We headed to Barcelona for the remainder of our Europe stay. We had visited Barcelona years ago, but only for a few days, and loved the vibe: great weather; friendly people; big, walkable city, and beach access. On this trip, Dale taught his on-line classes from the hotel room while Darcie attended immersion Spanish classes within walking distance of the hotel.
Darcie attended Linguaschools immersion Spanish classes, which had amazing teachers and fun activities. Most of her classmates were European and young -- half her age. So, she got a healthy dose of country- and generational-cultural differences. Most students spoke 3 or more languages, including their native language and English. Darcie got to translate one of our favorite jokes into Spanish for her classmates. Here is the English-language version: What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks 2 languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks one language? American.
Darcie was surprised by how much her classmates followed US entertainment, sports, and technology. The generational differences ranged from passion for recycling, hating morning classes, spending nights at the dance clubs, and surprisingly, smoking.
Barcelona is a very young city--this wasn't limited to Darcie's classes. In our neighborhood, the population seemed to skew female, more specifically young, stylish and braless women, to Dale's delight. Boutiques and high-end stores in our neighborhood catered to this crowd. Neither of us cares about fashion, as our photos clearly demonstrate, but we enjoyed commenting on peoples' outfits. Some were a little bizarre, like this pair of boots that looks like it's suffering from severe acne.
Like many large cities, Barcelona has distinct neighborhoods. One of our favorites is the Gothic Quarter. It is the oldest part of the city, with narrow, winding streets, several plazas, churches, restaurants and shops. The Picasso Museum is here too, and we enjoyed seeing the evolution of Picasso's style over time.
The Picasso Museum focuses on the artist's formative years, up to the Blue Period. It was fascinating seeing the development of his skills and evolution of his styles. While he is most famous for cubism, we were ignorant of, and surprised by, the artistic talent revealed in his earlier and more traditional pieces, like Science and Charity, below.
The black and white piece below, called Las Meninas (Maids of Honor), is actually Picasso's reinterpretation of the original Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez in 1656, currently on display at The Prado Museum in Madrid. Picasso also painted some of the individuals in Las Meninas in their own portraits.
Also near our neighborhood was Barcelona's Arc de Triomf, not as famous as the Paris counterpart but still a pretty sight. It was about 15 minutes from our hotel and a useful landmark when we got lost on walks. Vendors often lined the main walkway, and there was a park at the end of the walk. (Parque de la Ciutadella)
Besides the Gothic Quarter, we loved Barcelona's beach, Barceloneta. We were surprised to learn that Barcelona only recently built out the 2 miles of beach in 1992, ahead of the Olympic games. Now it has a boardwalk, bars, clubs, lot of beach volleyball, a luxury hotel, and even a nudist section. We didn't take pictures of the beach during many of our daytime visits, lo siento!
One of the sites we also enjoyed was the view from "The Bunkers," (Bunkers del Carmel). The Bunkers are actually old military bunkers built on top of a hill to defend the city during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930's. After the war, people actually lived in the bunkers, but they were rehoused by the government ahead of the 1992 Olympics. Now people go there to hang out and see a panoramic view of the city, especially at sunset.
Dale's birthday fell during our Barcelona stay, and our friends David and Dominika flew into Barcelona to celebrate with us and to see the city. They also gifted us with a Paella cooking class, which was a blast! During class, several teams cooked different types of paella, which we shared for dinner as a group. Dale was assigned black squid ink paella. While there was squid in the dish, the ink actually came in a separate packet that we added to the dish.
Of course, Barcelona is famous for Antoni Gaudi's architecture, so whenever anyone visited, we took them to see Gaudi's works. There are so many that we will have a separate blog post for them.
In the mean time, we found this hilarious Youtube video about immigrating to Spain that should be helpful.
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