Barcelona, Spain

We originally planned to take the train from London to France and then on to Spain. But we were surprised to learn that the Eurail train is more expensive than flying. We already had the experience of taking the Eurostar channel tunnel train on a previous trip from London and Paris, so we decided to skip the trains this time and just fly straight to Barcelona.

One of the cool things about Barcelona is how compact it can be. Nearly everything we wanted to see was in the "Old Town" area on either side of La Rambla or in the Gothic Quarter. Our hotel was on the edge of the Gothic Quarter (on the center right of the map), just a few blocks from La Rambla.

I'm not the only one to say this: if you do only one thing in Barcelona, you must walk La Rambla, from the bottom at the harbor, to the top at Placa de Catalyuna. It is the one thing that everyone recommends.

As you walk this pedestrian mall, you'll pass cafes, bars, restaurants. You'll see hawkers selling birds and turtles; tourist shops selling typical baubles and trinkets. Its similar to Pacific Avenue in our hometown, Santa Cruz, only more so.

One of the fun things to find along La Rambla is every sort of common slacker made up as a human statue tacitly asking for small change. They’ll spend hours standing around semi-patiently dressed as random pop-culture references doing little tricks for tourists.

Here are some of the ones we photographed. My favorite one is the first guy in this series, who made subtle little faces appropriate for his task:



Given the diversity and creativity of Barcelona's street talent, I suggest we send our own Pink Umbrella Man of Santa Cruz out to Barcelona to take some fashion lessons.

As I mentioned above, we stayed at the edge of the Gothic Quarter, which was almost as much fun as La Rambla. The Gothic Quarter is a dense maze of old medieval buildings, with thin streets winding seemingly randomly through them.

From our hotel, we were just a few steps away from Barcelona's cathedral, La Seu, protected from the main street by old Roman battlements.

The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, who was killed by the Romans in some horrible way for being unapologetically Christian, and who now serves as the patron saint for the local sailors.

At some point in every trip to Europe, you get tired of seeing yet another cathedral. And at Barcelona is where this started to happen to me. But what made this cathedral worthwhile was the cloister of geese protecting the church gardens. The geese also represent the virginity of Santa Eulalia. Apparently, there are 13 geese to represent the age of Eulalia when she was killed.

Barcelona has a fabulous street scene, day or night. And its not limited to just La Rambla. The medieval streets themselves are so fun to wander, it draws out the locals and tourists alike to join in the fun. We spent several afternoons and evenings just walking around watching people and looking for places to hang out or eat or drink.



Of course no visit to Barcelona is complete without visiting the various creations by Antoni Gaudí throughout the city.

The most obvious Gaudí attraction is the Sagrada Família, one of the most famous churches in the world. It is still unfinished, after more than a century of construction. Sure, its yet another cathedral, but unlike any other cathedral in the world. Actually, its not technically a Cathedral, but a temple; its full name is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família./

I don't know what the difference is between temple, cathedral, abbey, or church.

Continuing on our Gaudí tour, we went to the rounded, organic apartment building La Pedrera. Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside because we came to late. We did manage to spend an afternoon in the Alice-in-Wonderlandish Park Güell, which Gaudí designed and lived with his family in the early 1900s.



In addition to seeing the works of Gaudí, we also made it to the Salvador Dalí museum and the Pablo Picasso Museum. And we got out of the city to the Spanish countryside for a bit of wine tasting.

I first wanted to go to Barcelona after I graduated from college and was living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. My housemate, Dag, and I used to go to a local dive bar, called the "One Double-Oh Seven," named after its address of 1007 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz. The bar was walking distance from our apartment, so Dag and I could play pool not worry about driving.

The thing about playing pool in bars is you only get to play as long as you are winning. If there are people waiting, whoever is next in line takes the place of player that looses the match. The new player pays for the game.

If you keep winning, you can play all night and never have to pay for your own games. But if you're with the bar with friends, you probably want to play together as long as you can. If one of you looses early, then you have to wait until your friend's name moves up from the bottom of the chalkboard waiting list until you can play together again.

If you sink the 8-ball in typical bar pool, you loose. Game over. The next challenger struts over to take your place and start a new game. If you had a good game, that's okay. But if you just started a game and accidentally sink the 8-ball in the first few rounds, then it spoils your fun to walk away early. You can't hide the sunk 8-ball, because all the challengers are watching your game, waiting for their chance to play. They all know when you loose.

That's why we invented a pool game we called "Barcelona-7." In Barcelona-7, you play by normal bar rules unless you sink the 8-ball early. When that happens, if a challenger approaches the table, you tell him "we're playing Barcelona-7."

Nobody ever asked what that meant. I think because they didn't want to admit there was something they don't know about pool. What it really meant was we were going to keep playing. And for the rest of the game we treated the 7-ball like it was the 8-ball. It is helpful that bar pool rules tend to vary from bar to bar, so its rare that anyone is 100% sure of the local house rules anyway.

I think we came up the name Barcelona-7, because we happened to be practicing putting "English" on the ball for making trick shots. Some drunk guys were tying to be clever and were joking about putting some "Spanish" on the ball. Which is when we improvidently sunk the 8-ball and wanted to keep playing. "Spanish" of course triggered "Barcelona-7," which sounded just slightly exotic and convincing enough to justify keeping the table.

That story has no real connection to the actual city of Barcelona, other than sharing the description "slightly exotic."