I’ve gone rounds trying to understand how to write this one. I suspect I will find going day by day both too report like in nature and more like a list of activities. One thing became clear. Gaudi gets his own photo album, I mean blog post.
I don’t know what I expected, but Barcelona defied it.
I arrived mid morning having not slept well in Genova and before I was able to fully check into my airbnb. Additionally, my cab driver dropped me off several blocks away due to road closures. Come to find out, our street, Carrer Creu Coberta (Lol, Catalan is not Spanish), becomes pedestrian only on the weekends. I lugged my luggage severals blocks in what turned out to be an inefficient manner and the driver could’ve gotten a lot closer and met Zenyb who handed off the keys and helped me stash my luggage. She let me know I could return in about 2 hours when the cleaning woman was finished.
What a ridiculously charming apartment. Our apartment was in an old building with a very small elevator (we nearly got eaten once), a shower whose placement of hot cold knobs meant that you were constantly freezing or burning yourself, but otherwise was wonderfully updated, From the wood floors, to the modernist decor, to the balconette windows ala Romeo & Juliet. The narrow balcony affords a view of a clock tower through the tree lined view. It’s quietly bustling. It kinda makes me want to sing the Bonjour song from Beauty and the Beast.
But of course, I’m in Barcelona, and it is anything but provincial. We were based on the border of the Sants neighborhood, adjacent to L’Eixample Izquierdo. Lodging in Barcelona is expensive, which in some worked out well for me cause I strongly prefer staying in the hot spot adjacent neighborhoods. I feel like you get a touch more of the flavor of the city, better and cheaper food, and still have easy access to all the city offers. In this case, I think we chose perfectly, not a block away was the subway, a few blocks further were a traditional mercato, a grocery stores, and a really pretty organic grocery store that pours mist over its beautiful stacked produce. Of equal importance, we formed a strong relationship with the coffee shop below, in particular our favorite barista, Augustin. And the largest regional train station was maybe a 10 minute walk.
Early the next morning I took a bus to retrieve Heids from the airport. It had been too long (ok, really less than a year, but nonetheless too long). As much as I should go out and meet people, make friends, put myself out there, I find in some ways it’s made more difficult by these long defining friendships. New person, I scoff, look at the fiercely loving, loyal, bright, funny, strong & vulnerable in one breath vixens I already have. Nothing compares to you babes. How blessed am I? Maybe that’s the theme of this whole trip.
This city looks more like a city than those of Italy with wide avenues, multi lane roads, even sidewalks, visible garbage systems, a robust and amazing subway system. Florence feels like a living relic. Barcelona is a metropolis.
Things I knew, but didn’t get- Catalonia is in Spain but wants to be indepedent and they speak Catalan, which is kinda like Spanish? Catalan, as it turns out, is not a subset of Spanish, this language feels more like a Creole with distinct Spanish, Italian and French features. Signs feature Catalan, then Spanish, and sometimes English, which was also a reminder that in Spain they speak Spanish, not Mexican. If a sign is in Catalan, I may or may not have any idea what it’s talking about. Second, throughout this trip, the pride in Catalunya, the sense of being a distinct people with a distinct history, really of being conquered nation, was absolutely inescapable.
My completely unfact-checked learning, includes that unlike the rest of Spain, Barcelona has Roman origins and has been consistently occupied for over 2000 years (Madrid wishes it could), the rest of the country being Phoenician. The Moors only spent a little over a century in the region, compared to nearly 800 years in southern Spain. Finally, the area was the Kingdom of Aragon (cue Lord of the Rings theme song), rather than part of the Kingdom of Castile. In the 1460s a marriage between the kingdoms provided some unity, but Aragon retained autonomy until the 1700s. More recently, Catalonia in general, and Barcelona specifically, was a stronghold of Republican resistance during Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975!), meaning the region was targeted, the language outlawed, and the city bombed. These distinct histories, I’ve been assured by many a guide, represent a fundamental cultural difference between the region and the rest of Spain. Separatism was a constant undertone. And, intellectually, I knew this was a long standing point of contention, but I think I had no idea how constantly present it would be. Catalonia has two flags and you will see 100 of them before encountering a Spanish flag. The first, named Senyera, is 4 bold red stripes on a yellow background and represents the autonomous region of Catalonia (think state). The second, named L’Estelada Blava, is the same with the addition of a blue triangle with a 5 pointed white star in it at the beginning of the flag. This represents an independent Catalonia.
