Tag: Barcelona

Beautiful Barcelona

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography5 Comments

After our fun ride in from Tarragona and our lunch at La Rita, we got a decent night’s sleep on the first bed I had been comfortable on in 21 days. The next morning all six of us had been scheduled to do a 5-hour tour of the city, and the Gaudi highlights with Olga from Tours By Locals. Sadly, my brother had eaten something that did not agree with him so he and Jamie stayed at the hotel, and the rest of us set off for what was to be an outstanding tour. It was outstanding, primarily because of the excellent Olga.

I know I have mentioned Tours By Locals before, as we used two of their guides previously on this trip, Hans in Amsterdam and George in Athens. Both of them were great. I have used them on many occasions, but Olga may have been the best guide they have ever sent our way. To start with, she was 10 minutes early. I love early. I got a call from the lobby saying that our guide was there. As soon as Pam and Dave were downstairs, Olga’s driver pulled up in a wonderfully spacious Mercedes van. It was so GREAT not to be stuck in a “luxury motor coach.”

Kathleen and I with Olga on the roof of Casa Mila.

When I first contacted Tours By Locals a month previous, it had been hard finding a guide that either wasn’t already booked or could accommodate some of the things we wanted to do because of the festival going on for the entire time we were in the city. On the other hand, Olga was completely willing to work with me on setting up a tour that would incorporate the best of Barcelona. That’s what I love about Tours By Locals; the guides will work with you to see the things you want to see. When you go to Barcelona, some of the things most people want to see are the works of revolutionary Antoni Gaudi, the most famous of which is La Sagrada Familia. We knew upfront that the church would be completely closed to anyone but locals, so seeing the inside was not an option. Olga made suggestions of things we could see that would be a good alternative, and I liked them all. We decided to do Gaudi’s Casa Mila, Park Güell, see the outside of the La Sagrada Familia and then tour the old town. Olga said she would try and throw in some surprises along the way.

La Pedrera—Casa Mila)

When Kathleen and I were here in 2007, we toured the beautiful La Pedera—Casa Mila building. The building is an entire block made up of two condominiums totally designed by Antoni Gaudi (who designed La Sagrada Familia) as well as many other one-of-a-kind buildings throughout Barcelona. We wanted to see it again and make sure that the rest of the group also got to see it. Kathleen had no problem touring this building in 2007 and thought she could still do it because when you did the tour, you took the elevator to the top of the building. And then you walked down and did the tour on the way.

Olga told us that this had changed since we were there last (what hadn’t 😜?) and that now you walked UP the stairs and then exited by way of the elevator. This just wasn’t going to work for us. So Olga jumped into action as soon as we got there, and in no time, Kathleen and I were going up the original apartment elevator (not open to anyone but employees) to the top floor to start our tour down. I wish I had taken a photo because it was one elegant elevator. It even had a Gaudi-designed, hand-carved wooden bench that Kathleen got to sit on while we went up. This is what makes local guides so good. They know the people to talk to (because Olga toured there constantly), and they know what can and can’t be done with the right request. We were blown away.

We had an awesome time touring the building. I am going to let the photos and the captions tell you the rest of the story. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Casa Mila from the outside
Looking up the façade.
The entry way is gorgeous
Gaudi loved to showcase nature in his work.
Loved the etched glass windows.
Looking up in the inner courtyard.
It almost looks like…
…a gateway to heaven.
The main reception stairs to the second floor apartments
Incredible ceilings
They have different rooms set up exactly as they were when the building was inhabitied.
The original owners lost the buidling during a financial downturn.
A bank bought the building.
The bank turned it into a museum…
…so the public could tour it.
The rooms were incredibly large for the time.
Gaudi also designed much of the furniture.
Of course every European household has a bidet.
A small tub for bathing the babies in the house.
The windows all had incredible views.
The office
I loved the patterned floors
Either done with wood or tiles.
Beautifully furnished throughout.
The dining room.
Even the ceilings were beautiful.
A Gaudi-designed bed.
And mirror.
The design of the furniture mirroed the design of the house.
It takes a while to tour the floor where people lived.
No showers in that age.
Even the coat rack was Gaudi-desgned.
When the building became public…
…this amazing space above the living space and below the roof was discovered.
The supports for the roof and the entire building were here and they are beautiful.
They have turned this area into a museum.
Here you can see how Gaudi worked
There is a scale model of the entire building.
As well as a display of Gaudi’s furniture designs.
And then you reach the roof.
It has amazing views.
In every direction
As well as these amazing sculptures everywhere.
Gaudi loved to design.
It is said that George Lucas came to Casa Mila …
And used these statues as his inspiration for the stormtroopers in Star Wars.
It sure looks like it.
The roof top is truly a gem.
And from there you have an amazing view of La Sagrada Familia.
When we were here in 2007, the air quality was horrid…
…so my photos were nowhere near this good.
Can’t you just hear the…
Darth Vader March.
Looking back down into the courtyard.

