how lovely to have patrick meet me at the airport as i returned to the city of lights. while i thought the drive into the city was a bit unnerving, he said paris was all but empty through the holiday month of august so this congestion was nothing by comparison. we immediately got down to the business of catching up by strolling through le marais and st. germain with requisite cafe stops along the way. following a yummy persian dinner at a restaurant overlooking the centre georges pompidou, i hopped on the metro to meet my home exchange partners elsa and enrique who were also just arriving in paris for a week's holiday.
next day, i bid elsa adieu and met patrick for a full day of ambling about in paris' various quartiers. he took me to one of his favourite restaurants for dinner (le temps des cerises) where anarchists from the '68 riots run the place as a coop. tres interessant!
for my final full day in paris, again more strolling with patrick. this place and its history is fannnntastic! could definitely have stayed on a little longer to breathe it in but home calls and along with it my kitties poirot and zazie!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
last play day in barcie
after bidding my home adieu, i strolled along the now familiar beachfront where serious breezes drove wind surfers to dizzying speeds. i said goodbye to the ocean with the promise that we would meet again soon.
met lisa and clare in placa catalunya for one last burst of power-shopping. we ambled up the gracia area to soak up more fiesta. many normally sedate streets had morphed into frenzied hotbeds of activity what with the community dressing them up in fabulously creative themes. it wasn't unusual to see motifs ranging from beehives to smurfland to a devil's lair decked out in a gigantic papier mache beelzebub so frightfully satanic that a toddler forced to pose for a photo op promptly burst into tears. i can only imagine the community coordination and effort that must've gone into this.
lisa, clare and i soon recruited bink, her sister moo, julia and enric to our little posse. a few leisurely drinks into our visit, we were treated to an award ceremony where julia was celebrated as the bronze trophy winner of her all/day ping pong tournament. never mind the fact that there were only 5 participants, it was brilliant...a quaint slice of life among local barcelonians.
strolling around the fiesta, we turned a corner here and bumped into a jazz band. another corner there took us to an r&b show. we were privy to more gravity-defying human towers and fireworks. julia entertained us all in her quick lesson in the fine distinction between the expressions "quieres pollo" and "quieres polla". while the former means "i want chicken", the latter literally translates as "i want dick"!! it would've been hysterical enough with a deadpan delivery but was doubly so with julia turning in a masterful performance.
one by one, i said goodbye to my new and old friends. wonderful to hang with clare and lisa if only for a short time. will seriously miss julia and her charming eccentricities and disarming wit. now on to paris and a final chapter in my travels.
met lisa and clare in placa catalunya for one last burst of power-shopping. we ambled up the gracia area to soak up more fiesta. many normally sedate streets had morphed into frenzied hotbeds of activity what with the community dressing them up in fabulously creative themes. it wasn't unusual to see motifs ranging from beehives to smurfland to a devil's lair decked out in a gigantic papier mache beelzebub so frightfully satanic that a toddler forced to pose for a photo op promptly burst into tears. i can only imagine the community coordination and effort that must've gone into this.
lisa, clare and i soon recruited bink, her sister moo, julia and enric to our little posse. a few leisurely drinks into our visit, we were treated to an award ceremony where julia was celebrated as the bronze trophy winner of her all/day ping pong tournament. never mind the fact that there were only 5 participants, it was brilliant...a quaint slice of life among local barcelonians.
strolling around the fiesta, we turned a corner here and bumped into a jazz band. another corner there took us to an r&b show. we were privy to more gravity-defying human towers and fireworks. julia entertained us all in her quick lesson in the fine distinction between the expressions "quieres pollo" and "quieres polla". while the former means "i want chicken", the latter literally translates as "i want dick"!! it would've been hysterical enough with a deadpan delivery but was doubly so with julia turning in a masterful performance.
one by one, i said goodbye to my new and old friends. wonderful to hang with clare and lisa if only for a short time. will seriously miss julia and her charming eccentricities and disarming wit. now on to paris and a final chapter in my travels.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
fiesta de gracia
since it was the holy day of gracia, everything was closed but lisa, clare and i nonetheless walked around everywhere and i proudly showed them my favourite spots. by the time we met my aussie friend bink and spanish friends julia and enric, we were ready for our second wind to kick in.
