Barcelona!

6/27

Last night it took me forever to fall asleep…I was just too excited to get to Barcelona today.

This morning I went snorkeling at the Medes Islands as an FDP for my marine biology class. Well, I say it’s for my class, and it is, but really it’s for me because why would I turn down snorkeling in the Mediterranean? We boarded a bus at 10am and rode through 2 hours of Spanish (or should I say, Catalunyan) countryside to arrive at the adorable beach town, l’Esteriat. We listened to a presentation by Alex, a representative of the marine ecotourism company we booked through, on the marine protected area around the Medes Islands (and up the coast). Then, we had lunch on the steps of the l’Esteriat Yacht Club (I should have brought some DWYC burgees with me…) overlooking one of the most beautiful harbors I have been too. It was small, probably not more than 150-200 boats, and many were gorgeous old-fashioned wooden sailboats, and there were a few more modern ones with blue hulls that anyone (ahem, Mom) would die for. This place makes me want to sail around the Mediterranean for my retirement plan (now I just have to figure out how to make it there). It reminded me of the pictures I’ve seen of harbors in the south of France, which makes sense because l’Esteriat is about 100 miles north of Barcelona along the coast, and only about 10 miles south of the French border. 

After lunch we made our way to the shop. It was open in the front and full of wetsuits, t-shirts, sunscreen (and a lot more tanning oil or low SPF sunscreen than I’m used to seeing in the US, don’t worry I stuck with my SPF 30 and 70) and the perpetual smell of sea-water coated neoprene. The staff, who both fitted all 29 of us with wetsuits, fins, masks and snorkels and became our guides while snorkeling on the islands, were tanned, friendly, laid-back and completely at ease on and in the ocean. This did not come as much of a surprise, and cemented in my mind the image and atmosphere I have for a dive shop. I am sad I couldn’t dive…they have 50-60,000 divers a year! It wouldn’t have worked logistically…but I’ll try my best to go scuba diving in Croatia (I’ve found a group of people on the ship who are also dive certified and motivated to find a good spot and shop).

We loaded up our gear, tramped the five-minute walk from the shop to the dock and waited about ten minutes for the captain, who had disappeared, but our guides didn’t seem flustered by this…Spanish + beach town + dive instructor/dive boat captain does not equal punctuality. Once he arrived, we all hopped aboard (literally, the docks are the kinds without fingers along the hulls so we took the somewhat precarious step from the dock onto the bow) and found our seats. The boat was just big enough for us, our captain and our four snorkel guides, but did not seem crowded. We put on our 5mm full-length (and in my case, slightly damp) wetsuits on the way to the islands, which was a short trip because they are probably a mile or two off the coast. Many of the people on this trip had not only never been snorkeling before, but had never put on a wetsuit before. That, combined with our guides’ tendency to err on the small side in their wetsuit sizing, made for a very entertaining trip. I was glad for my experience struggling in and out of 7mm wetsuits in Catalina, and it took some teamwork to get everyone zipped and velcroed. Once we arrived, we tied to a buoy (they don’t allow anchoring near the islands as part of the protection of the marine environment, including beautiful red corals and giant mussels (like, 1 meter long…I wish I could have seen those). I was the first one in the water after the first two guides, probably because I was waiting at the edge with my mask and fins on like an excited puppy. It was my first time in the Mediterranean, and it was fantastic.

I saw at least 8 different types of fish. One was about a foot long and football shaped with a flatter back end. It was a tricky iridescent shade that was either brilliant green, pale blue, or dark yellow depending on the lighting, a black spot where the tail met the body, a black half-moon shape around its gills and a black stripe on the back of its tail (like it had been dipped in paint). They also had pretty large, but translucent, pectoral fins. They didn’t normally use them to swim, but I saw one pop them both out and wiggle them to swim backwards. There were lots of these fish, and a good number of juveniles (which looked similar, just a lot smaller and very cute…although not as cute as the juvenile garibaldi, which may be my favorite fish we see underwater). I also saw a few fish that were maybe five inches long, black on the top and light silver on the bottom with a white stripe along both sides. They were long and narrow, almost like fat, short eels, and tended to stay close to the bottom. I saw two of what looking like very small kelp bass (although I know that’s not what they were because there is no kelp in the Medes Islands and they were sitting on the bottom in the sand…but the body shape and striped pattern of different shades of yellow and browns was similar). I also saw several of some fish that had a cat-fish like mouth (but no catfish “whiskers” and was about the size and shape of a catfish, but was blueish silver on top with a beautiful iridescent silver stripe down either side. I also saw a few different types of small schooling fish (from tiny silver ones about a centimeter long to plain black ones a couple of inches long). I also saw groups of about foot-long but narrow pale silver fish with horizontal yellow stripes across their bodies, and several of a smallish (about 6-8 inch) silvery-blue fish with two vertical black bars: one around the gills and one just before the tail.

