Fifty Things About Barcelona

Random musings:

1. For breakfast most days we've only had to walk a few metres in any direction to find a pleasant spot. Trouble is, most aren't open until 0800 or later. Which makes sense since (sorry about that) they're open until after midnight.

2. La Rambla is the inspiration for La Prado in Havana, but frankly the latter is a lot more fun. Street food, performers, artisans (not trashy), artists... La Rambla a bunch of regular shops and such.

3. Here and there are beer can crunchers on the streets. Pop your can in, pull down on a largish bar and it gets crushed and then dropped into a bin that gets emptied ever day.

4. No Dinks, let alone Grand Dinks (the legendary Big Dink to us afficionados). But I did see a People's 125 scooter. So there's hope. So long as there are Dinks, Big Dinks or People's scooters for sale anywhere in the world, globalization has not yet sunk its claws into us all.

5. If you're going to take a hop-on, hop-off bus tour of the city (we always do, it helps get us oriented), (a) take the Barcelona Bus Touristica (run by the city transit system) not one of the private companies' services and (b) line up before you buy a ticket. Saves time since ticket sellers with wireless credit card gizmos will come past you while you are in line and sell you a ticket. Lining up will just add to your wait.

6. And don't be turned-off by the length of the lines, the BBT buses run every 5-10 minutes. The Gray Line not nearly so often. And the weird thing is that the lines are long the buses packed in the morning but by noon they're, respectively, short and empty. You might want to consider waiting until 1100 to grab one and mebbe getting the two-day ticket if you really need to hit al the hot spots.

7. All I can say about the Sagrada Familla church are these two small things: It is one of the top five fab buildings (the Dupmo in Firenze, the Taj Mahal, the Hagia Sofia and Kali Temple being the others I think) I have ever seen and you have to wonder if Gaudi had photos (did they have fast film back then?) of the bishop banging a goat, otherwise how did he get the catholic church to apprve the design and pay for the start of construction 100+ years ago?

8. Park Guell to die for. Why do I not live someplace with an architectural history like this?

9. Notcieably more Chinese tourists than we have seen on prior visits to Europe.

10. Geri thinks the word 'gaudy' has its roots in Gaudi, but apparently not. Plus nothing Gaudi did (and we have seen a lot of his work in the past 5 days) can be described as tasteless. Lovely, spectacular, wonderous, perhaps even luscious, but not tasteless.

11. Very odd how noticeable McDonald's is when the background colour is green rather than red. Almost creepy.

12. Ambulance hooters here kinda restful, unlike sirens at home. Here you can imagine the patient/victim getting some pleasant rest and mebbe downing a cuppa cava on the way to emerg.

13. When ordering beer go for a 'jarrat'. 'Flautas' too small. There's a measure for beer that is even smaler but I didn't bother learning the Catalan word for it. I mean really why bother?

14. Give the harbour centre (the Maremagnum) a miss. Ontario place.

15. Though we did spend an hour or so in the aquarium. Pleasant. Not up to Boston standards but OK.

16. Street food is available with beer. Not a single inebriated person to be seen walking around.

17. The rent-a-bike system everywhere and (likely why) very popular. You not only see empty racks during the Barcelona (deferred) rush hour, you also see see tonnes of them on the street all day.

18. Almost all street vendors are of African descent and spea French.

19. Since Spain's own version of the US mortage fraud unemployment has gone from 5% to 26%.

20. Very clean city. Like Toronto used to be.

21. Street folks mostly active, either as mendicants outside churches or as recyclers. Garbage outside businesses taken apart for the smallest piece of metal. Read Mike Davis' Slums.

22. 20-30% od cab drivers and muni workers women.

23. One cab company entirely women drivers. Apparently very popular after 23:00.

24. Any number of male-only couples walking about holding hands. Don't think and can't find anything suggesting, tht this is a traditional cultural practice here.

25. Also re. Things genderish, have on a couple of occasions been the only man in a bar or restaurant.

26. Even relatevly seedy neighbourhood bars have huge fancy coffee machines.

27. Those same restaurants will serve you a couple of glasses of quite resonable wine for E2,20-E3,00.

28. Having a hell of a time finding some Basque whites. Bizarrely, think there's a place in Paris we've been to before that will have.

29. Lots of Brits here but the younger ones all half a couple. Not like Prague where you want to shoot them all for being drunk and nasty.

30. Though as a firend also travelling in Spain said recently, the place is very child-friendly. Which to me just means next time I bring a stick.

31. I LOVE cockles. Need to find a sourace in or near Cobourg. Yum.

32. A shop near us sells nothing but ham and pork sausages. And the little chunks that are the leavings are scooped (swept?)-up and dropped into paper cones which are then sold as street snacks. Yummy.

33. Ham in not food here, it is a religion. I am a convert.

34. Olives here as ubiquitous as in Turkey and Greece, but different. Not as much variety, but they taste...for lack of a better term, fresher.

35. Every lead cook I have talked to is South Asian. Fun.

36. The Metro is pretty much dead during the time we would consider rush hour. Perks up around 10:00 and really hops around 19:00.

37. I feel obligated to mention that were it not for Geri's ability to read a subway map we would still still, 2 days later, be wandering around the docks.

38. Lunch with CGT comrades didn't come off. But I may have managed to recruit a few folks to LabourStart. Well, one. :-)

39. Bright red hair on women in their 50's would seem to be de rigeur. Most also appear to be suffering from female patern baldness. Which the chicken, which the egg?

40. Did I mention the way fab Civil War tour?

41. I need to get more and bigger memory cards for our camera. Not unrelated to (40) above.

42. Tour had couples from US, Germany, singles from Netherlands, couple from England. Nice bunch. Some sectarian tensions every now and then, but in a joshing fashion. :-)

43. Can't describe the tour without getting excessively detailed and gushy. Take it yourself.

44. Hole in the wall bars here cheap and great once you get out of the touristy bits.

45. Txacoli should be easier to find here. Way easier. Guess will have to head to Bibao, find a bar across the street from the Guggenheim next trip.

46. Placa Reial a real and unexpected treat. Much fun people wtching with a Roman wall on one side, a busy street on the other, and a server who cleans ashtrays by dumping them on the ground next to the table they came from, who serves mebbe 10 beer steins at a time and who thought she'd make friends with me by using my beers to demonstrate sizes to other customers. I'm in love.

47. Parakeets all over the place. Mostly palm trees where they fight and fuck.

48. Hardly any iPhones. BlackBerries and Galaxies.

49. US bus tour groups all over the place. They get off their busses and while waiting for their guide to dismount and take the lead they pull out their copies of Rick Steves' guide to Spain.

50. Barcelona won't be the everlasting draw for us that Vienna and Kolkata are, but this was fun and if we can figure out a way to get back here we will do.