What sheer joy to have Heidi all to myself for 11 days! I love her children, they are amazing individuals. But fuck, kids are demanding. This was just us. Staying up late (for us), sleeping in (not terribly late), eating excessive amounts of cheese (for any human). We stayed near Montjuic which is a mountain, or maybe just a large hill, in Barcelona. It has a robust and chilling history in the city, but is now an enormous park featuring the National Museum of Catalonian Art, the Castell de Montjuic, an enormous cemetary, 2 botanical gardens, the Joan Miro Foundation, the Olympic swimming pool, a magic fountain, and much more. We explored there multiple times.
We’d booked three tours in advance, one to the Dali museum and Dali’s home a few hours north of Barcelona, a second to Sagrada Familia, and a third to Montserrat and a wine tasting. In a sorta fortunately/unfortunately event, the tour I’d booked for Sagrada Familia was canceled two days prior to execution. I was livid. But we actually ended up going through the same company as the other two tours, got a bit of a discount and it was actually a damn perfect finale.
As most of you should be able to anticipate, I wos beyond excited to check out the Dali museum. It’s located just shy of 2 hours north of Barcelona in a town called Figueres, Dali’s home town. I knew it housed more of his art than anywhere else in the world, I did not know Dali made the damn museum. And the whole thing reflects that. After having your ticket scanned, there’s a small circular courtyard, you then pass into a grand room where theater actually used to be held. Dali is buried beneath the stage. The museum rambles in narrow circles behind the stage with occassional alcoves and rooms jutting off its 3 stories. It’s a bizarre and disorienting architecture.
While bereft of his most famous pieces which are housed throughout the world, it’s actual title is the Dali Theatre-Museum which is apropos. The whole building is an artistic fable you wander, ok more like shoulder, your way through. Its focus is on illusion and it’s semi interactive. In the courtyard there’s a car with him and his wife Gala in the back. For a euro you can make it rain on them. The wall go up and up with Oscar style figurines in windows and Daliesque takes on gargoyles playing on walls. But throughout there’s an homage to his wife. They had a somewhat unconventional partnership during their 53 year marriage, with Gala functioning as his muse, his business manager, but rarely his lover. With his encouragement, she had numerous affairs, often with young artists. He bought her a castle and would only visit her there with written permission. It’s a reminder that there is no right way to partner, no right way to love, and the insistence on such is pretty futile.
I want my museum to be a single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist object. It will be [a] totally theatrical museum. The people who come to see it will leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream.
— Salvador Dalí
I rather think he succeeded. It’s a maze of art. Art hidden in ceiling, in walls. Art hidden in art as he continued to play with illusion and pixelation. You climb a staircase to transform a room design into a face. You move forward and backward and Abe Lincoln becomes a naked woman modeled after Gala staring off into the distance. A peephole reveals a green fantasy jungle. Literally and figuratively, you become lost.
It’s an experience only slightly dampened by the sheer volume of people.
After we headed to Cadaques a coastal town where Dali and Gala had a home which is now preserved as a museum. It was our first glimpse of the Spanish coastline and it did not disappoint. You weave through deeply green hills before Cadaques opens to view. It’s a beautifully white town with bourgainvillea overgrowing and a warm breeze coming from the beach. We trekked up to the small church atop a hill where we found a young man playing classical guitar under a tree (are you freakin’ kidding me!?)
