Barcelona, The Second Day!

It was because of this man's moustache that we ate Mexican food in the afternoon of our second day in Barcelona.



This day was to be the day when we did not get assaulted by A-rabs or assaulted at all, with any luck, so we had to stock up on guacamole and nostalgia for kitsch Mexican back home. I got fajitas. Tay got a burrito. And because I love the way 'cerveza' allows one to roll a saucy 'R' in the middle of a word, I got a cerveza (a Voll-Damm). It was Damm good.

Palm trees and pink houses!

Tay said that she thought the big orange cat used the small cat as the sympathy cat, like goons using dwarves. There was no sympathy to be had.

But we gave Lonely Planet a second chance because we lacked a geographical target of any sort. It led us to yet another of Gaudi's beauties/marvels/monstrosities, after we marched up a hill past some sun-painted clay houses, alternately off-white and tan with clothes drying on strings on balconies and Spanish women walking their Spanish dogs.

The hill kept going, defying the scale of the map. Then we got there, to Guelli Park, on the north side of the Gracia district of town. It was commissioned by this super-rich guy for Gaudi in the opening to the 20th century. Gaudi was instructed to build a 'Garden City' for other super-rich people, in the form of 'great European city plans of the day,' according to an info sign in the park. So he carried on, dream-strewn, throughout acres upon acres. They ran out of money in 1914... but this is what one gets when he gives Antoni Gaudi unlimited money and a copy of CandyLand.

Ain't nothin' like a mosaic lizard/dinosaur to gather the kiddies 'round.

This man does his laundry across the street. Washing and drying. Washing and drying. Washing and drying as people walk beyond.

Inside Guelli Park, looking back out. Still very excited.

Remember how the columns at La Sagrada Familia meant to emulate forests? These, in the 100-column room (meant to be a marketplace) look like mushrooms. And mosaics are everywhere.

(no idea why this font is blue) ... Above the 100-column room, there sits this huge courtyard, surrounded by a mosaic fence and populated by a wildly distributed mosaic of person, of people dancing and people watching, people eating baguettes on dates as they touch each other's hands, people dangling their legs over, peering out with young and deeply-soulled eyes on the city, people mindful of nothing but the sun and the day and the way it pulls us together.

People selling jewelry, made from glass or rocks or shells and hemp. Lots of hemp.

A pair of darkly-clad hipsters used these strings tied to two poles, dipped in bubble stuff, to make these huge, flowing bubbles that were chased relentlessly by this boy.

And these kids.

And these kids.

A string of walkways leads you to the top of the hill into which the Park is dug. On the way there, there's a soccer field. No action today, sadly, except for construction workers playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart."

As we lumbered up to the final staircase to the lookout point at the top, knees squeaking, a French woman, probably around 60, sped in front of us. She surveyed the stairs and pushed up them, step step step step. She got to the top, looked out, took a breath, and walked down, smiling.

A person with a lot of money lived here.

The guardrails for the walkways, at corners, spun on these blocks that looked like they had pineapples on them.

My happy sightseeing tour.

This is an amusement park! There's a ferris wheel and a roller coaster and it sits above the entire cityscape, silhouetted blue always, watching over the city with crazyman eyes.

Final travel installment tomorrow.

Soon:

Belle & Sebastian Friday (there's this hipster dancing joint afterwards that gave me a free pass to the guest list because I told them I'd invent a new dance move...stay tuned)

Pub on Saturday for Six Nations Rugby