One of my favorite parts of the dive was going into the cave. For those of you who don’t know, I love caves, especially underwater or semi-underwater ones, and have a history of exploring them (beginning when I was six years old and my Mom and Dad were nice enough to dinghy me all around the coast of Two Harbors, Catalina to find the perfect cave). At the opening of the cave, there was a Spanish Dancer. I found this name much too attractive for the actual creature, a huge (the size of two to three fists) black sea slug with red stripes down its side. But, it was just sucked up to a rock, and apparently when they swim, they do so by moving the sides of their bodies in wave-like motions that makes them look like they’re dancing. And red and black are such perfect flamenco colors. The cave had a broad opening, about ten feet across and five feet high with another five feet below the water. Once inside, it was still pretty light, but the cave tapered quickly to leave a small space of air our group had to go in through single file. Once inside there (the real cave in my mind) it was completely dark except for the brilliant turquoise light coming through the entryway. Our guide had a flashlight, and turned it on to illuminate the cave, which was the size of two or three rooms in an average house…pretty massive considering that tiny opening. There weren’t many fish in the cave, but there were sea tomatoes: cave-dwelling organisms that looked like bright red spheres stuck to the walls along the water line that ranges in size from the head of a pin to a ping-pong ball. Other people I talked to saw octopus (at least two people, one of them a guide, saw an octopus…I’m so jealous) and sea stars as well, but I must have missed them. 

Even in this brief exposure to Catalunya, I’ve already been immensely confused by the difference between Castilian Spanish and Catalan. I can’t understand more than a few words of someone speaking Catalan, and even some street signs are very different than their Castilian counterparts. Some words were similar, like “supermercat” instead of “supermercado”, some are the same, but others are not even close, like “si sus plau” instead of “por favor” or “forn” instead of “panaderia”. Of course, in Barcelona most things will be in Castilian Spanish and Catalan (hopefully…), but in l’Esteriat many signs, billboards, advertisements, ect. were in only Catalan.

Along these lines, I’ve also already learned that Catalunya is very different (or thinks they are at least) than the rest of Spain. I’ve seen several places flying only the Catalan flag and not both that and the Spanish flag. On our way to l’Esteriat, about an hour out of Barcelona and while we were traveling through countryside, there was a giant graffiti on a roadside building that said Catalunya and “Spain” with an X through it. A member of the US consulate in Barcelona came this morning before we disembarked to give us a diplomatic briefing, and it turns out that the party in charge of the Barcelona government at the moment is pro-independence and trying to get more autonomy from Madrid. I also learned that if your passport is stolen (and many are…they replace thousands of US passports each year), they are so practiced in replacing them that you can get an emergency passport in about an hour and a half. This piece of news was received with impressed “whoas” and applause from the SAS audience.  

I was planning on taking a nap before going out tonight…but it’s already nine and I still have to take a shower and get ready, so it looks like that’s not going to happen. Hopefully excitement will get me through four days in Barcelona on minimal sleep and then I can sleep all day Friday while we head to Italy.



6/28

I got back to the ship this morning at 6:30am. First night out in Barcelona=success. The crazy thing about this is that it’s a normal Barcelona nightlife schedule. Some friends met in my room on the ship at 10:30, caught a taxi around 11 to head to the boardwalk distract (along the beach and marina) that’s full of tapas bars and clubs (discotecas). We had tapas and sangria (including the most delicious octopus I’ve ever had) and hit our first club around 12:30 (a little early…many discotecas don’t open until 1am). It closed around 3am, and some of our group went home but I stayed out and went to another club down the street that was open until 6am. This long night also gave me ample opportunity to practice speaking Spanish, and I am happy to report that I’m shaking off the dust without sneezing too much so far. Luckily, we found ways out of the cover charge in both places, so we had plenty left over for taxi fare at the end of the night.

As a result, this morning was both the first morning of the trip I saw the sunrise (over the Barcelona harbor, very pretty) and had breakfast on the ship (which was underwhelming…I should have bought a croissant in Barcelona instead). 7:30am to 9:30 was pretty rough…I was exhausted but couldn’t really sleep. But after that I hit my second wind (which I amazingly am still riding now at 5:15pm..although it is siesta time so I better get hit with a wave of exhaustion soon) and felt much more awake, especially when I was out in the sun (zietgeber? Yeah I’m mentioning it again…today has made me think about that circadian rhythms lecture a lot). 