Their home reminded me vaguely of Pablo Neruda’s homes, small light filled rooms crammed to the gills with knick knacks large and small. There was a giant stuffed polar bear holding a lamp, ladened with heavy necklaces and either ski poles or a rifle, I’m not remembering. Dali apparently originally bought a fish shack and redid it then another which he connected, then another, then he built a studio on top of the first one, then he bought another shack, and so it grew. It’s not a cozy house, feeling almost performative, and perhaps it has been redone in this one, but it also just doesn’t especially reflect my aesthetic of big open spaces. Not so with the yard. An epic display of olive trees and white stucco walls with an intimate space for a pool and almost throne like space where you could picture royalty getting fanned and fed grapes at the same time. But from the outside, it’s all pretty unassuming.
At all points, Heidi fully indulged my deep enchantment with novel forms of travel. And after having spent 3 weeks in Europe, I gotta say, we super suck at public transit. Buses, subways, and trains are clean and efficient with phenomenal signage and I don’t typically think of Italy or Spain as the European height of industry or efficiency. What must a German train be like!? We took a funicular, the subway, a cable car, a bus, a boat, and a train.
We managed to fit in two beach days, the first at Sitges (say Sitch-ess) about an hour south by train and the second at Barceloneta a manmade beach in the city and accessible by public transit on our second to last full day. And I only burned myself the latter time. Win. Sitges feels more like a coast town, the beach was long and sandy with water getting deeper then a bar raising back up, it felt protected. Barceloneta was definitely colder, in fairness the day wasn’t as hot, more crowded and had a pebblier texture. Drinks were overpriced at both. But also drinks were available at both…
Heidi wanted to go to a castle. I wanted to go on a funicular and a cable car. In Barcelona this can all be accomplished in one fell swoop to Castell Montjuic. Ok, so the funicular was basically in a tunnel the whole time and the castle is more like a fortress of death. The cable car was an unmitigated success.
Castell de Montjuic started life as a tower in the 1600s to warn of approaching danger. For the next 300 years it would expand and be used to hold and execute political prisoners and on occassion conduct military operations against the city of Barcelona by the rest of Spain. While still using it as a prison and execution site, Franco inaugurated it as a Museum of Military Armor in 1963. Damn Gina, that’s cold.
In 2007, it was finally handed over to Barcelona, who have done significant restoration work and opened the current museum documenting the history of the castle/fort. It’s a very sad and quiet place, with the heavy toll of its past still present its very austerity. If it’s taking me over 2 years to get over 9 years of a relatively tame marriage, how long does it take a whole people to recover from more than 300 years of violence and repression? What does it mean to carry it and face it and allow it space in your soul, to make some kind of peace with trauma? Is it more than time? Deep thoughts by Kerry.
And sometimes we just had fun. In a way that felt achingly good and like a distant memory. We laughed. We went down a slide, we cried a little. I made her watch Trevor Noah. We found parrots. We marveled at narrow streets and charming vistas. We ate. We drank. We found women exercise on weird bouncy shoes (ok, I googled they are called Kangoos). We drank wine in a plaza and got hit on. Heidi got a cute man who wanted us to meet him at a another bar. Mine was missing his two front teeth. I miss adventuring with you all so much.
While we stayed in a big avenued, leafy green, updated feeling neighborhood, Barcelona is not lacking in narrow-street old stuff. Originally the Romans found Barcino, a small outpost of the more powerful Tarragona down the coastline. As with all outposts, the Romans built walls around their small colony, including a distinct Jewish quarter. This has since grown into the Gothic Quarter and Born districts of Barcelona. You can still see the remains of the walls and aqueduct. Early one morning we saw ballet dancers performing in a plaza outside the Cathedral of Barcelona. Fun fact- a cathedral is the seat of the bishop, meaning each designated territory can only have one. Basilicas, on the other hand, are granted their status in recognition of their unique importance and may be plentiful.