the fiesta de gracia was in full swing complete with drum bands, huge 5 metre high puppets depicting historical figures, traditional dancers and army guys all mingling with street crowds closed to motorist traffic. loved the human towers 6-storeys high with ever-diminutive members climbing monkey-like to the top. in one heart-stopping moment, the entire tower began teetering dangerously as a collective gasp escaped from the crowd. still, they managed to stabilize and all was right as rain.
we caught some of the artisan action and open-air music but had the crap scared out of us when something sounding like canons went off right next to us in the crowd. not only was the sound deafening but the vibrations from the blasts struck right to the heart of our chests. seems the spanish are well-known for firing muskets and heavy-duty fireworks into the crowd. a tribute to the civil war? maybe. i just think it was men being a little gun-crazy! when it comes to public safety, you might say that spain is far from the leader of the pack!
the fiesta de gracia was in full swing complete with drum bands, huge 5 metre high puppets depicting historical figures, traditional dancers and army guys all mingling with street crowds closed to motorist traffic. loved the human towers 6-storeys high with ever-diminutive members climbing monkey-like to the top. in one heart-stopping moment, the entire tower began teetering dangerously as a collective gasp escaped from the crowd. still, they managed to stabilize and all was right as rain.
we caught some of the artisan action and open-air music but had the crap scared out of us when something sounding like canons went off right next to us in the crowd. not only was the sound deafening but the vibrations from the blasts struck right to the heart of our chests. seems the spanish are well-known for firing muskets and heavy-duty fireworks into the crowd. a tribute to the civil war? maybe. i just think it was men being a little gun-crazy! when it comes to public safety, you might say that spain is far from the leader of the pack!
Friday, August 15, 2008
closing in
had lunch with my exchange partners elsa and enrique at a relaxing seaside restaurant. they are lovely folks. will be spending my first day in paris in their digs.
picked up my london friends lisa and clare at the airport last night. it has been close to a year since i´ve seen them, so lovely to hang out. we got back to my pad rather late but that didn´t stop us from pulling the table out on the deck and breaking out the spanish tortilla and cava in celebration. woooooohoooooooooooooo!!
picked up my london friends lisa and clare at the airport last night. it has been close to a year since i´ve seen them, so lovely to hang out. we got back to my pad rather late but that didn´t stop us from pulling the table out on the deck and breaking out the spanish tortilla and cava in celebration. woooooohoooooooooooooo!!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
blooper
upon hosting my aussie and barcie friends for dinner last night, we sat out on the terrace with some lip-smacking grub, tasty grappa and great company. enric asked whether i´d used a recipe to whip up my lentil chorizo stew. i replied here was a dish i´d frequently encountered across the spanish camino so improv´d my way through to reproduce this dazzling contact lens stew.
enric and julia had a good giggle then informed me i´d confused the spanish word ¨contact lenses¨ for ¨lentils¨. imagine a yummy piping hot contact lens stew. yummmmmmmmm, simply deeeeeeee-lishhhhhh!!!
enric and julia had a good giggle then informed me i´d confused the spanish word ¨contact lenses¨ for ¨lentils¨. imagine a yummy piping hot contact lens stew. yummmmmmmmm, simply deeeeeeee-lishhhhhh!!!
small villages
visited sarria in the north west end of the city where the plaza looks like so many tiny villages in the middle of spain. though i hadn´t connected the dots until yesterday, it completely made sense that barcelona was a town quite distinct from its current boroughs such as sarria, montjuic, sant andreu.
as barcie headed into the industrial revolution and demand for real estate grew in leaps and bounds, the l´eixample area began to take shape with architectural masters leaving their distinct marks. it didn´t take long before the new district grew to fill the gaps between barcelona and its neighbouring areas. these boroughs soon became part of barcelona while maintaining their original small village feel. cool!
as barcie headed into the industrial revolution and demand for real estate grew in leaps and bounds, the l´eixample area began to take shape with architectural masters leaving their distinct marks. it didn´t take long before the new district grew to fill the gaps between barcelona and its neighbouring areas. these boroughs soon became part of barcelona while maintaining their original small village feel. cool!
