Even the ceilings in Casa Batllo were wavy

Casa Batllo: no straight lines anywhere

It's getting better all the time

Barcelona is definitely growing on me. I knew that once I got my bearings and got a chance to extricate myself from the massive crowds for a little while, I'd feel better about the place. And I do. I might still like Madrid better, but Barca definitely has charm.

After getting lost repeatedly on a short walk this morning (bad sense of direction, remember), I surrendered temporarily and claimed a bar stool at a cute little place called the Paris Cafe, hoping to consult my maps and get unlost, or at least less lost. The combination of a great sandwich and pleasant surroundings can really lift the mood, can't it? :) Under big black and white photos of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, and with Ella singing in the background, I had the tastiest, simplest lunch: just a baguette with tomato, mozzarella, and a touch of olive oil, salt, and oregano. Plain and perfect. The baguette sandwich is an innovation that I will definitely bring home with me.

In any case, I didn't really get unlost, but I did get less lost, and after some meandering and backtracking eventually I found myself at the Block of Discord. It's a set of three apartment buildings on the same city block all designed by different architects, in different styles--hence the name Block of Discord. The buildings are so surreal that when I rounded the corner and saw them, I involuntarily stopped dead in my tracks and broke out in this huge grin. It's like stepping into the pages of some crazy children's book. The houses almost look like they are trying to elbow each other in a grab for your attention. The first look took my breath away.

The most famous of the three houses is Casa Batllo, brainchild of Gaudi, the leader of the Modernismo architectural movement. Casa B is now open to the public for touring. The design is absolutely nuts--you can see some of the pictures that I posted earlier today. There are almost no flat surfaces or straight lines in the entire building--the walls and ceilings are constructed in rounded waves, the windows and doors are oddly shaped, and the light fixtures are all quirky. The building is set around two interior atriums which distribute sunlight from big skylights, and the atrium walls undulate. Because the atrium is covered with tile, the construction teams had to individually break the flat tiles and create a mosaic to cover the walls. Everything, everything, everything in the house had to be hand worked, from the floor baseboards to the built in cabinets. Amazing.

After that tour, I walked a few blocks to another Gaudi masterpiece, La Pedrera, which was also an apartment building. Like Casa Battlo, it's been purchased for preservation purposes and parts of it are open to the public, including the roofdeck which houses a sculpture garden. The tour was informative and interesting, but the best part was being on the top of the city surrounded by all the crazy sculptures and being able to see La Sagrada Familia and the sea in the distance. I can't get enough the Gaudi architecture. I love it. One of the audio tours I listened to today said that as he was graduating from architecture school, one of his professors said he wasn't sure if Gaudi was an architectural genius or an architectural lunatic. Honestly, I don't think it matters--I'm just glad that these funhouses exist.
This evening I went on an organizational rampage and scheduled a great day tomorrow (lots more Gaudi to examine) plus all my arrangements for Morocco. I'm flying to Marrakesh on Monday. Keep your fingers crossed that it all goes smoothly, please! :)

A photograph showing the home newly built

Casa Batllo by Gaudi

Barcelona skyline

La Sagrada Familia on the skyline

More La Pedrera roof

La Pedrera roof

View from the roof of La Pedrera

Casa Mila, or La Pedrera

Road Trip!

I spent almost all day on a bus traveling from Madrid to Barcelona, which was a marvelous trip.  We drove past mountain ranges, vineyards, red cliffs, scrubby arid areas, poplar trees and palm trees, thunderstorms, and beautiful sunshine to make it to the Mediterranean coast in the early evening.  It is a testament to the loveliness of this country that I was captive on a bus for eight hours and never opened the book in my lap!  :)  Oh, and we passed the biggest wind farm I´ve ever seen and a large solar panel farm.  Also cool in their own way, right?

As soon as I stepped off the bus, I could feel the wet breeziness, smell the fish, and hear the seagulls.  I love being near the Mediterranean, and one of my bucket list items is to visit every country that borders it.  By the end of the summer I may be adding Morocco, Italy, and/or Greece to the current list of Egypt, Turkey, and now Spain.  As far as I´m concerned, though, a project like that is only worth doing if the execution is leisurely and informed.  So I will take my time and see what I can get to comfortably.  And when I am done with this trip, no matter how many or how few of the countries I´ve added to my list, I will enjoy the fact that there´s still so much left to discover. 