I was signed up for a tour of the Picasso Museum, Gothic Quarter (including the Barcelona Cathedral) and La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s massive, unfinished church. So, at 9:15 I and about 40 other SAS students, including two of the friends I went out with last night, boarded the bus. On the way to the Picasso Museum, which is in the Gothic Quarter, the tour guide talked about the architecture we passed by. So far, the architecture is one of my favorite things about Barcelona. Sure, Barcelona has a stunning collection of the early medieval Romanesque, late medieval/Renaissance Gothic, Baroque,  and Neoclassical architecture you expect to be the hallmark of any grand European city, but it also has such fantastic modern architecture. Gaudi is by no means the only contributor to this new tradition, and Barcelona has become a magnet for innovative architects, including designer of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Frank Gehry. So I’d learned that stuff in the Global Studies class and cultural pre-port meeting, but I thought it would be incohesive, or at least very sectioned—each style having its own little area without much blending. But it’s not. There are modern art sculptures in the middle of the Gothic Quarter, outlandish Gaudi buildings sit nestled between Neoclassical stonework and sleek, all-window modern buildings, and the Christopher Columbus stature is accompanied by a large, abstract, colorful statue and tribute to Picasso to welcome you into the city. And somehow, it all works together.

The Picasso Museum was great; they had the galleries organized by year, so when I walked through I could really see a progression of his work, which was interesting. I loved seeing his sketches, and he did some really beautiful oil works earlier on in his career that, despite being completely different from his famous abstract style, show just how talented he was. Most of his most famous works are not in this museum, which I didn’t mind too much because it means I got to see a mostly new things. Also, there was a whole room (a small room, but its own nonetheless) dedicated to Picasso’s ceramic work. I had no idea Picasso made ceramics. I was talking with a friend about how many museums all over the world contain Picasso’s artwork, and we realized what a prolific artist he was to be able to fill so many exhibits.

After the museum, we went to the Barcelona Cathedral. I brought a cardigan to wear to cover my shoulders, but my dress ended a couple inches above my knee, so I had to buy a shawl and tie it as a skirt to be knee-length. They have monitors at all entrances enforcing these rules, which makes sense considering that it is a functioning cathedral. It was large and beautiful and Gothic and full of stained glass windows and a very cool organ, but the most unique part of the cathedral was found in its courtyard. In a large fountain, and surrounded by foliage and then an ornate fence, are geese. Not just one or two, but like ten geese. Back in the day, the room right next to the geese was where they stored the treasure, so they put the geese, which honk noisily whenever someone is there (which is all the time now that the cathedral is a tourist attraction). Alarm geese…I’m glad they don’t wake me up every morning.

Next we bussed to La Sagrada Familia. It is so different than other churches; I think Gaudi was brilliant to design a religious monument in modern style. It’s still not finished today:  118 years after construction began. This is mainly because Gaudi’s death and imprecise plans lead to a great deal of bickering about what should and shouldn’t appear on the church. Also, funding is obviously a problem (now construction is funded by the entry fee to see the inside of the church and private donations) and different circumstances have lead to more of less emphasis on finishing La Sagrada Familia. I could try to describe it, but I really don’t think words will do it justice. I have a bunch of pictures of La Sagrada and the rest of the Gothic Quarter and Barcelona (and l’Esteriat and las Islas Medes for that matter), and will upload some on Facebook (hopefully) this Thursday. May the internet gods smile upon me in my quest…

On our bus ride back from La Sagrada Familia, we had to change our route due to protestors taking over the street on which we were driving. Due to the economic crisis in Spain, the Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona is full of tents where “los indignados”, the indignant ones, have been camping out in protest of the way the situation is being handled and a number of other issues. Our guide on the bus, who was telling us all about the history of the architecture we were passing by at the time, was extremely irritated by the demonstrators, but every person in the bus (including me) flocked to the window to take a picture where “an exemplary Gothic flying buttress” had only made a few tired hands lift their cameras from their laps.

A friend and I went back and walked around the Gothic Quarter (it has a bunch of cute shops and cafes) and had lunch (super simple and delicious sandwich of different types of salami on a baguette…perfection) after seeing La Sagrada. We walked back along the harbor to get to the bus station to take us back to the ship, which was quite pleasant (especially with my Fanta naranja, which tastes much better than orange Fanta in the US). I think my friend was a little confused as to why I kept taking pictures of all the boats in the harbor, but they (while not as adorable as l’Esteriat’s) were definitely worth remembering.