Monday, August 11, 2008
shade-hunting
no doubt one adapts to one´s surroundings but when one´s environment is sooooooo very hot, one sometimes has to come up with different solutions. my ¨beat the heat¨ trick is to hunt out every last corner of shade available and make a beeline for it. anyone following my progress would wonder whether i hadn´t hit the bottle as my path zigzags from one extreme to the other in search of cooooool relief!
gitanos
elsa had warned me about gitanos, the iberian gypsies. consensus was that they were shameless thieves, first class cons and brutish barbarians, not to mention stinky and rowdy marginals.
gypsy barrios - essentially seedy, overcrowded concrete compounds - are the sadly successful outcome of the spanish authorities' assimilation crusade. some twenty years ago, iberia's last rebellious nomads were crammed into sterile apartment buildings which, in the rough hands of these former tent-dwellers, quickly fell prey to accelerated decay.
gypsies are also called "rom" (free man) and have been associated with the dom indian caste. they are believed to have abandoned their native punjab around the year 900. linguists have even traced back the origins of romani - the traditional gypsy idiom - to sanskrit, and uncovered shared features with modern darvinian languages such as hindi, bengali, and panjabi. so gypsies settled in spain around 1425 and nearly 600 years later, gitanos were still completely alienated mostly because they had retained much of their traditional beliefs and way of life.
few are the metro trips where a couple of gypsies don´t jump into a crammed car dragging a pull cart containing a mini p.a. system, only to whip out a mike. next thing is you are being treated to a syrupy but abbreviated version of some spanish tune, like it or not. oftentimes, the second gitano looks around with an expression of the most intense boredom while smacking a tambourine to the beat and pelting out the chorus. it´s all very entertaining. of course, the hat is passed around before the metro pulls into the next station...
gypsy barrios - essentially seedy, overcrowded concrete compounds - are the sadly successful outcome of the spanish authorities' assimilation crusade. some twenty years ago, iberia's last rebellious nomads were crammed into sterile apartment buildings which, in the rough hands of these former tent-dwellers, quickly fell prey to accelerated decay.
gypsies are also called "rom" (free man) and have been associated with the dom indian caste. they are believed to have abandoned their native punjab around the year 900. linguists have even traced back the origins of romani - the traditional gypsy idiom - to sanskrit, and uncovered shared features with modern darvinian languages such as hindi, bengali, and panjabi. so gypsies settled in spain around 1425 and nearly 600 years later, gitanos were still completely alienated mostly because they had retained much of their traditional beliefs and way of life.
few are the metro trips where a couple of gypsies don´t jump into a crammed car dragging a pull cart containing a mini p.a. system, only to whip out a mike. next thing is you are being treated to a syrupy but abbreviated version of some spanish tune, like it or not. oftentimes, the second gitano looks around with an expression of the most intense boredom while smacking a tambourine to the beat and pelting out the chorus. it´s all very entertaining. of course, the hat is passed around before the metro pulls into the next station...
Sunday, August 10, 2008
tapas
it is said that as far back as the 13th century, ailing spanish king alfonso x el sabio ("the learned") took small morsels with wine on his doctor's advice and so enjoyed the cure that he made it a regular practice in his court. even cervantes refers to tapas as llamativos (attention getters), for their stimulating properties, in don quixote. often miniature versions of classic spanish dishes, tapas allow you to sample different kinds of food and wine with minimal alcohol poisoning, especially on a tapeo -- the spanish version of a pub crawl: you walk off your wine and tapas as you move around.
