extension of the city that occurred around the turn of the century. We started our tour at the Hospital de Sant Pau. We were wandering rather aimlessly about from the metro when we thought we had found it, but it turned out he had found a very beautiful College of Anatomy. We ended up touring the hospital grounds from the back entrance, so we saw a lot of the more modern utilitarian buildings, before finding the more showy front entrance and original buildings. The architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, believed that a hospital should be a beautiful area so that the spirit and the body could be healed simultaneously. I know there is no place I'd rather eat my therapeutic scotch-a-roos than that hospital.
From the hospital we walked down a wide pedestrian street and had a quick snack, Orrin had a hot dog pizza (not as bad as it sounds), I had a spinach quiche, Sonja had a mushroom pizza, and Ben had a chorizo pizza, of which Ian ate half. We all shared a raspberry tart with a shiny glaze that looked much better than it tasted.
Next stop was La Sagrada Familia Catherdral. If I marveled that the music place took less than three years to build, marvel that this temple was started in 1882 and they are still working on it!! It's the first tourist attraction I've gone to that was an active construction site; covered, and filled, with scaffolding not for cleaning, preservation, or renovations, but for construction. Still only half completed, the temple is absolutely breathtaking. The main architect was Antoni Gaudi, and the current architects are attempting to use his plans and sketches to continue the work. Inside are the most amazing columns which branch out like trees, and the ceiling is patterned like leaves. You feel as if you were walking under a dense forest canopy. It's really brilliant. It's one of the few churches I've ever been in where you felt like celebrating, the stained glass was vibrant, the stones bright, the place filled with energy. I guess because it is still a work in progress, still new, still alive, not some stodgey old ancient cathedral filled with tombs of bishops and kings. They had a really interesteing display which talked about the microstructure of different types of stone and how the microstructure affected the properties and therefore both the structureal and decorative uses of the stone throughout the temple. They also had an amazing exhibit of photographs taken by the various workers of the church, from viewpoints a tourist would never get to see, such as a welder amid the spires of the towers with sparks flying at the end of his torch at dawn.
Afterwards, we strolled through more of the area and saw countless gorgeous buildings. I wish I had kept better track of them. We saw the Apple or Block of Discord, three extraordinary houses by Montaner, Gaudí and Puig i Cadafalch on the Passeig de Grácia. The Gaudi building is the most unbelivable with multicolored tiles on the façade , prehistoric jaw-like balconies and a reptilian tile roof that is said to represent St. George's dragon.
Although it is not as famous as Gaudi's buildings, my favorite was done by an architect who was a student of Gaudi, Salvador Valeri i Pupurull, Casa Comalat. It was curvy and fanciful and brightly colored with mosaics and stained glass covering the back facade. I can't believe how badly all the pictures show the colors. It was so gorgeous in person.
The last place we saw was Casa Milá, also known as La Pedrera (the stone quarry). It's white stone surface undulates like ocean waves, as if the stone were clay and is punctuated by balconies of wrought iron draped like ribbons. apartment block on the corner of Passeig de Gràcia. On the roof you can see chimneys that are shaped almost exactly like the helmets of the storm troopers in Star Wars.
We managed to make it back to the apartment on our weary legs and stirred up some veggie risotto and bread which took forever to cook so we didn't end up eating until nearly 9 o'clock. I guess we were getting into this late night dining of the Spaniards.
Orrin had procured some cards from their walk the previous night, so we played a round of hearts, in which I played miserably (oh yeah the queen of spades is bad...) but miraculously was not in last place when we quit.

6. On our last full day in Barcelona we decided we'd take a little trip out of the city. The night before we had decided we would go north through Girona to Figueres, the birthplace of Dali and home of a couple museums. The night before I had tried unsuccessfully to call the train station to figure out when the train left and returned and how much the trip would cost. Unfortunetly the place that had the English speaker had no information about train schedules and the place that had information about train schedules had no English speakers, and without the help of my extremely effective charades, my Spanish was incomprehensible to the Catalan speaker on the phone. I gave up and we chanced it in the morning. Sadly, we discovered at 9:45 that the train from the station near us to Figueres left at 8:45. But Ben found a train schedule that listed a train every hour from the main station, with every other being an express train. We walked up Las Ramblas for a final time, and bought some more delicious pastries (why don't I ever think to take pictures like that?) at a place called Escriba. We initially stopped to look at the beautiful art nouvou mosiac facade but it didn't take me long to quickly shift my attention to the chocoalte behind the facade. Did you see the ultra glamourous Ring Pops on their website? Orrin selected a loaf covered in sugar and pine nuts that was filled with a custard, that although it was 8 euros (it was pretty big, enough for four) it was worth every penny.
