Tuesday, April 17, 2007

April 10th - day 2 in Barcelona


















Did the usual breakfast thing and headed out to see Sagrada Familia. We headed to a metro station much closer, the reason we hadn't been going there was cos it involved changing lines a coupls of times, and sometimes that could take a much longer time to get to our destination. But after all the walking the day before, we were in no mood to walk the distance to Sants. We got to Sagrada soon and spent a couple of hours gazing at this bizarre Art Nouveau wonder by Antonio Gaudi! I had studied it in 20th century architecture in BCC, and was keen to see it, but was totally unprepared for how weird and fascinatingly bizarre it was. Sinewy columns, organic flowing interiors, flowery grape bunchy things here and there......quite grotesque. But when we looked clsoe it was amazing they had managed to build something like this at that time, without all the construction methods and engineering skills we have today. Gaudi died before it was completed and work is still continuing till today to finish it the way he had envisioned. What was more fascinating, was watching all the workers and craftsmen inside the building.

Then we left for the metro again intending to take a ride on the Montjuic Funicular, so we could get a panoramic view of the city. We exited the metro station at Montjuic, only to find the access to the funicular was tied in to the metro system and we could have boarded within the station. So we had to buy tickets again...drats! So back we went and took the funicular to the top of the hill. We got some amazing views from there, walked around the gardens a bit and then decided to come back to the hotel, take a siesta and go back to our fav place, La Rambla, in the evening. We stopped at a supermarket on the way back, I bought some Spanish dog chews for the pooches ( which they just sniff at...they don't seem to like them too much :-( ), had Patatas Bravas, marinated olives, bread and beer for lunch, stopped at an Internet cafe for the mandatory e mailing session and came back at 3.15pm. We left again at 5pm, walked to Sants, took the metro to Liceu/La Rambla and this time walked along the southern part. Since we were planning on seeing the flamenco show at Los Tarantos at Plaza Reial, we browsed that area, watched 2 amazing street guitar players, bought their CD, then some souvenier shopping including a gorgeous ceramic sangria pitcher. We had seen a veg restaurant called Maoz, the day before, so we had falafels and patatas flamencas (french fries) for dinner. It was huge and an effort to eat it all...but we managed alright.

Finally we got to Los Tarantos, went in and grabbed front row seats. It was only a half hour show and it began right on time at 8.3opm. All of us there got settled with a pitcher of sangria...thats the thing to drink in Spain, very good and very addictive. It started with 4 guys, one on guitar, one on drums and 2 taking turns singing loudly and lustily. We kept waiting for the flamenco dancer to show up but there was no sign of her. At about 8.45 or so, the front door to the bar opened and slammed, and a guy rushed backstage with a garment bag sort of thing. Ah ha....he's brought her flamenco outfit we thought. Good...so she should be out soon. A few minutes later, the same guy came onto stage in his flamenco suit. Turns out there was no female flamenco dancer that night, only this guy! But what a fabulous dancer he turned out to be. All us viewers were disappointed there was no woman in her flouncy flamenco skirt, but this guy was awesome. The show went on past 9pm, probably to make up for the delay....all in all it was amazing. Came back pretty tired at 10pm.

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