We passed the port and the docks on the way into Barcelona, and even though it wasn´t Marseilles, when I saw some sailors walking with their duffel bags over their shoulders, it made me think of The Count of Monte Cristo.  If you haven´t read that one yet, do yourself a favor and grab a copy, and I bet you´ll want to start a Mediterranean adventure too.  :)  It´s a fantastic old French revenge saga set in cities all over this area.  It´s a historical swashbuckler, a romance, and a psychological thriller all rolled into one.  It´s so good that even having to read the abridged version of it in high school didn´t ruin it for me.  And that is saying something.

Although it´s great to be near the sea, I have to admit that Barcelona is going to have to grow on me--which I´m certain that it will.  But as I´ve been reading about the city and listening to podcasts about it, every source has included semi-hysterical warnings that the pickpockets are out of control here and that petty crime (of the non-violent persuasion, Mom, I promise) is a serious problem.  I had to withdraw cash from the ATM this evening and I felt unusually on edge, even though I´m always careful (I live in DC, for crying out loud).  I hated how defensive and closed up those warnings made me.  A middle aged French guy walking by with two women and another man bumped into me when I was standing in line at the ATM, and my first thought was that he was trying to pick my pocket.  I glared at him and clutched my bag tighter, and as he made a quick apology and kept walking by, I realized that they were just deep in their discussion and he hadn´t been looking where he was going.  Guh.  That is not the way to spend my time here.

I should know better than to blow these kinds of warnings out of proportion, but I always take advice like that too seriously.  I did it before visiting Turkey and Egypt too, and then when I got there I felt like the hype was way too shrill compared to my own observations of the place, and they actually scared me when they should have just tweaked my internal level of alert.  The bottom line is that you have to be vigilant and smart everywhere, all the time, but if you can´t do that while also enjoying what you´re seeing and doing, you shouldn´t be there in the first place. 

To make matters worse, I took a quick walk among the hordes of foreign tourists and because the warnings intimidated me, I stayed with the crowds and pretty much only passed big glassy storefronts for Bennetton, Foot Locker, Starbucks, KFC, McDonald´s, Burger King, etc etc etc.  I ducked off the main drag briefly to find a little pub, and I was just starting to enjoy my tapas when three women came into the bar with four small children who sat beside me and started screaming while the mothers did nothing to comfort or quiet them.  They did not stop.  My ears are still ringing.  I cut the meal short, paid up, and came home.  So much for that.

So, hey, Barcelona, you´ve got to redeem yourself tomorrow.  I´m counting on you and your cheeky Gaudi architecture and your modern art museum and your legendary food not to disappoint me.  I will be up early and cheerful to behold your awesomeness.  The ball´s in your court.  Love, Peg. :)

The Reina Sofia

Calder installation in the courtyard of the Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid



Yesterday after a good long walk in the morning, I spent the rest of the day in the Reina Sofia museum, which blew me away. It's dedicated to 20th century art, especially but not exclusively Spanish art. The pieces themselves are a feast for the eyes, and they have been curated better than any museum I've ever visited. The RS functions almost like a documentary on modern art. I get the audio tours of any museum whenever they're available, and they're almost always really useful and insightful, but this one elevated the experience to a different level. The Reina Sofia is organized not just to display but to explain chronologically the rise of the various artistic movements of the past century, and Spanish artists were critically involved in most of them. The audio tour described how events like the First World War and the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Germany influenced the artistic movements, how they spread, and so forth. I learned a ton, and it made me so much more able to appreciate what I was seeing.