Sorry moving on...
We finally arrived at the train station ans Ben and Sonja waited in line for tickets, Sonja at the main teller, Ben at the automated teller. Ben got to the machine first so Sonja got out of line before they found out that the machine didnt' sell tickets to Figueres. So back to end of line they went. They finally got our four tickets and we ran to the platform. For some reason the platform wasn't listed on the monitors and we guessed that the announcement that said something about Figueres and something about platform "tre" something or other meant platform 13. We guessed correctly and managed to cram onto the train and find four seats together. The train trip was pretty uneventful, both Silas and Ian fell asleep in their mothers arms. I ate what was probably a mediocre sandwich of salmon and olives on a baguette, but for some reason it tasted like the most delicious thing I'd eaten in ages. I guess I was craving salt, because those ridiculous little olives will forever stick in my memory as the best! olives! ever!
We arrived in Figueres around 2 pm and walked through town to the Teatro Dali, an old theatre Dali bought and converted into a museum of is things. Although the museum was lacking much information about Dali, it was really interesting to see that the entire building was designed by the artist. I'm not really a fan of Dali's works, but both Ben and Orrin really like it. There were definetly some pieces, especially the early work where it is a bit more impressionist that I enjoyed. There were some amusing pieces, like the car that is rigged so it rains inside and the room that is supposed to look like his wifes face with a lip sofa, and some that showed his genius where he was painting reflections of reflections, and from varying perspectives. There was also some beautiful furniture which was impressive. But, for example, the paintings that you view simultaneously with a mirror down the center, I just don't get.
As I was waiting for the others to finish in the museum I stopped by a cafe and asked for a small cold milk becuase Silas had been whining for milk for the last, oh say, 2 years. The nice man gives me a smal glass for free. Unfortunetly, frio means warm out of the coffee machine and just not steamed an extra amount, not that it is actually cold or even room temperature. So Silas woouldn't drink it. Not even with a straw. So I waited there, Silas writhing to get down, until the man isn't looking as gulp it down myself. I hated appearing either ungrateful for getting free milk and then Silas not drinking it, or like some kind of con artist getting free milk for a baby and drinking it myself. Ah well.
The other museum was dedicated to Dali's jewels. I didn't know that Dali designed jewelry, did you? Silas was getting a bit unruly at this point, so I wasn't able to look to closely at anything. But there was an amazing brooch, (click on the link, it's the picture on the right called the royal heart) where the red jeweled heart inside the golden heart actually moves as though it were pumping blood. Very cool and innovative, I think.
Afterwards, some "mo cream" and pizza for the babies and, ok, maybe for the parents too. We stopped at the lovely little church nearby and a gift shop called Dalicatessen where Orrin bought a cool t-shirt of a bike with a Dali-esque mustache for handlebars.
Back to the train station where we had our pick of seats. I finished my book while the daddies entertaied the babies with cars and looking out the window. Then we sang countless verses of Wheels on the Bus. For instance did you know that there were dentists on this bus that go "brush brush brush?"
By the time we made it back to the apartment we were exhausted and it was too late to stop at the market, and the babies were too crabby to take out to dinner. We asked about take away pizza with no luck. Orrin and Ben took Silas and Ian home and Sonja and I went to the corner grocer to get some milk for the morning, popcorn for a late snack that night, and digestives for the trip home. We passed a chinese place which did have take away available and got some tempura, shrimp, and orange and lemon chicken. We tried to clean out the rest of the pantry and fridge along with our dinner, but there was still quite a bit left. We visited for a little while and talked to Ben and Sonja about their plans for the following day and packed as much as we could and went to bed early in preperation for our early departure the next morning.

You can look at these pictures bigger and more pictures here. And if you are really a glutton for punishment, I think you can view the pictures of our traveling companions here.