So where was I? Ah yes, Barcelona...
On Sunday morning we awoke to a crowd of people outside of our hostel waiting for the Pope to fly by in his Pope mobile on his way to consecrate the Sagrada Familia. Luckily for us, our room had a balcony so we were able to hang out there for his quick drive by. Getting into the hype of seeing il Papa, even though I've seen him before and I'm not even a huge fan of him, I had my camera ready to take a video of his passing by. Well, that was my intent, but I didn't want to just look through my camera so I mistakenly looked up when he came by and my camera followed my eyes...so I actually didn't catch him so well. Here is the video so you can see for yourself:
Ah well, it was a good attempt! After the excitement we were looking forward to exploring the city, figuring most people would be swarming the Pope. We headed to Montjuic, a hill overlooking the downtown area. It is the site of a fortress, the olympic stadium, and many interesting museums (our main reason to go up). Courtney really wanted to go to the Joan Miro museum and for those of you who don't know him, he was a Catalan artist whose "work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride." (I liked that description the best). I wanted to describe his work as modern art, though I'm not sure if that is fully accurate. All I know is that I am not a fan of most modern art and unfortunately his work wasn't an exception... However, the area where the museum was located was gorgeous! There were gardens and cats everywhere so Caroline was in heaven.
After the museum we walked to the Catalan art museum, but it was closed. The building the museum is housed in is amazing though - it was a Palace built for the World Fair in 1929.
That night Courtney opted to stay in while Caroline and I headed out to explore some of the areas we hadn't seen yet. There are so many because Barcelona is HUGE! We started with the gothic church Santa Maria del Mar (Saint Mary of the sea), which was built in the 14th century at the height of Catalonia's maritime and mercantile successes. The church got it's name because of the naval successes, as well as it's closeness to sea and because of it's use by sailors and merchants of medieval Barcelona. It has a beautiful interior and, while I was researching information about it, I found out that Gaudi used some of the column designs in the interior as inspiration for his Sagrada Familia.
We ended up getting there at a great time because evening mass was just starting so we stayed for a little bit. I was so lost because I don't even really know Spanish well and even Caroline couldn't understand much since they weren't even speaking normal Spanish. Oh well, the experience was nice!
By this point we were both hungry so we headed somewhere to get some paella! We headed towards the coast since we hadn't been there yet and found a cute little bar/restaurant where we could also watch Barcelona playing on tv. I was nervous about getting the paella marisco (with seafood) since Courtney wasn't there and since I had never had prawns before I didn't know how to deal with them - and I KNEW Caroline hadn't ever had them before. But Caroline talked me into and I'm ultimately happy I had it just to say I did, though it wasn't my favorite. We had sangria though and that was yummy!
After dinner we went to explore the coast, even though it was freeeeeezing. It was beautiful out there though and what was supposed to be just a nice stroll along along the coast turned into an hour trek across the city. Caroline was dead set on finding this skyscraper that is completely lit up at night with florescent blue and red. Surprisingly enough you couldn't see it from far away...I guess it wasn't as big as we thought, so we had to walk to it (I honestly think it was like 2 or more miles away from where we were at that point). So as we were walking we passed the Olympic Village with all the clubs and restaurants and it was a very impressive area, but of course we still had our mission to find that building. Fast forward 30 minutes later and walking through some sketchy areas and finally we found it. My feet hurt and I was exhausted, but Caroline's excitement at finding it made me feel like we accomplished something...even though it was just finding a glowing building that we didn't even know what the significance of it was.
And that's it for my post today! I thought I'd be able to wrap up Barcelona in this post, but alas I can't and I really want to make an onion omelet since I'm hungry. I have been starving myself until I finished this post since I have been slacking! :o)
Barcelona part tres will come soon and then I can move on to Malta, parent's visit, and daily life...man, writing a blog is tough! :)
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