The museum has pieces from Picasso, Dali, Magritte, Miro, and dozens of other artists, and the gem of the collection is Picasso's Guernica, which depicts the air raid on the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The attack on Guernica was the first time that a civilian town became a bombing target in a war. It's a massive piece, covering an entire wall, done in black and white and depicting gruesome figures of war. The Spanish Republican government commissioned the piece, but when the fascists took over, the piece was evacuated to New York City. PIcasso stipulated that it not return to Spain until democracy was restored in that country, and the painting was finally repatriated in 1981. It's an eye-popping painting: the images pull you in and before you know it you've been staring at it for 20 minutes and are still transfixed. Seeing it on a page doesn't compare to having it loom over you, but I'll try to find a picture of it to post.

Incidentally, they sell Guernica t-shirts in the gift shop. I couldn't help but wonder who on earth would enjoy wearing that on their chest. Eeek.

Every couple of hours, I'd stop for a break in either the restaurant or the building's roof terrace, which is on top of the newly built annex. I loved the rooftop: it's all glass and metal beams at precise angles, and I snapped a bunch of pictures while I was up there. I probably should have stayed up there for the sunset (oh yeah, the RS closes at 9 pm. I love it when museums stay open late!), but I gave up and took a long, meandering walk back to my place instead.

In any case, I'm off to Barcelona and I need to go catch my bus! :)

Banco de Espana

Cervantes Institute

Walked home past the Prado

The museum terrace roof

The terrace of the Reina Sofia

A ham sandwich in Spain looks this this:

OK, not every single ham sandwich in Spain, but it is easy to score one like this here. :)

The Reina Sofia, my new favorite museum!

Lost and Found

One of my favorite things to do in a new city is to head out on foot and just get lost for a few hours. Usually the coolest things I encounter are a result of that process, not from executing some perfectly plotted surgical tourism strike. Normally I just start wandering in a random direction and keep twisting and turning, being alert for signs that the neighborhood is not safe, obviously. And when I'm tired I either find my way back on my own or, if I'm hopelessly lost, hop in a cab and give them the hotel address.

Madrid has been really fun in that respect. I walked for a couple of hours this morning and found what I swear is Madrid's Adams Morgan: it's a neighborhood called La Latina. Then I ended up in a theater district and found amazing patatas bravas and gazpacho for lunch...which is a really easy thing to accomplish in Madrid, of course. :) Then I found a park and monument dedicated to Christopher Columbus. Awhile later, I landed in the Grand Via, which is the shopping magnet. I got so turned around that I finally had to pull out a map to get to the Prado, and I was almost walked out before I even arrived, but it was such a fun morning. It gave me a better feel for some of the very distinctive personalities among the neighborhoods. And I got to do things like visit a regular neighborhood grocery store, pet people's dogs, and make small talk in broken Spanish.

Without some room for chance and spontaneity, I might as well be at home watching a Rick Steves show about a city instead of being there. But that's just me. It's a tradeoff for sure, because I will miss some of Madrid's big tourism draws on this trip, but I cant feel like I know a city until I've really walked it thoroughly.

This evening I made friends with an elderly Spanish gentleman who was strolling through the palace gardens. He spoke as much English as I spoke Spanish but we had a very enthusiastic and disjointed conversation about Ferdinand and Isabella, whose statues stood nearby. The statues were facing in on a drained reflecting pool and surrounded by knee-high hedges that were clearly intended as a polite "do not approach the sculptures" hint. But since we couldn't see the front of the sculptures and he was so eager to tell me more about F&I, my friend merrily hopped over the hedges and encouraged me to join him so we could get a better look. It was fun and I got great pictures that I would have been too chicken to take on my own. His whole face lit up when he talked about Spain's history, and even though we could only understand about a quarter of what each other was saying, I will remember that a lot longer than the names of the Goya paintings I saw at the Prado today.

Sunset at Palacio Real

My luck is holding.

I just stepped into a market, bought a gelato, and the minute I sat down, the sky opened up and it started pouring. I'm dry and enjoying my snack and free wifi. Could my timing be any luckier?

Christopher Columbus monument

Fabulous gelato. Mmmm :)

Visiting another great market

Palacio Real

Figure on the dome of Nuestra Senora de la Almudena

Basilica dome interior

I shot this from between two arches--the strange white arcs framing the painting are arches.

This is the ceiling of the basilica. I'm not sure what the designs are or are supposed to represent.

