Summer Dreams II: Barcelona

So how fast, really, are those so-called “fast” trains in Europe, especially when you’re eager for your first date with a new city, the legendary Barcelona? Come on, are they really that fast? Heck yeah! How about covering the 621km/386 miles from Madrid to Barca in just THREE hours . . . with four stops along the way? Zoom! Fast and smooth as silk and entirely comfortable. Zoom, boom! The route flew through a landscape that sang of the open plains and yielded to the deeply eroded and rocky Sierra de Cuenca, and it soon descended across the basin of the Ebro River as we neared the Balearic sea and fabled Barcelona.

That quickly, before Sarah and I could even finish recounting the litany of the fond impressions of our second date with Madrid, we detrained at the station in Barcelona and cabbed just a handful of minutes to our next AirBnb destination. This time, we had booked a spacious penthouse flat with three bedrooms and a sprawling mirrored living room lined with books—and a piano napping peacefully in one corner. That, plus a huge deck, with a retractable sun shade, outside the floor to ceiling glass wall and overlooking the cathedrals and the distant Catalan hills and the colorful balconies of several buildings across the street. We purposely chose a venue in the Sant Antoni neighborhood, a bit away from the agro-tourist areas and relatively quiet yet alive and alluring with its own Mercado and plenty of intriguing cafes and shops and friendly barcelonís and barceloninas enjoying daily life.

In keeping with our current travel mission of art exploration, we of course visited the Picasso museum where we devoured so many of the iconic works—and the fascinating history—of this lofty artist and singular character; plus a photographic exhibition “Picasso, La mirada del fotógrafo,” translated rather lumpishly by the museum as “Picasso, Photographer’s Gaze,” with some fascinating captures of the artist’s life and, okay, his ego. We walked from the museum through the Barri Gotic area to the don’t-miss-it Las Ramblas where we realized how really, really old we were, as a rake of coltish youngsters—like, in their 20s and 30s and, oh my gosh, maybe some as old as their 40s—wizzed by on Segues and skateboards and scooters, looking oh, so, with it. Ah, and a trip of global tourists with dueling selfie sticks.

Of course, also in keeping with our typical approach to any new locale—okay, in keeping with every locale, new or old—we indulged our gastronomy mission, looking for new, yet neighborhood, settings and friendly, yet unique, tastes. . . and maybe a few wines. Oh, okay, and LOTS of gelato!

And no visit to Barcelona could be considered genuine without an immersion in Antoni Gaudi’s Catalan Modernist architecture. Gaudí’s work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature, and religion, and his vision transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by natural forms. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and moulding the details as he conceived them.

La Pedrera, meaning “The Stone Quarry,” the derogatory epithet given the building by neighbors as it was being constructed on the Passeig de Gracia, the Michigan Avenue of Barcelona, was a private residence—the official name was “Casa Mila”—and when it was completed in 1912 it was was an expression, in stone, of the Modernisme that reflected the brazen rebellion of those times in all the arts: Proust published À la recherche du temps perdu in 1913; Stravinsky premiered his Rite of Spring to riots in Paris in 1913; and Picasso completed many of his iconic paintings while the construction of La Pedrera was bemusing Barcelona. And they didn’t even need Instagram (although Picasso did seem to like his semi-selfies!)

Sarah and I thoroughly loved our tour of La Pedrera, wandering the whale’s belly attic, snooping into the representative apartment from a hundred years ago, and ogling the giant warriors atop the roof. And, of course we found a marvelous restaurant for lunch followed by our first stop—of many—for miraculous gelato at Emilia Cremeria. Sadly, heavy rains drenched our plans for a tour of Gaudi’s ongoing final life’s work, the cathedral of La Sagrada Familia. Still under construction after a hundred years, it will top our list for our next visit to Barcelona.

But the sun shone brightly as we decided to grab another fast train, this time to the charming town of Figueres, about an hour north of Barca, to take in one of Sarah’s lifelong inspirations, the Salvador Dali Museum. Dali grew up in Figueres—and is buried there—and said of his intended museum, “I want my museum to be a single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist object.” He helped design the building and provided art from his own collection in addition to producing new elements to create that experience. See for yourself.

So, a fabulous first date with Catalunya, its art, its culture, its food and wine and gelato, its vibrant neighborhoods with their evocative graffiti, and, of course, its delightful barcelonins. But given Barca’s teeming crowds of selfing and elbow-tossing visitors, do our hearts perhaps still yearn for Madrid . . . Hmmmmm, maybe another story, right?

Okay, what could top a magical pair of weeks in Madrid and Barcelona . . . Oh, that’s right, how about an Agriturismo in the rolling Tuscan countryside? Sure, why not! Arrivederci!