Waiters, waiters everywhere…
Early in the week, I had a craving for beef. Beef as in “steak with veggies” type of beef. I know, I know; I love Spanish food but sometimes a girl’s gotta have a steak. So we set off in search of a menu I could approve. Not an easy task. We wandered all over the damn place while finding nothing that either of us could approve (we might have been a little cranky, and ultimately, hard to please) and finally dove into Nou Cellar, a dark little place by the apartment that had the daily specials in the window. What a great little find that turned out to be. The ceilings were low, the smoke was prevalent, the waiter was surly but the food was amazing. And the waiter finally smiled at us. Turns out he has a pretty good sense of humour. His name is Carlos and when we went back in later that week, we kissed us on the cheek, seated us in his section and it was like we were old friends. Then we started to see him everywhere. Every time we passed the restaurant, he was there and stepped out to hug us and say hello. Jenn spotted him twice on the street as we were walking past. It’s extraordinary really for a city that size. I was 12 years in Dallas and never ran into people I knew. But he was lovely and he took such good care of us. I have his email and the website for his photography and I’ve only just remembered that I need to write to him. Damn… Such a sweet guy. If I go back to Barcelona, I want to be able to drop in on him again.
Girona
As previously mentioned, I flew out of Girona, a neighboring town, at 930 that night. Instead of schlepping around Barcelona one more day, I did what no one else has done: I spent the day in Girona. It is an enchanting city really. Medieval streets, charming placas, loaded with quaint cafes, atmospheric churches, and vistas to the hills beyond. And it’s a shopper’s paradise. Of all places to be without credit cards… The first order of business was to buy an umbrella since it was lashing rain like it does in Dublin. Not an auspicious beginning, I thought. But the umbrella section was colourful and they were ¼ the price they are here in Dublin, so I set out rather happily under a shocking pink, red and magenta flowered number. Nothing lifts a grey day like a little pink tinted light. I’ll never own another black umbrella.
The city is halved by a river and a rather large portion of the old town sits literally on the bank of the river. It’s amazing to wander into a shop and see the entire back wall is a window to the river. I spent quite a bit of time in a toy shop, marvelling quite frankly, at the view and then at the toys. They were all handcrafted wood toys, the likes of which I’ve never seen. Usually ‘hand-crafted wooden toys’ means chunky thick blocks of wood put on wheels and pulled by a string. But here there were mobiles and puzzles and tops and yo-yos and every manner of toy, all very delicately made. It was too much and I had to leave. I wanted to buy everything. Actually, that’s pretty much how I felt about every shop I went into so I stopped shopping and started wandering off the beaten track. Not as easy as it is in other cities. They use their historic core for daily life, so the cultural sites are nestled in between cafes and boutiques, all of which makes for easy wandering.
I went to the cathedral, which is a very steep set of stairs but worth everyone one of them for the view. Turn around once you reach the top and you can see over the river and into the countryside. Most people missed it until they came out of the church. It’s quite entertaining to watch the reaction. I didn’t pay to go in, mostly because they wouldn’t even give me a sneak peek to see if I was even interested. I’m glad I skipped it because the little church round the corner was amazing. Dark and spooky, Gregorian chants ringing off the stone, cold grey stone, dark colourful stained glass. Loved every minute of sitting there. I didn’t even mind the German woman who kept lecturing her companions at normal speaking voice. That’s one pet peeve of mine that I never realized I’d had before. I cannot stand people who insist on speaking when they shouldn’t. People in museums fine, people in churches, not fine. When we visited Montserrat earlier in the week, both jenn and I watched the senior citizens in front of us fight each other for seating in the pews and then start to hiss at each other. Which might have been fine except they joined the cacophony of others chatting away while the boys choir performed for us. We could barely hear them and the saddest thing was, it was a 2 song performance. You can’t shut the hell up for 10 minutes? Please… it ruined the experience for both of us and this woman in Girona was treading dangerously. Thankfully, she left before I did.
After the church, I paid my euro and went into the Arab baths. It’s a wonderful little space, was Turkish type public bath once upon a time and have now been turned into Something To See. Plus they display art there. It was a very quick tour, amounting to all of 7 minutes, but the whole site is wonderfully preserved and the people mercifully silent. Evidently you need to place painting in a space to get tourists to respect the silence. Once I exited there I just wandered and explored. It’s an enchanting city really and not that difficult to navigate. I ended up back at the ramblas before I started looking for it and then explored the streets that feed into the ramblas. I spent my last hour in a student library/internet café/bar, sitting beside the open window, watching it rain. It was almost a perfect day and I kept wishing that Jenn had been there with me. We neither of us felt very strongly about Barcelona. It’s a nice town, I enjoyed it, and I’m glad I got to visit. But I somehow doubt I’ll be back again. I’m not that kind of tourist. I like to lose myself in the fabric; to be forced to hear the language and to see the everyday of the city and it’s people. Barcelona to me felt like the Spanish version of New York. I love New York but I didn’t move to Europe to visit large, noisy, hectic American cities. It’s really that simple. There wasn’t one place in the city that wasn’t staged for tourists. Girona stays with me more because the history of the city is still tangible. It’s lived in and somehow more of what I expected Spain to look like. I’ll go back to Spain, just not to Barcelona. I’ll visit Madrid or Granada, Seville and Toledo. But not Barcelona. I got what I needed from the city.
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