Friday, August 8, 2008
jewish quarter
i connected with some of my he medieval jewish quarter inside el barri gotico. the area was founded in the 12th century and therein now resides spain´s most ancient synagogue. while most of the buildings have succombed to modernization, the streets remain as they were 9 centuries ago. the gothic surroundings were very amenable to these mental conjurings, particularly as here was a little traveled tourist destination, thus leaving me mostly alone wih my thoughts.
the saga of barcelona's jewish community came to its culminating moment in august 1391 when, during a time of famine and pestilence, a nationwide outbreak of anti-semitic violence reached catalunya with catastrophic results: nearly the entire jewish population was murdered or forced to convert to christianity. and this, a full 101 years before they were expelled from the rest of spain, in 1492, by the reyes católicos, isabel and fernando. no wonder they felt the need to congregate in a ghetto of sorts.
next on the list was the old town´s 13th century gothic cathedral de santa eulalia, co-patron saint of barcelona. eulalia was a young virgin who suffered martyrdom during roman times in barcelona. it is said the romans exposed her naked in the public square but a miraculous snow fall in mid spring covered her nudity. the enraged romans threw her into a barrel with knives stuck into it and rolled it down a street. her body is entombed in the cathedral's crypt.
as the cathedral is currently undergoing a faclift, the entire front facade was hidden behind scaffolds and large scale prints representing the future finished product. the view from its towers was beautiful and a funky gothic cloister is home to a flock of 13 regal white geese (eulalia was 13 when murdered).
in the evening, i met julia around the parallel area to check out a concert where her trumpet teacher was performing with the opening band. the apolo theatre is a fairly good sized venue deckedout in the grooviest chandeliers and it was just about filled to capacity. the opening band was tight but lacked in a certain ¨ooumff¨. the headline band wasn´t much better so i cut out in time to catch the metro part way home. the last half was a nicely chilled late night stroll in a barcelona that is rarely so quiet.
the saga of barcelona's jewish community came to its culminating moment in august 1391 when, during a time of famine and pestilence, a nationwide outbreak of anti-semitic violence reached catalunya with catastrophic results: nearly the entire jewish population was murdered or forced to convert to christianity. and this, a full 101 years before they were expelled from the rest of spain, in 1492, by the reyes católicos, isabel and fernando. no wonder they felt the need to congregate in a ghetto of sorts.
next on the list was the old town´s 13th century gothic cathedral de santa eulalia, co-patron saint of barcelona. eulalia was a young virgin who suffered martyrdom during roman times in barcelona. it is said the romans exposed her naked in the public square but a miraculous snow fall in mid spring covered her nudity. the enraged romans threw her into a barrel with knives stuck into it and rolled it down a street. her body is entombed in the cathedral's crypt.
as the cathedral is currently undergoing a faclift, the entire front facade was hidden behind scaffolds and large scale prints representing the future finished product. the view from its towers was beautiful and a funky gothic cloister is home to a flock of 13 regal white geese (eulalia was 13 when murdered).
in the evening, i met julia around the parallel area to check out a concert where her trumpet teacher was performing with the opening band. the apolo theatre is a fairly good sized venue deckedout in the grooviest chandeliers and it was just about filled to capacity. the opening band was tight but lacked in a certain ¨ooumff¨. the headline band wasn´t much better so i cut out in time to catch the metro part way home. the last half was a nicely chilled late night stroll in a barcelona that is rarely so quiet.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
barca fc
fully intending to stuff a little culture into my day, i pointed myself in the direction of the museum of contemporary art. however, upon looking at the map, i somehow got distracted and wound up standing outside the stadium where barca futbol club play their home games. sport trumps culture...art can wait another day!
key to my heart...or at least to the front door!
before having my senses fully about me this morning, i ran out to pick up some breakfast fruit only to realize i´d left my keys in the house. knowing that one half of my exchange partners is minding my pad in toronto while the other half is 300 km away in zaragoza, i just knew this would happen.
luckily, gary was still inside the house but fast asleep. i located his window in the apartment building and looked about for a projectile to slipshot at it. there were no pebbles to be found so old cherry pits would have to do instead.
after calling gary´s name and assailing the window for a good 5 minutes, the neighbouring apartment´s window whipped open and some guy´s head popped out. in the split second it took me to look over, i suspected i´d upset a night owl´s beauty sleep and was in for an earful. but when the face registered, i realized to my surprise that it was gary´s sleepy face. so...who´s window had i been pelting with old sun-bleached cherry pits?! lucky for me noone was home!
