June 20 Day 7 Barcelona

Another lovely sunny day in Barcelona. We woke up pleased that we had made reservations for a walking tour that didn’t start until 11 AM. This gave us a chance to have a leisurely morning, with coffee and breakfast, checking emails and getting ready for the day.

We decided to try a “free" walking tour of the old Gothic neighborhood of Barcelona. These types of tours are given by often graduate students with a lot of enthusiasm, basically work for tips. We were pleased to have our guide be Raquel, a young woman who is finishing her Masters in Art Therapy. Patti talked with her about her work at our local children’s hospital, and we also got to hear more about Raquel’s interest in art as well as growing up locally in Barcelona.

The tour took us on a two and a half hour tour of the oldest section of Barcelona. It was in this section 2,500 years ago that the Romans built a small walled-city. Later, it grew to be a larger walled area and at one point had nearly 500,000 people living within the walls. Eventually, even this larger walled area was too small to hold all of the growing population for Barcelona. And so, the walls came down, having been ordered to be torn down by the Spanish king.

There were many interesting winding streets and back alleys and amazing old buildings. It was a delight to wander and hear some of the stories of the history of Spain, as well as the Catalan area of which Barcelona is the capital.

There are many tales to be told including how old the Catalan flag was developed which is even now flown throughout the area in support of independence from the rest of Spain.

We also saw many important religious and spiritual sites. We saw the site of the oldest synagogue in Barcelona dating back to 1200’s. Also, several other churches and cathedrals. They were all very, very old!

We took a little break during our tour and had some really delicious Argentinian empanadas. Yum!

One of the unique things that we got to see was something called the dancing egg. This is a custom that goes back centuries that includes decorating a fountain with intricate flower arrangements and then placing an egg at the top of the fountain and watching it go up and down in dance on the water jet. Not the sort of thing you see every day. This is done for the Corpus Christi holiday, a celebration that comes 60 days after Easter. We had the chance to see the dancing egg at two different sites. Some things you just happen upon and it’s just pretty interesting to observe.

And then, we ended the tour by finding out some of the interesting ways that the local Catalonian people celebrate Christmas. This includes having little statues of famous people sitting on toilet, as well as a small creature made out of a log with kind of antlers and legs on it. This is the creature that brings children Christmas presents rather than Santa here in Catalunya. The way it brings the presents is it is covered in a cloth and then the kids feed it for a while and then come and whack it with sticks and hope that the log will poop out presents.  (This is called feeding the poop log.)Yes, that does appear to be the local custom. Somethings maybe don’t translate so well.  If you want to read more about these traditions, click here.

We ended with a group photo and bid all of our fellow travelers a happy journey.

Fortunately, we ended our tour just a short distance from the Picasso Museum.  He was born and raised in Catalonia.  His father was an art teacher, so young Picasso received consistent encouragement and instruction in following his passion to draw.  For periods of time he lived in Barcelona.  The museum focused on his early paintings.  There were amazing oils painted when he was in his early teens.  The painting "Science and Charity" was painted in 1897, when he was only 15, and won honorable mention in a competition in Madrid.  "Las Meninas" was painted in 1957.  What a contrast!

We were very tired but had one more event left for the day, so we found a spot in one of the city parks where we laid in the grass and had a bit of a rest.

Then we headed off for an event we had really look forward to learning how to cook seafood paella. We walked a ways and found the spot, and  met another traveler who is also there for the class. And we never hooked up with the chef who was to be our teacher. Frustrating.  And more frustrating because we didn’t have the best cell phone way to communicate internationally.  We had only his What’s app number, but couldn’t figure out how to add an international number into the app. So, we never did get to make paella.

However, being travelers means you have to sometimes shift your plans. So, rather than cooking paella we had the chance to try another local delight. We stopped at a café and had pintkos pronounced “peen-chos”, literally toothpick food.   These were a little appetizer things on rounds of crusted bread. You picked out the ones you wanted and then saved the toothpicks which is how they figured out how to bill you. It reminded us of eating sushi or dim sum. We had some really delicious food and then we were happy to head back to our apartment. Patti spent some time into the evening communicating by email with the people to get her money back for the paella experience which was a no show on the chef’s part. (Success.)

But, all in all, another lovely day.

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