This is the interior of the basilica, Nuestra Senora de la Almudena. The design is beautiful, but it's almost too squeaky clean and new to feel like a real European basilica. Maybe it'll be ripe in another couple of hundred years. :)

The Palacio Real and the basilica

Another great day. This morning, I walked to the Palacio Real, the royal palace, which is still used for some ceremonial state occasions but which now functions mostly as a museum. About twenty rooms are on display currently, and they were completely over the top. In fact, these rooms went over the top and then went off in search of another top to overtop. Every room's ceiling has a fresco, and most of them have life-sized portraits on the walls as well. In one room, the walls are draped in handmade Italian velvet with gold threads. Another room has painted porcelain walls; apparently all things Chinese were in vogue at the time that room was designed, and instead of choosing porcelain objects to display or hang on the walls, they just made the walls from porcelain. The entire building is crammed full of priceless chandeliers, clocks, cabinets, tapestries, china, and artwork, and it is just overwhelming. I haven't visited Versailles, but the PR is often compared to it. If you can get over the whole how-many-poor-Spanish-people-would-that-knickknack-have-fed thing, it's great. I'm glad I saw it, but by the end of it, my senses were dull.

One completely unforgettable item, though: the PR has five Stradivarius stringed instruments on display. I was all set to be heartbroken that they were going to waste, trapped inside glass cases with no one to play with them, but it turns out that they do get used frequently by artists around the world. Good to hear. And, can I just say, wow.

Next door to the palace is Madrid's basilica, which took well over a century to complete (1873-1993). The basilica feels like new construction. I think centuries of candle smoke, smog, incense deposition, grime, and heaven knows what else really underscore the timelessness of most of the great places of worship, whether they're churches or mosques or whatever. You know, where the stones in the walls are showing aging, the floor is uneven, and none of the corners are cut sharp because they've worn away over time. It just makes you think about the centuries of footfalls that have worn that stair away over time, or the hands that have touched that wall and discolored the stone. It brings home the fact that you're standing in the same spot that someone stood in 500 years ago, performing the same religious rituals. It puts you in touch with your mortality and the cycle of life and stuff. Well, the basilica didn't have it, at least on the inside--it just felt too new. Some of the stained glass was gorgeous, but on the whole, I just didn't love the interior of the place.

I'm so glad I took the tour of the basilica, though, because I got to go up to the roof and walk around the exterior of the dome. And the statues there were absolutely epic. So moving. I posted some of the pictures earlier today, but they don't do justice.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, so I plan to disappear into the Prado and not come up for air for hours. Cannot wait!

Mercado de San Miguel

Dome of Nuestra Señora de la Almudena

This afternoon I checked out Madrid's basilica, which they began constructing in 1879 and completed in 1993.  (And you thought your kitchen reno took forever!). The interior is impressive, although since it's so modern it seems like it might be lacking some of the character of other basilicas. (Basilicae?). BUT, the statues, especially those surrounding the dome, were breathtaking, especially when set against the skyline.  It was so worth climbing all those stairs! :)

Puerta del Sol

The demonstrations are occurring right in front of this building, which dates from the 1760s and was the site of human rights abuses during the Franco regime. Now it's the seat of local governments which held elections this past weekend. Their austerity measures are the subject of the protests.

Veggie Stall at Mercado de San Miguel

This is a beautiful glassed-in market in Old Madrid. I scored some great paella and OJ here.

Day One: Madrid

Day one of the adventure was fabulous. After I got settled and slept for a couple of hours, I headed out and discovered that Madrid is totally walkable, freakishly clean, and home to both the world's greatest orange juice and a host of unemployed young people who are anxious to find jobs. Unemployment is at 30 percent for young people here, and they've taken over one of the big public squares to bring attention to their situation. I know next to nothing about the substance of their grievances, but I did see a fair number of people in their 50s and 60s stopping by the rallies and discussion groups, and they seemed to be listening supportively. For such a large gathering, it feels more like a festival than a protest--there's no tense undercurrent, at least that I could detect.

