Dali and Nachmanides

We began this morning by picking up our rental car at Sixt. Then drove to Cadaques on the Costa Brava to visit the nearby Casa y Museo Dali in Portlligat. We lucked out because as it turns out the house is very small and in order to control numbers, a reserved, timed ticket is required. The earliest available ticket would have been 2 hours later, but there were some no-shows and we were able to go in immediately.

Catalonia seems to have more than its fair share of mad artistic geniuses. In addition to Gaudi, Picasso and Miro, they count Salvador Dali amongst their number. Known for his kitsch pop art, his house at Portlligat is a perfect reflection of his style. Dali took seven simple fishermen’s cottages and combined them into one custom built house. One particularly interesting design detail was a hole in the floor of his second story studio that enabled him to raise and lower large canvases on a rope and pulley frame system so he could paint them without having to get on a ladder.

The house is full of nooks and crannies and multiple levels. Each room is unique, but most are quite small as these were Salvador and Gala’s private spaces. When they entertained they used the pool and other outdoor spaces. They didn’t have overnight guests.

The views were spectacular. Dali included some art instillations on the grounds. This includes Christ of the Rubbish and the Michelin Man serving as lifeguard overlooking the pool. If you’re a Dali fan, it’s well worth a visit.

We drove back over the mountains to get to Girona, a very quaint medieval town about 100 km from Barcelona. By getting a Spanish SIM card with data service we were able to use my smart phone here in Spain. Amongst other things, my phone has a GPS, which is proving very useful except that when we got to Girona, it prompted us to take a left turn which would have been down a steep flight of steps!

Girona was an important Jewish center in medieval times. In fact, it had the 3rd largest Jewish population in Catalonia after Barcelona and Perpignan (now in France, then part of Catalonia). Perhaps the most famous Jewish resident of Girona was Rabbi Nachman ben Maimon, better known  as Nachmanides - a doctor, Talmudic scholar, and kabbalist. The Jewish quarter, or call, is fairly well preserved, although most traces of its Jewish residents disappeared with the expulsion in 1492.

The Jewish museum does a good job of explaining the Jewish heritage of Girona and what led to its demise. One thing that I learned was that after an early 15th century disputation, about half of the Jewish population of Aragon converted to Christianity. By the time of the final expulsion in 1492, relatively few Jews left Girona (and presumably other Jewish communities) as most had already converted to Christianity.

We stopped at a supermarket to pick up a picnic dinner. Kelly made our own tapas at 120 kph.  We are now on our way towards Bilbao, but we’ll break the journey overnight at Zaragoza, about half way.  This is wine country, that at times reminds me of Tuscany and Northern California.  Unfortunately we aren’t able to stop to take pictures on the AutoPiste, but here’s a quick grab shot from the car.

So much art, they can walk on it.

After a slow start this morning, we went to The Phone House and got a prepaid SIM card for one of our phones. Using our US T-Mobile SIMs is expensive here. For starters, it’s about $1 per minute to make a local call and if somebody calls me from the States, their call is free (it’s a local number for them), but in addition to the high roaming cost per minute, I’m also paying for their international call. That’s just voice. Data would be something like $10-15 per MB. A local SIM card costs €20 but comes with €20 calling credit, so the SIM is essentially free. For this, local voice calls are about 8 cents per minute and and for something like €10 we have up to 500MB of data per month. Such a deal!

Next stop was the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s monumental lifetime project. He was actually brought in as the second architect in 1883, after another one departed the project after just one year, having created a very traditional apse for the church which still remains. Gaudi’s style changed over time. While one façade looks a little more traditional, another façade is heavy duty Modernista. Most of the decoration is on the exterior of the church which includes various Bible scenes, animals, plants, and other allegorical forms.

The interior is a vast forest of columns, but it’s pretty sparse, making the stained glass windows really stand out. It’s size is deceptively large. It can accommodate 11,000 worshippers and more than 1500 choir members. Although construction is not expected to finish until at least 2026, the church was consecrated just last November (2010) by Pope Benedict.  Gaudi worked on the church continuously towards the end of his life, sleeping in his simple onsite workshop.  He was killed when a tram hit him.

We headed over to the main promenade of Las Ramblas, which is a funky mix of restaurants, flower shops, and street entertainers. Nearby is the popular local food market,  La Boqueria, where we grabbed a vegetarian lunch on the go.

At just about the midpoint of Las Ramblas there is a large ceramic mosaic created by another Catalan artistic genius named Joan Miro. I have liked Miro’s abstract art for a long time and I remember (before the boys were born) our favorite Los Angeles restaurant for special occasions was L’Ermitage, which is sadly no longer in business. The first time we were there I looked at the wall and asked the waiter, “Is that a real Miro?” to which he responded with a delighted, “Yes.”

Also near the Las Ramblas Miro mosaic is another Gaudi building, the Palau Guell, built for the industrialist of the same name. From here we took a metro to Parc Guell, which is northeast of the downtown area and a 20 minute uphill from the nearest metro station. The metro system in Barcelona is really good. It’s easy to use, gets you all over the city fast, and especially with a T10 card is very inexpensive.