I actually am going to take a nap today before going out, and I’m planning on coming back by 3 so I can try to get some sleep at night. Of course, I do have all Friday to sleep while we cruise from Barcelona to Naples since there are no classes that day.

I had a very successful nap this evening. I’m changing my mind about not having a window; it’s now definitely a plus because it allows me to sleep at anytime, no matter how bright it is outside. Of course, when I woke up (if my the alarm I had set for 9pm went off I turned it off and went back to sleep and forgot I did so) at 9:45pm, I was disoriented and thought it was the morning so I stared at the time on my phone for a good two minutes, convinced it was wrong. Of course, when I remembered that I had gone to sleep at 7pm, I jumped out of bed and got in the shower to get ready to go out.



6/29

This morning I didn’t have any SAS-organized trips, so I met up with a friend this morning at 10 and took the bus from the dock to the statue of Christopher Columbus, a good launch point for walking around many parts of the city. We walked along La Rambla, a wide street with a pedestrian-only area in the middle. Tapas bars, street artists, and stands selling touristy stuff line the sides of this pedestrian area, and tall, leafy trees are planted at the edges, making the walk down the street quite pleasant (as long as you don’t get pick-pocketed). We had originally planned to take another bus to Plaza Catalunya to catch a train to Figueres to go to the Dali museum, but it would have taken most of the day to do so, and we really wanted to walk around the city more. So, we cruised down La Rambla, stopping in to whatever stores on the sides of the street (on the other side of the car traffic, where there were actual stores and not just the little stands and tapas bars) caught our interest. I love how most of the apartment buildings have balconies and laundry hanging out to dry; it makes the city feel so alive and the people who live there feel so much closer. But there are still tons of tourists—many from the US but also a lot from France, the UK and other parts of Spain. The residents of Barcelona were pretty easy to spot though, because apart from not looking lost, carrying cameras or clinging fearfully to their purses, they dress in a laid-back but edgy kind of Bohemian fashion. And, of course, they speak Catalan, which I can now pick out of a crowd. Also a decent number of people biked around the city (apart from tourists doing bike tours), which seems a great way to get around. I think I spotted some Barcelona bros yesterday…with their super low-seat bikes and flat-brimmed hats. The public transportation is great though, we took buses today (although the giant map with about twenty different colors for different lines was pretty confusing) and they have a metro which I haven’t yet taken.

Part way down La Rambla, we came across La Boqueria, a huge market filled with tiny stalls selling fresh fruit, freshly baked breads and croissants, legumes, nuts, spices, candies, chocolates (we had a free sample at one of these sweet shops…it was kind of like Barcelona’s take on marzipan and it was amazing) cured meats, seafood, and cheeses. Also, min cafes and tapas bars are sprinkled through the market, so we grabbed a prochuito sandwich on a baguette…literally just those two ingredients and probably one of the most delicious sandwiches I have ever eaten. We’re planning on going back there tomorrow, getting a whatever looks the best and bringing it over to the beach for a picnic.  I took about a million pictures there…so I’ll have to pick out a few highlights for Facebook.

After La Boqueria, we walked turned off La Rambla to head in the general direction of the beach, enjoying the city as we went. We stumbled upon the Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf (I didn’t even know they had one, but there it was) and watched pigeons and what looked like large wild lovebirds bathing in the sprinklers. The wide pedestrian walkway after the Arc lead us to the Parc de la Ciutadella (Catalan, not Castilian Spanish), which was full of fountains and sunbathers. It even had an old-fashioned greenhouse, and at the end of the park was the Barcelona zoo, which we had to walk all the way around to get to the beach. Once we got there, we took our shoes off and walked through the sand (which was burning our feet) to the surf, which was perfect temperature. We walked down the beach for twenty minutes or so, enjoying the people watching (the beach was packed) and wishing we had brought bathing suits (although bottomed would have sufficed as it was a topless beach). Tomorrow we will return much better prepared. We stopped by and had some sorbet, which was perfectly cold and refreshing in the sun, and began walking to find a bus stop that would take us back to the Christopher Columbus statue, where we could catch the bus to the port. This lead us through La Barceloneta, the old fisherman’s quarter which is now filled with seafood restaurants and shops, many aquatic-oriented, a yacht club and a swim club, which was giant so I assume it housed an Olympic sized pool. We found a bus stop, failed at deciphering the map with all the bus routes and opted to ask the driver of the next bus if he was going where we needed to go. Luckily enough, he was.