what with gary leaving tomorrow, i know i won´t be doing that again!
luckily, gary was still inside the house but fast asleep. i located his window in the apartment building and looked about for a projectile to slipshot at it. there were no pebbles to be found so old cherry pits would have to do instead.
after calling gary´s name and assailing the window for a good 5 minutes, the neighbouring apartment´s window whipped open and some guy´s head popped out. in the split second it took me to look over, i suspected i´d upset a night owl´s beauty sleep and was in for an earful. but when the face registered, i realized to my surprise that it was gary´s sleepy face. so...who´s window had i been pelting with old sun-bleached cherry pits?! lucky for me noone was home!
what with gary leaving tomorrow, i know i won´t be doing that again!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
sitges
gary and i spent the day at sitges, a little seaside beach town less than an hour out of barcie. it couldn´t have been less than 40 degrees in the shade, not that there was much shade to be had. crazy hot.
still, we checked out the digs and were impressed with some of its architecture. very attractive spot with lots of great shopping and restaurants. on one of the menus, we saw the following translation of seafood paella: ¨soggy fisherman´s rice¨!!
still, we checked out the digs and were impressed with some of its architecture. very attractive spot with lots of great shopping and restaurants. on one of the menus, we saw the following translation of seafood paella: ¨soggy fisherman´s rice¨!!
Monday, August 4, 2008
gaga 4 gothic gargoyles
i strolled around the old gothic quarter on a self-guided walking tour and sleuthed about in search of all known vestiges of the excavated roman walls. the ancient roman colony - then known as barcino - was founded between the years 15-10 bc in the time of emperor augustus. the barri gotic covered around ten hectares and housed some 1,000 inhabitants. living under the constant fear of attack, the romans built a sturdy wall in the 2nd century ad to protect the city and its residents. a second wall complete with watchtowers was built in the 4th century as further reinforcement.
fascinating to think some of these stones that i was admiring had been standing for 19 centuries. the battles they´ve seen...the evolution they´ve witnessed, the injustices and acts of bravery. blows my mind.
it´s a wonder people walking around the old town don´t collide more often as there is soooo much eye candy to contemplate up high in the cornices, windows and towers. my faves though are the gargoyles. there are so many different types, shapes, sizes and are immortalized in the oddest poses. i´ve gone gaga over gargoyles!
temps just soared today. ahhhhhhhhh, thank my lucky stars there is no longer a water shortage.
fascinating to think some of these stones that i was admiring had been standing for 19 centuries. the battles they´ve seen...the evolution they´ve witnessed, the injustices and acts of bravery. blows my mind.
it´s a wonder people walking around the old town don´t collide more often as there is soooo much eye candy to contemplate up high in the cornices, windows and towers. my faves though are the gargoyles. there are so many different types, shapes, sizes and are immortalized in the oddest poses. i´ve gone gaga over gargoyles!
temps just soared today. ahhhhhhhhh, thank my lucky stars there is no longer a water shortage.
Friday, August 1, 2008
through the eyes of another
gary is in town! spent the day subtly smiling at his excitement upon sharing some of my most highly coveted city gems. whether architecture, a district or food, g obliged by exhibiting the appropriate amount of glee. out popped the camera every 5 seconds!
i had intentionally set aside the gothic quarter´s born area to discover it together. we caught our second wind in a discrete square near the cathedral where a musician serenaded us with some ancient instrument while we contemplated the neighbouring church´s many gargoyles. also checked out la boqueria and its gastronomic cornucopia of colours, textures, smells...an epicure´s delight! a terrific day on both counts, capped by a typical spanish lentil chorizo stew dinner and san miguel cerveza. que bien!
i had intentionally set aside the gothic quarter´s born area to discover it together. we caught our second wind in a discrete square near the cathedral where a musician serenaded us with some ancient instrument while we contemplated the neighbouring church´s many gargoyles. also checked out la boqueria and its gastronomic cornucopia of colours, textures, smells...an epicure´s delight! a terrific day on both counts, capped by a typical spanish lentil chorizo stew dinner and san miguel cerveza. que bien!
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