Less is More.: Barcelona WITH Chris

(Tue. Nov. 10th to Thu. Nov. 12th)

Chris and I landed in Barcelona relatively late-ish on Monday night, for me to go back home for a couple days, have a couple days of class, and then get outta there and fly to Paris :)

Here's the big sign on the airport, I feel like I remember seeing this in the 92 Olympics, but who knows. It only welcomed us if we were flying into the right terminal, so I was glad Chris got to see it. Kinda cool to see it and think YEAH, I'm in Barcelona!

Chris was ready to call it a day on his new bed, that had only recently been Jenny Stahl's bed, and Ryan Cobb's before that :) My poster started peeling off the wall, as you can see, because it was held up with electrical tape, and the weather was starting to cool down so the tape was shrinking :)

Chris was partially tired because his allergies were acting up. Apparently he was allergic to Barcelona. He was fine in Switzerland. I probably should have looked up some words in Spanish before, but I just winged it and we went to a Farmacia and asked for medicamentos para ojos y nariz, or something like that- medicine for eyes and nose- thankfully even though I couldn't come up with the Spanish word for allergies, antihistamino made sense to them, and we were all set. They worked pretty well, which of course probably means it was something stronger than was even available in the US without prescription.

The bummer of Chris being there that week is that I had a professor visiting- a class of mine was a seminar with classmates in Chicago, and the professor teaching that, via video chat with us, was coming to visit for a couple days, supposedly to have some meetings and a lecture. Well she didn't have time for the lecture and didn't feel like meeting, just wanted to see "cool buildings". She'd been there before, around Olympics time, so she wanted to see things newer than that. Perfect!! So Chris wouldn't hafta be on his own seeing the city for days. He tagged along. He did his own thing for a few hours while I had Studio, then we went to meet Sarah at her hotel, and we were off. Half the stuff I'd seen before, half I hadn't, so the pictures don't document the whole process. We went to a museum that had an underground entrance, here.

That was very Richard Meier/Farnsworth-y in the main entry space.

We walked a bunch that day and the next- saw this great wall built out of brick, that had gaps everywhere so it was transparent. Obviously not bearing a whole lot of weight.

We took Sarah (and Chris) down the main pedestrian/touristy streets, and of course there were street performers, including this guy who looked like he was walking, but he was actually frozen like that. Not sure how he could stand in that position for very long!

We finally decided on a tapas place to stop for a late dinner- I was worried Chris wouldn't enjoy it, but we found some things to eat, had a beer. Unfortunately Sarah didn't treat us :) The next day was more of the same- I think we walked for 4 or 5 hours. It was great!

We started down in the old city because there was a newer building there, but first we stuck our noses in one of the many big old churches in Barcelona, the actual Cathedral.

Which had a big complex of buildings including the rectory and all, and this cool gate, that actually opens if you look carefully, and leads to who knows where. I liked it a lot.

We found the Enric Miralles building, the big undulating colorful tiled roof over a marketplace, that I've posted pictures of before. Inside, it was mostly meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, everywhere. The meat and fish was the most interesting of course...

Like the giant ham hocks, Iberica and Serrano Ham. Some of it cheap. Some of it bloody expensive.

Seafood!

Fruit!

One of the column clusters outside, holding the roof up.

There was a big promenade near the old city center, I think this was an old government building, but I forget. Looked cool though, especially with the palm trees. You don't really think of Spain having palm trees...or at least I don't!

Down at one end was the Arc de Triomf, or maybe its not spelled that way, but it gets confusing when like every major European city has their own with the same name...

Old train station. Looks like the one in Madrid.

Behind the train station, as we made our way east from the old city center to my neighborhood where all the new buildings were, we found another park- this was like a small mountain covered in tile. Odd, useless, but cool looking I guess...

Not sure what this really was either but it also looked kinda cool.

Near Sagrada Familia, we found this soccer field! Below the level of the street, between two bridges, a lot like the linear riverbed park we saw in Valencia...pretty cool! With Torre Agbar in the background, the landmark of my area...even though technically it was really the next neighborhood over.

There's the Sagrada. Under construction of course.

Some museum.

New buildings! My favorite area to walk around- lots of cool weird stuff either just built or still being built. This one was all glass, covered in a window-screen kind of material, that actually had these bubbles formed into and out of the screen all over...weird.

This was an old factory turned museum, that had the biggest swinging door I'd ever seen. It pivoted in the center, and spun practically all the way around to the opposite direction- leaving a GIANT opening when it was swung open. Really interesting.

We went back to Jean Nouvel's park at my suggestion, and wandered around there- interesting place, not a lot of people using it though. It was walled off.

This is a great photo of these two buildings, shifted away from themselves.

We then walked to the coast, some cool stuff down there too. Chris and his beard liked this wall, which overlooked the highway going by the coast, full of round glass block. Kinda cool.

Here we were at the cheese wedge again, with some new hotel in the background.

A very shiny stainless steel wall, with our reflections in it.

The breakwater was really cool, like a bunch of dice or something, all these little concrete cubes with a few rusted steel ones- must have been a piece of art. Neato.

A solar array! It also I guess served as a roof for the space underneath, but it was mostly just a lotta solar panels that were running...something... Pretty large structure though!