When I walked through it around 11:30 tonight, the square was still absolutely jammed. I spotted a scaffolding for press photographers, and since only one photographer was working up there, I figured I'd test my luck. I asked the police officer guarding it whether I could go up, and at first he asked to see my press credentials, and when I admitted I didn't have any, he smiled and let me go anyway. I snapped away for about ten minutes, and the whole time, the officers were eating their yogurt and chatting. Clearly the officers weren't on edge.

Other observations. Tapas here are all they're cracked up to be! I had a small serving of veggie paella at a market and it was otherworldly--I can't even imagine how to coax a taste like that out of rice, but luckily here I don't have to. :)

Later on, I tried some gazpacho, which was poured out of a carton into a glass in front of me. My initial thought was, "Great, I just got a glass of tomato juice," but it was fantastic. From now on, I won't be so quick to judge stuff that comes out of cartons here. :) Oh, and dinner was a gorgeous plate of grilled veggies drizzled in olive oil, sprinkled with salt, and otherwise left alone to taste like vegetables. Awesome! I will be eating well here, and it's a good thing because I must've walked ten miles today.

One thing that's not awesome: my five years of high school and college Spanish seem to have mostly dissolved. I guess not using it for 20 years wasn't the best plan. Go figure. I can understand snatches of things from time to time, and I can understand a fair amount of written Spanish, but when I'm searching for words, I'm having a ton of trouble even coming up with the basics, and now it's getting commingled with Arabic. I'll think of or say a sentence in Spanish, but I'll forget and use Arabic prepositions and stuff. And just when I get it straightened out, I'll be headed to Morocco, so I'll probably be making the opposite mistake there. Oh well.

Black Swan in Madrid

I made it to Madrid safely, and I can't check in quite yet, so I'm hanging out in the lobby of my hostel soaking up the free wi-fi and air conditioning. The flight was uneventful except for the fact that maybe for the first time in my life, I was justified in getting to the airport way earlier than any normal person would do. It took a full two hours to make it through bag check and security. United's international departures line was so long it might have been easier just to walk to Madrid, and then they seated me in a middle seat in the middle aisle. But we landed safely, and I'm pretty sure that this won't be the roughest leg of travel on this particular adventure. So no big deal. I'm making a conscious decision not to let stuff like that get to me. So far it's working. Remind me of that when I find my first roach in a hostel, okay? ;)

Well, I've made quite a debut here in Madrid. Right after I got off the plane, I felt something itching my right eye. Stupidly, I rubbed it, and after a few minutes it was getting worse and not better, and it felt like it might be swelling a little. I pulled out a mirror and when I saw my reflection, I almost screamed. Have you seen the promo posters for Black Swan? I had to take two subway lines and walk several blocks to get to my hostel, and I was trying desperately not to look anyone in the eye. Nobody needs a scare like that during their morning commute. And you can imagine how great I looked after hauling all my crap up six flights of stairs to get to the hostel. When I burst into the lobby, now sweaty and disheveled on top of looking like I had recently injected heroin into my eyeball, you could almost see the thought bubble above the attendant's head: "I don't want any trouble, lady--just take the money." Yikes.

Eyedrops seems to be doing the trick, though, and in a couple of minutes I'll be able to get into my room. Then it's off to explore Madrid! There's a big protest a couple of blocks away--tent cities and sheets painted with slogans in Spanish, English, and Arabic. Should be a really interesting day. Pictures forthcoming.

Adios, mi amigos! :)

Peg

Baggage

Packing for this trip is really making me revisit my relationship with my belongings.  I'm determined to limit my baggage to the backpack above and a small shoulder bag for my camera and purse items.  I've learned from hard experience that the more I bring along on a trip, the less happy I am.  It's ironic: when you try to stave off unhappiness and discomfort by preparing and packing for every situation or mishap, you actually just end up bringing along so much stuff that you're unhappy and uncomfortable because your baggage is a pain in the rear to drag around.  Maybe there's a life lesson in there someplace!  :)  In any case, whatever I bring, I'll have to be able to transport on European budget airlines, which are notoriously stingy about baggage weight.  Plus, I'll be staying in the medina in Fez, the city center, which is the largest metropolitan area in the world closed to auto traffic.  So if I can't comfortably carry it a fair distance, I'd have to hire a donkey to do it for me.  Truly.  And how embarrassing would that be?