We were waiting for our bus back to the port (where we were planning on meeting up with another two friends) when those same two friends arrived on a bus coming from the port. Perfect timing. Turns out that neither of them had gone on their SAS-planned trips that morning, so they came into town a little earlier than intended. They hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so we decided to take them to La Boqueria, where they also partook of the delicious prochutto baguette sandwich and fresh fruit smoothies. We saw a group of three other SAS friends, so we hung out with them for awhile before parting ways and heading into the Gothic Quarter. We went to the official store for Barca (their soccer/futbol team), where there were the usual jerseys, banners and t-shirts, but also baby clothes, dog clothes, underwear mugs and sweatbands. After another half an hour or so of walking around, we stopped into a café for a snack. Despite the heat, I decided to get a hot chocolate with my croissant. Best decision of the day so far…it was so good. I don’t like coffee, so I always drink either hot chocolate or tea and I always look for the tastiest hot chocolates. This was way up there. It was thick but not too thick, and not too sweet and I don’t know what they put in it to make it so delicious, but it was the pick-me-up I needed to finish our afternoon of shopping, because I was pretty tired by then. We eventually headed back to the ship, and I’m going to take a short nap before showering and getting ready for dinner and Kaskade at Opium tonight.



6/30

Today is my last day in Barcelona. While I’m sad to say goodbye because I have had an amazing time here, I am really looking forward to recuperating tomorrow. We leave tonight at 8pm (but have to be on the ship by 6pm), will be at sea all day tomorrow and arrive in Naples Saturday morning. Before I came, I thought I would have plenty of free time to relax and read for leisure while we were at sea…but tomorrow I think I will be sleeping in any free time I can get. Tomorrow we also have the “Sea Olympics,” where the 4 decks with students (named different sea, my deck is the Aegean) compete against each other in a series of silly events. I am signed up for the synchronized swimming team…but I’m not sure when the four of us are going to come up with music and a routine by tomorrow since everyone (including me) is beat from their time in Barcelona. I’m sure we’ll be able to pull something together, most likely at the last minute!

Kaskade last night at Opium was awesome. The club, which is huge, was packed, and at least 150 people from SAS were there throughout the night, which made mingling through the crowd fun. Eight of us went out to dinner beforehand at around 10:30, and I had an amazing paella and tasty gazpacho. We hung out on the beach with other friends for a while (Opium is right on the boardwalk along the beach) and went in around 12:30, which was on the early side. It was pretty empty then, but filled up within 45 minutes or so, and Kaskade came on around 2am and played until 6am…the music was awesome. I was worried about not working out much on this trip, but dancing the whole night was definitely the best and most fun workout I could get, so I won’t worry about that anymore. When we left, we watched the sunrise on the beach and made it back to the ship in time for breakfast.

This morning I had a SAS-lead trip to the Chocolate Museum, also in the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona. We met at the bus at 9:45, which I was really unhappy about after my hour of sleep for the “night.” But once I walked around in the sun for a few minutes I felt much better, so by the time to arrived at the Chocolate Museum I was happy to be there. About thirty of us came on the trip, so our group split in half. My half toured the museum first. It was fairly small, but considering it was all about chocolate, it was large. The main thread of the museum was a series of little exhibits on the history, making and cultural significance of chocolate in Spain, which were all interesting. Some of these were also in video form, which was pretty cool (even though the dictation in the videos were in Catalan, which I can’t understand). But the main attractions of the museum were the “monas.” These were sculptures made entirely of chocolate…I took pictures of almost all of them because they were so incredible. One of the coolest was a 4-foot replica of La Sagrada Familia, made to commemorate the pope coming to consecrate the church. After looking through the museum, out half switched to the chocolate workshop. There Bea, one of the students (as this was also a pastry school specializing in chocolate) taught us about how they make chocolate. Then, we each got to make a mold and fill it with chocolate from a kind of chocolate fountain (which reminded me of Willy Wonka). Bea then put all our molds in the super freezer, where they hardened in 5 minutes. While we waited for them to harden, Bea made us each little paper pipettes full of chocolate, which we used to draw on sheets of wax paper…which is much more difficult than she made it look. The best part of all of this was that we could eat as much of the chocolate as we wanted, and it was delicious 70% cacao, my favorite. The Chocolate Museum itself is in a building that used to be a convent in the 1500s, so it is all Gothic architecture with a renovated interior.

We came back a little later than I had expected, so I won’t be able to go to La Boqueria again to have a picnic and swim at the beach like I had planned. Oh well…just another reason to come back. I also didn’t have time to make it to an internet café…so Facebook uploads of pictures will have to wait until Naples. I promise I’m taking tons of pictures, though. Also, now that I’m not going back into Barcelona, I can officially say that I did not get pick-pocketed. Win.

Love from Barcelona,
Ginny