It’s a hard city to pinpoint. For a long time, Barcelona was sort of isolated in favor of other ports and cities and then in 1992 Barcelona hosted the Olympics. The city launched a massive program to reframe itself as a modern destination, including building the artificial beach of Barceloneta, launching a campaign around awareness of Gaudi, modernizing infrastructure and giving some of its gothic history a bit of a facelift. It wears tourism almost as an armor, an acquired identity and it does it so well that it’s hard to scratch the surface.
It also built a magic fountain.
And on weekends in the summer, the fountain performs.
Set to classical or Frank Sinatra or Bad Bunny or the Beatles, the fountain is choreographed by magic in shape, size and color of spray while the music plays. It’s a kinda awesome free event, we brought snacks and water bottles full of wine. Next time I think hallucinogens are in order.
And oh how we ate. I think we half lived off cheese with tomatoes & olive oil and white wine. Heidi even ate olives and pronounced at least one of them not disgusting. Nothing feels more international in this city than the cuisine.
For a massive piece of indulgence, we went to a hammam, aka a Turkish bath. To be fair, this was really more like a spa with an imitation of hammam, but it was delicious. The locker room was huge and brilliant and we changed quickly into our swimsuits and donned the little booties they gave us. Then we were led downstairs to the pools, actually we were led literally everywhere in this entire place, but I digress. This was like out of a movie. It’s dark and smells good. The walls are brick and arched, and I don’t think it really was candelight, but it felt like it. There’s a large seating area, a sauna that smells of eucalyptus and mint, a float pool with a bar you can rest your neck on to stay in place, two cold plunge pools, two hot pools, one large medium pool, an enormous and powerful hot tub divided into two sides, one is open seating, the other has seats carved into and jets everywhere around the seat. On the back side of the seating area are 4 marble blocks- think cemetary. After an hour or so of floating in bliss between the various tubs, we were led to the marble blocks where we were scrubbed down with a black exfoliant, Heidi made me take the male masseuse. Traditionally this is done with a kessa glove, honestly I have no idea what they used on us, but after a vigorous scrub, warm water was delicately poured over me. I think we rinsed off after that? before being led up to our massage, where warm oil was poured on us. It was the fanciest spa thing I’ve done and worth every penny. Heidi decided we were queens. Queens take Ubers home, not the subway. Queens also drink wine when they get there.
And sometimes, they go on boats. Romantic sunset sailboat cruises nonetheless. We actually found ourselves on a party boat with free flowing cava and Dua Lipa playing. It was about the right size group, a 30 something couple from South Korea, 4 women in their 20s from the Ukraine, 3 girls in their younger 20s from the US & Canada, one random kinda weird, but nice dude from Turkey and me & Heids.
Our captain, David, was from Barcelona and made a big deal about how he was only supposed to give us 2 glasses of cava, but he was a cool captain so we could have as much as we want and then he turned over the playlist and upped the volume to the crowd. The younguns won that one, but I think Heidi and I won the cava. The trip started off with grey skies and not especially warm, so we weren’t particularly planning on hopping in for a swim. But cava flowed, and the Turkish dude jumped in. So I jumped in and Heidi jumped in. Actually, it was considerably warmer than expected. Also we couldn’t be out daringed by the 20-somethings. I think we both felt the need for a little “40s are fun” proving ourselves.
And in the end we did get a lovely sunset.
My trip, even more than Heidi’s, featured a lot of God. Stories about God or representations of biblical stories or myths around God, or people building things for the glory of God. There was a lot of God. I’ve never been a believer, but in all my travel, nothing has inspired more aspirational beauty than God(s). And sure, it could be argued that God has been a pretty effective tool for acquiring power and wealth and that’s certainly true. But as a good little socialist, I don’t believe that wealth is the sole driver of invention. I don’t believe that Michelangelo made David for the money, that Gaudi imagined the Sagrada Familia cause of the pay. I think they had a passion and a vision and a need to show God through beauty. Remarkable beauty. Maybe in that I can be grateful to God. And with that, we turned our steps to Montserrat (haha, gotcha! I said no Gaudi this post).