Anyway, this packing process will be a ruthless exercise in distinguishing what's essential and what's not.  I'm planning for two or three months on the road, with activities ranging from sleeping out in the Sahara to wandering through museums in Madrid and Rome.  It's especially tough given that I'll be spending a significant length of time in Muslim countries where I really need to cover up with long sleeves and long pants regardless of how hot the weather gets.  I'm guessing that by the end of this trip, if hand laundry were an Olympic sport, I'd have a shot at gold.

Thank goodness for the Kindle app on my iPad and for my iPhone.  I can bring along a whole bookshelf and my entire music library in my pocket.  When pressed, I can be hard-nosed about winnowing down clothes and toiletries and stuff.  But if I had to do that with books or CDs (or, God forbid, cassettes!), I would turn to jelly.  I can't imagine the sleepless nights I'd spend worrying about whether I really needed all of the Shins albums, because Chutes Too Narrow had moments of glory but also quite a few songs that I don't care about at all, or whether I could justify bringing along Combat Rock just so I could listen to Rock the Casbah in a casbah.  Happily, they all get to make the trip, together with various episodes of Wallace and Gromit, Glee, and Rick Steves audio tours.  Whew, so glad I only have to deal with the unimportant stuff like shoes and shirts!  :)

Pre-Trip Reading

Before I take a trip, I love to dig through books about the destination.  For me, it's the single best way to build up excitement for the trip.  Particularly when I'm visiting a country for the first time, it really helps me put sites and situations in context and it makes me aware of what is so unique about the place and its people.

The Morocco book haul has been a little disappointing.  I've amassed a giant stack of books, but there just aren't that many Moroccan novelists translated into English, and my Arabic is nowhere near good enough to read a novel yet.  Plus, a lot of the books that non-Moroccans write about Morocco aren't so great (I'm looking at you, Paul Bowles).  But I feel like I've learned enough to get started over there without being completely clueless or giving offense.

I've only finished a handful of the books in the picture, but I've spent time riffling through all of them.  So far, the best Morocco reads I've come across (and finished) have been A Street in Marrakech by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea and the absolutely breathtaking A Palace in the Old Village by Tahar Ben Jelloun (which is actually a novel about a Moroccan man who emigrates to France, so it doesn't actually take place in Morocco, but I'm counting it anyway.).  Fernea's book is the story of the year she and her family lived in the medina in Marrakech when her husband was on sabbatical from the University of Texas.  I enjoyed the fact that her husband was supposedly the renowned anthropologist studying the Middle East but it's her book that people are still reading and loving 35 years after she wrote it.  :)

In any case, I hope that I can spend a little more time with my stack of Morocco books between my visits to the DMV, taking the dog to the vet, getting to the bank, and taking care of all my other pre-trip errands.  One week from this moment I'll be on the plane!

You May Ask Yourself, "Where Does that Highway Go to?"

“And you may ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’”

A few days ago, I celebrated my 38th birthday by buying a one-way plane ticket overseas, leaving in a week.  I’m a lawyer in Washington, DC and my firm recently downsized.  Last in, first out; suddenly I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands.  

It stung a little at first, but it didn’t take long to find the silver lining: for the first time in my life, I’ve actually got time, savings, and the freedom to travel.  Except for the whole lack of income thing, it’s kind of ideal.  

I’ve been trying to learn Arabic for about two and a half years, and it’s been an exceedingly slow process.  One of my goals for the trip is to try to make some headway with my language skills this summer, most likely in either Morocco or Jordan.  I applied to go to a language school in Fez for six weeks, but I sent in my application a bit late and I’m not sure if they’ll have room for me.  If that doesn’t work, I’ll figure out something else.

All I know for sure is that next Tuesday, I’ll be boarding a flight for Madrid with no return ticket, not knowing a soul in the entire country, and having no itinerary past the first two nights.  This is either going to be the adventure of a lifetime or a total fiasco.  Stay tuned.