Barca!: Barcelona with the Meeks! March 26-29

We got back to Barcelona that Monday (March 26^th) just in time for me to make it to class while my parents and Clara went and returned the car and checked into our hotel there. After class I met them once again in Plaza Catalunya and we walked over to the hotel so I could drop of my stuff. We stayed in the Hotel Pulitzer, which was about half a block away from Plaza Catalunya and very conveniently located right in the middle of the city. We walked toward the cathedral and found a little café to have lunch outside. After lunch, we wandered around a little bit, I showed them parts of the medieval quarter of town, Plaza Reial and Las Ramblas. I had to get back to class for a bit that evening so I told them to walk down to Port Vell and then along the water and we agreed to meet up again at the hotel after I had class.

When I got back to the hotel after class, my parents and Clara were completely exhausted and filled me in on their evening. Turns out, they had walked down the entire beach, through Ciutadella Park and then back to the hotel. It was way more than I thought they’d walk and I could see why they were so wiped! We hung out on the rooftop terrace at our hotel for a bit after that, and then had our usual dinner on the balcony of the room Clara and I shared. If you’re still reading, I’m sure you’ve noticed our dinner trend, we just loved trying the different wines, meats and cheeses and usually had such a huge lunch and did so much walking that all we wanted to do was have a mellow dinner! After eating and hanging out for a little bit, we walked down the street to Scobies Irish Pub where we had a couple pints of Guinness and watched the end of a Manchester United match.

On Tuesday, my parents and Clara came with me for a tour of the medieval Jewish quarter that my History of the Mediterranean class took. It was an interesting tour and went thorough a part of the city where I hadn’t spent much time before. The tour only took about an hour, and after wards I took my parents and Clara on another tour of the entire medieval quarter of the city that I had taken on another one of my classes. We walked through the cathedral, Plaza San Felipe, the Temple of Augustus and a few other places. Wandering around with them was a ton of fun, I loved being able to play tour guide and show them around some of my favorite parts of the city. We stopped for a coffee in Plaza del Pi and then decided to head over to the Sagrada Familia.

Seeing the inside of the Sagrada Familia for the second time was just as incredible as the first time I had been inside. We spend awhile inside the cathedral taking pictures and we took the elevator to the top and walked down the steps in one of the towers. We also went into a museum in the basement where many of Gaudi’s original models and his crypt were. I hadn’t been in that museum the first time I was in the cathedral so it was fun to see all of that. It was also really interesting to see Barcelona’s gothic cathedral and then the very non-traditional Sagrada Familia on the same day. We left the cathedral, grabbed some kebabs for lunch and then headed up to Park Guell.

Park Guell is one of my favorite places in Barcelona and I loved being there with my parents and Clara and showing them the views of the city and all of the Gaudi designs that are there. We walked through the park for a while and took lots of pictures. I’ve been to Park Guell quite a few times now but still manage to notice something new each time I go. That time, we found the house Gaudi lived in while designing the park and saw some of his wrought iron work that was displayed outside. I’ve got to apologize again, most of the pictures from us being in Barcelona are on my parent’s camera so I couldn’t post them here, but I’ll post what I’ve got! Anyways, we then left Park Guell, grabbed some beers from a café, and drank them on a very awkwardly slanted bench on the hill leading down from the park, and then head back to the hotel.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! At Parc Guell

We hung out and read on the rooftop terrace before heading out to dinner. For dinner that night, I wanted to take my parents and Clara to Can Paixano, my favorite champagne and sandwiches restaurant. It turns out the restaurant doesn’t sell champagne by the bottle for dinner so we decided we’d go back for lunch and then headed out to find a place for dinner. We walked around down by Port Vell until we found a little restaurant on the water that looked allright. The restaurant wasn’t great and we all realized this around the same time after we ordered but we still had a good time eating down by the water. We had some questionable paella for dinner there and afterwards set off to walk back along the port and up Las Ramblas toward the hotel. It was a great after dinner walk and it was fun to see my parents and Clara take in how busy the city still was even around midnight on a Tuesday, definitely very different from most American cities!

I had class again that Wednesday morning, so my parents and I got up early and had a croissant and some coffee at Café Zurich before I had to leave for class. While I was in class, they spent some of the morning at the café, and then wandered around in the area near the University of Barcelona, which was right up the street from our hotel. We met up at the hotel after I had class and then set off for Montjuic. We walk through Plaza Espanya and up to the MNAC built up on the mountain. We spent some time sitting on the steps in front of the MNAC museum listening to a Spanish guitar player and then walk further up the mountain to the Olympic stadiums. We walked around the Olympic plaza for a little while and had some sandwiches for lunch inside the main Olympic stadium. It was pretty cool to be having our lunch in the main Olympic stadium!