Parc Guell itself is wonderful with all sorts of curvaceous lines and animal forms including the famous gecko fountain. Another area of the park has a forest of columns that were intended to be part of a market space. While all of Gaudi’s forms may seem fantastical, they are in fact grounded in solid engineering and mathematics. Back at the museum under Sagrada Famila, we learned how he engineered many of the tall arches used in his structures without the aid of modern CAD tools. If you hold a piece of string in each hand, the natural valley created between them is called a catenary arch.  By holding your hands further apart, closer together, or one hand higher than the other, you can create many different forms of natural arches.  This is what Gaudi did to design structures such as the Sagrada Familia using copious strings and weights and then looking at the whole in a mirror to see the structure right side up.  Later, the structures were described with detailed drawings and math.

While at the Sagrada Familia we had bought a combination ticket to the church and the Gaudi Museum in Park Guell.  This is where Gaudi lived for many years and the museum includes a number of furnishings and furniture that Gaudi designed.  Nice pieces, but if you come here, I’d definitely come to the park, but skip the museum unless you are a die hard Gaudi fan.

Parades, Protests, and Pyramids

Sunday seemed to be the day for protests and parades.  It started when we arrived at the Placa Catalunya in the heart of Barcelona to find squatters who seemed to be there to protest for quality housing.

At the Placa de Sant Jaume, which is where the Catalan government sits, there was a good size “free Syria” protest. while meanwhile, elsewhere in the square there was a competition with different teams vying to build the tallest human pyramid.

Later in the day we ran across large protest parades that seemed to be asking for economic freedom.

Barcelona has a Chocolate Museum, which has the distinct bonus that with each ticket, you receive a high quality chocolate bar. The museum is mostly about the history of chocolate and how it is made, but perhaps the most impressive artifacts were chocolate centerpieces made by master chocolatiers:

We then walked around the Old Town, or Barri Gothic,which is studded with old buildings and interesting decorations. 

One part of the quarter has a bridge modeled after Venice’s Bridge of Sighs.

It was hot today and at least this overweight basset hound had the right idea!

After lunch we went to the Picasso Museum, which was free today after 3pm.  The museum focuses on his time in Barcelona, and does a very good job of tracing the development of his style from classic portraiture in his earliest days to the cubism we all associate with Picasso,

Beneath the City History Museum lies the largest subterranean Roman ruins in the world, about 2,000 years old. I’ve seen Roman ruins in many places, but this place was unique in that you could actually see where they made  fish sauce (this Rome’s equivalent of Worcestershire Sauce or Thai Fish Sauce) and their wine making factory.  Fascinating!

Also on display were Medieval Jewish inscriptions and displays explaining the Jewish history of the city, unfortunately all in Catalan and Castellano, but we could understand  well enough.

Afterwards, we took a walk down Las Ramblas, the main pedestrian walkway, to the seafront.  The city is full of statues old and new, including  Frank Gehry’s “Fish” made for the 1992 Olympics.

Nearby was another statue, entitled “David and Goliath” by Antoni Llena, also from 1992.

We rode the Metro back to the Barri Gothic where we had dinner consisting of Papas Bravas; Smoked Salmon, with dates, mascarpone cheese and sesame oil; gazpacho with apple and sunflower seeds; and roast eggplant with yogurt honey dressing and cheese infused polenta.  Yum.

We Got some desserts at a pastry shop on the way back to the hotel and Kelly and I agreed that the almond in filo dough pastry was amazing.  Hope to find more like it!

No sign of Manuel

For those of you who used to watch Fawlty Towers, you may recall that their hapless waiter Manuel’s vocabulary was mostly “Que?” and “I am from Barcelona”. The actor Andrew Sachs was British, and his childhood language was German (don’t mention the war!)  According to Wikipedia “The character's nationality was switched to Italian (and the name to Paolo) for the Spanish dub of the show, while in Catalonia he is a Mexican (still called Manuel).”  Well thankfully we’ve not met any Barcelonans of this ilk.  Actually the people we’ve met have been very hospitable and helpful.

After getting in from the Airport via suburban train and subway we rested at hotel.  The public transportation system here is very good.  If you come to visit, here is a money saving tip – but a T10 card.  The ticket is good for 10 journeys at about 1/2 the total price compared to individual trips,  And any transfers within a 75 minute period count as a single journey.  It is even good for the ride in from the airport.

By early evening we were ready to go, so we walked along the Diagonal and saw some Modernist buildings, including Gaudi’s Casa Milla and Casa Batllo.  What a crazy genius the guy was,  I can’t help wonder what a building would look like if he and Frank Gehry designed it together.

As it was Saturday night, there were lots of people about.  What appeared to be a drunken stag group insisted I take their photo, although what they thought I would do with it, I don’t know.  Here’s the shot in case you come across them, you’ll know to be on your guard and put your camera away quickly.

We had a nice dinner of some tapas, salad and very simply, but perfectly prepared fish. Then we walked over to see the Sagrada Familia at night.

In case you aren’t familiar with it, the Sagrada Familia is a church and considered a  Modernista masterpiece, and was Gaudi’s passion until the end of his life.  It has been under construction since 1882, and will continue to be so until at least 2026.  And you thought you had problems with slow contractors!  The organic nature of the structure with no right angles and decorations that at times look like melted ice cream sculptures is almost surreal.  Did I mention he was a crazy genius?

I guess this put us in the mood for some real ice cream, and here is Kelly enjoying some scoops in front of the church.

It was pretty late by the time we got back to the hotel and went to bed, but I guess we were early by Barcelona’s standards.  Our room is on the first floor overlooking the street and revelers continued to shout and sing throughout the night.  It got quiet around 3am, but then I can’t figure out if the noisy people at 6am were out very late, or just up very early.