Far Too Short A Time in Barcelona

December 9th--It was a windy day in Barcelona.

That's a huge understatement, actually. When I met Mike for breakfast at 10:00, it was already blowing pretty hard down by the water, and continued to grow as we walked along the waterfront. Throughout the entire day and most of the night it kept going, sometimes blowing people sideways, tearing clothes off of clotheslines, and knocking down temporary construction signs. Liz said she'd almost never seen it like that before.


The plan for the day was to go see a friend of Liz's play in a bar at 1:30, eat lunch, and then tour the city on bikes. Mike came along to the bar, which was packed, and we sat and drank dark vermouth while we talked, apparently a typical thing to do on a Sunday afternoon in Barcelona.

After the bar we had lunch in a cafe with cylindrical menus and an awesome cardboard cut out of David Hasselhoff.


Then it was time for the bikes. Mike headed off in another direction, while Liz and I picked up our bikes. Similar to Paris and some other cities, Barcelona has a bike rental system where you get a bike from a rack and return it to other racks scattered around the city.



As the light was fading, we only had time to tour the three main Gaudi buildings, which were incredible. The detail and organic structure of them make the buildings full of life and artistry, and are some of the coolest I've seen on the trip.

Inspired by the story of St. George and the dragon

Meant to evoke the ocean and coral reefs (this is a weird view, I was under it looking up)

The definite highlight, however, was the Sangrada Familia cathedral, still under construction. They have been building it for over a hundred years, and is scheduled to be finished in 2026. I think it's my favorite cathedral of the trip, even though I didn't get to go inside.

Right next to the cathedral was a Christmas market, where Liz was able to teach me about a crazy part of Catalan (north-eastern Spain) culture.

For Christmas, the Spanish people get really into making nativity scenes, with incredibly elaborate and detailed figurines and scenery. One of the traditional figures is a sheperd in a traditional Catalan hat pooping. Seriously. I had it explained later to me by someone else that it's the Spanish sense of humor, that while the angels were coming down, there must have been a sheperd pooping somehwere and missing all the action.

Another hilariously inexplicable tradition is the shit log. That's literally the translation, apparently.


One is placed by the tree on Christmas, and then kids come up and hit it with sticks, singing the following song. I have faithfully copied the lyrics from Liz's translation.

Log, log,
Shit out candy,
Don't shit out
Salty things.

Log, log,
Shit out almonds
And pine nuts
Or I will hit you
With my stick.

My mind was blown. Is still blown, actually--I can't quite wrap my head around this one...

After the market Liz and I separated, and I went to meet Mike at the main soccer stadium. He had had the idea to see a game, because Barcelona was playing that night. We met up and bought two scalped tickets, which turned out to be awesome seats.

Barcelona was playing Deportivo, a far inferior team, but Deportivo scored in the first minute and made it tense--however, Barcelona scored once on a penalty kick in the first half and once in the second half to win it 2-1.

One of the coolest things was that Ronaldinho, often referred to as the best soccer player in the world, plays left striker for Barcelona, and that meant that he was right in front of us all the time for the second half. He was clearly outclassing people right and left--while he wasn't heavily involved in the game, he was pretty amazing to watch.


After the game Mike and I took the long way back, walking about an hour to get back to where he was staying. As I was leaving for Madrid the next day, we said goodbye there--it was a great week traveling with you, Mike; good luck with everything in the future, and I know we'll meet up again sometime.