After lunch we kept walking up the mountain to the Joan Miro museum. Miro was one of Catalonia’s most renowned modern artists and the museum was definitely interesting. I didn’t love a lot of the art (I guess modern art is just over my head) but the actual building was beautiful and the views it offered looking out over the city were spectacular. We walked around the museum for a little while and then decided to head over to take a gondola ride up to the castle on top of the mountain. Montjuic castle is another one of my favorite places in Barcelona and we spent a couple hours up there looking out over the city and the Mediterranean. We also spent a long time (this was actually mostly my dad) looking at the port and watching the freight ships being unloaded and watching the trucks and trains being loaded with freight to be shipped elsewhere. It was actually really cool to see! Then we took the gondola back down and took the metro back to our hotel.

That night, we had dinner at an amazing fondue restaurant that my parents and Clara had found earlier that morning. I couldn’t believe that one of my favorite meals I’ve had so far this semester was fondue, but it was amazing! We had a great time sitting at this little restaurant and were very happy that our dinner was so much better than the night before! Clara had decided earlier that day that she wanted to go out that night, so after dinner we headed up into the neighborhood where I live to go to a couple nearby bars and a club. We met up with my roommate Mike, his sister, my friend Mari and her sister, my other roommate Travis and my friend Carl. We had a blast going to a couple different bars and then Clara and I headed to the club on our own. I don’t think the club was quite what she expected, it was really crowded and hot, but we had a great time dancing for a little bit before heading home. I really loved being able to show Clara some of the Barcelona nightlife and it was something totally different than what she had experienced at home.

That Thursday was the beginning of my spring break so I didn’t have any class. The night before, we decided we’d take it pretty easy on Thursday, so Clara and I were able to sleep in a little bit before heading out for the day. Although we had decided to take it easy, that Thursday ended up being one of the craziest I’ve had this semester. A general strike across all of Spain was planned for that day and as we left the door we were immediately met with protests and demonstrations. Almost everything was closed, people were marching and chanting in the streets and the city felt pretty chaotic. We had to walk around for a long time before finally finding a café that was open. We had some coffee and croissants in the café’s outdoor seating and stayed until a protest formed in front of one of the buildings right across from where we were sitting. It was unbelievable to see this protest suddenly form. People were chanting, yelling through megaphones, setting off fireworks and waving the flags of the unions that represented them. We recognized that the protest was forming and got out of there pretty fast because we weren’t sure if things were going to get violent. We decided that it would be best to head back down into the medieval neighborhood and the Born neighborhood where there wasn’t as much protest occurring.

Before leaving Chicago, my mom printed Frommer’s walking tours through Barcelona so we spent that afternoon following those tours through the medieval and Born neighborhoods. After touring the medieval district, we stopped for lunch at Cam Paixano. I had been looking forward to taking my parents there and loved seeing their reactions to the little hole in the wall restaurant. We had a great lunch and then headed into the Born neighborhood. Born is the neighborhood right next to the medieval district in Barcelona and is my favorite neighborhood in the city because of its old building, narrow streets and small plazas. We wandered around there for a while, and then stopped at a Farggi for some churros and chocolate. After eating, we headed back to the hotel. Once at the hotel, I had to go back to my home stay to pack some clothes for the weekend, so my mom and I hopped on the metro to go do that. It was so much fun showing my mom my neighborhood and home stay. She also got to meet Eulalia and her son Luis. She really loved getting to meet Eulalia and Eulalia was very happy to meet her too.

Lunch at Cam Paixano

When my mom and I got back to the hotel, the protest was getting huge. We had a view of Plaza Catalunya from the balcony in my parent’s room and immediately went out there to watch protesters gather in Plaza Catalunya. I had never seen protesting like that before and was amazed at the number of people gathered in the plaza and all of the noise they were making. After a while, the riot police around the plaza decided the protest had to end and began trying to get people to leave. This was met with some resistance from the protesters and then things really got crazy. The police began fighting the crowds out of the plaza using their batons and rubber balls fired from guns. The entire crowd took off running from the plaza and many of them ended up running down our street, right below our second floor balcony. We watched at the riot police formed a line and fired rubber balls into the crowd to keep them away from the plaza. In response, the crowd yelled and set trash on fire in the street. The police held their ground and eventually were able to get the protesters to back further down our street and around the corner. Watching all of this occur from our balcony was one an unbelievable experience and definitely not anything I thought I’d ever witness while in Spain. While watching the protests, we decided that leaving our building that night was a terrible idea so we had our usual bread, meat, cheese, and fruit and chocolate dinner on the rooftop terrace. We could still hear the protests occurring all around the city and could see the smoke from the fires protesters set in the streets. It was a very unusual way to spend our last night in Barcelona before heading to Madrid.