Montserrat, literally jagged or serrated mountain, is national park about an hour NW of Barcelona, getting near wine country here. It is also home to Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey. In the present day, the Benedictine Abbey is famous for its location and its boys’ choir. Traditionally, in order to be a Catalonian one must hike to the Abbey and apparently many young people still make the trek.
The Abbey was founded in 1025 and features a basilica which is home to the Black Madonna, or La Moreneta. She is one of Catalonia’s two patron saints. Legend has it she was carved in Jerusalem by St. Luke in the early days of the church (science may have cast doubt on this). In the 800s, she was discoveredd by shepherd children drawn to a cave which cast out a glow and from which emanated heavenly music, Santa Cova. She granted heart’s most earnest desires from her cave, before a jealous bishop attempted to relocate the Madonna to a nearby town. He organized a procession and ceremony for the removal, however as the group proceeded, the statue grew heavier and heavier and eventually even the strongest of men couldn’t lift her. And with that she somehow successfully communicated that she wanted to stay on the mountain. So they built a monastery around her.
We were told that you could for about 12 euro offer a prayer and rub the sphere she holds which opening your other hand to symbolize your acceptance of divine grace. If your prayer is granted, you must to return to Montserrat and give her a gift. In fact there was a whole room of random ass “gifts” that looked a bit more like a garage sale. But at first, we couldn’t even find her. 1. She’s not that big. 2. She’s above the altar with no clear path to touch any part of her. As it turns out there’s actually a little balcony there in front of her and you get led through a secret passageway to said balcony to make your wish/prayer. That you paid for. And must pay again if it comes true. Which seems to denote a certain lack of confidence in her wish granting abilities, otherwise, just leave the gift up front?
Below the monastery hosts an ages old farmers market with local cheese, honey, nuts, nougat and other wares. The area is celebrated for a Catalan cheese called Mató. Made with whatever milk you happen to have on hand, it most closely resembles a ricotta and is classically served with a healthy topping of local honey.
The mountain offers a lot to explore and there actually is a hotel or two up there. In retrospect, I wish we’d stayed a night there and done some hiking and checked the out the musuem (and the cable car!), but as we were just on a day trip, we carried on to lunch and the winery.
I’m winery spoiled. This was a lovely, biodynamic vineyard and winery in the Penedes DO. Catalonia is the birthplace of Cava, which is made exactly like champagne but not being Champagne cannot, in fact, be champagne. Penedes produce almost 95% of Cava and pioneered a machine techonology that replaced hand riddling. If you haven’t recently toured somewhat that does a champagne style sparkle, riddling is this insane fucking process by which some poor schmo rotates each bottle a quarter of a turn and slightly changes the tilt to displace sediment. They do this every day, to every individual bottle for like a month and half. The goal being that all sediment will descend to the neck of the bottle. Winemakers then freeze the bottle of the neck to harden the sediment, when they open the bottle to put in the final cork, the built up pressure will shoot the sediment bullet out and then the cork is quickly inserted to lose as little bubble as possible. This is an insane process. I’m guessing God was involved.
This whole time we learned about the distinct history and pride, not just in Barcelona, but in Catalonia. And it exterted itself in weird ways, bragging about how progressive women’s right were in the late 1800s, a genuine concern for animal welfare represented by a ban on bull fighting, which kinda seems bare minimum, and of course, a general disdain for all things Castille. Seriously matches between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid must be intense. And having been in Andalucia, I could see their point. So it felt kinda of strange to seek out Spain things in a place that focused so heavily on not being Spanish. Nonetheless, we went to flamenco. I am extremely pleased with myself for my find on Heidi’s first flamenco experience.
I found a cave.
Not only can these women move their feet in magical ways, but it seemed like the whole performance was a bit call and response, you could watch them reacting in real time to one another. It was like Spanish dance jazz.
People don’t get to live like this. And I know I prioritize it and spend money on it and somehow have developed of talking others into doing it with me and maybe people should live this way. What a fantabulous trip.
Stay tuned for Part II the legend of Gaudi
I ate no tacos this week.
Year One Project 
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