Park Güell

Our second stop on the tour was the beautiful Park Güell. This is another of Gaudi’s masterpieces that was originally built out in the country north of Barcelona, but over the years, the city has grown to swallow it up, and it is now almost in the city center. There is so much to see there, but I will just let you see it in my photos. Enjoy.

Note how the name is spelled. The man who commissioned it wanted a British Park.
Remind you of palm trees?
One of the many buildings on the grounds.
The view from the Park
Remind you of elephants?
A band was playing in the park.
The queen of Barcelona
On the upper level of the park. The place was swamped.
Loved all the nature depicted in the art.
This is the support for the upper part of the park.
More elephants? Everything is designed with a purpose.
Looking down from the top of the park.
This was Gaudi’s home for a while.
Underneath the upper park.
There are four huge circles in the ceiling.
They represent the four seasons.
The Park’s unofficial mascot, at the front gate.
Looking up at the top of the park.
Note how the tiles are both convex and concave.
The top of the house Gaudi lived in.
Check out the dots on top, which are actually coffee cups turned upside down.
On the house across the entrance from Gaudi’s home.
Gaudi’s house almost looks like a gingerbread house.
Looking back at the park.
The other house on the opposite side of the entrance.
Beautiful design was everywhere.

La Sagrada Família

Even though this incredible church was closed to non-locals due to the current festival, Olga wanted us to see it close up from the outside so she could explain the building and the significance of the art on the outside. You can’t believe the art on the outside of La Sagrada Família. Maybe you will have you see my photos. If you get bored with all the closeups, please feel free to jump out, but I did pair this down from more than 200 photos. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

I don’t believe I have ever been so stunned by a building.
There is nothing quite like this church.
As you can see from the cranes, after more than 100 years, this building is still not done.
They hope to finish it in the next 10 years.
So many incredible pieces of art on this building.
None of the artwork is Guadi’s.
The church itself is his work of art.
But the art is everywhere created by his disciples.
So much to look at.
This tree with doves is on the birth of Christ side.
There is fruit on top of the spires.
All kinds.
It is everywhere.
But the cranes are hard to shoot around.
You can see the fruit on the top of the spires.
This is the top of the recently finished Virgin Mary spire.
It is a very photogenic cathedral.
From every angle.
The nativity.
So much to see.
Olga explained all of this but…
…I would have needed to take notes to keep up with it….
…but I had a camera in my hands.
Aren’t you glad I did?
Otherwise you would have to read about this…
…amazing art instead of seeing it.
Sadly, this was right across…
…a very small side streed from the cathedral. I think this is JUST WRONG!
Moving to the front we passed the new chapel on the left side of the church.
And the towers that connect it.
With amazing spires.
And lions.
The current front of the cathedral.
With more art everywhere.
When we were here in 2007, I was shooting a small…
…point and shoot camera with no zoom lens.
I was so happy I could get closeups of the artwork.
Including this art of the crucifixion.
And the risen Christ.
Between the twin spires.

The old city of Barcelona

Our next stop after the incredible La Sagrada Família was to head downtown (in HORRIBLE TRAFFIC) to the oldest parts of Barcelona. We walked by the original cathedral, which dates to the 13th century, while Olga pointed out a lot of truly remarkable sights. We saw a piece of art by Pablo Picasso that he drew with his usual minimalist style.

About this time, we were starving. So Olga recommended we try pintxos. If you have never been to a pintxos restaurant, it is almost worth a trip to Barcelona just to try it. Olga took us to her favorite place, Bilbao Berria Barcelona. Pintxos are topping of every kind placed on slices of awesome bread, and they put different colors and styles of sticks into the stack. The stack includes either cold or hot toppings. Hot ones might include melted cheese, roasted tomatoes, sausages, and serrano ham and the cold ones include cheeses, veggies, and so much more. There are even dessert pintxos. These are all set up on a number of buffet tables, and you choose what you want. Then after you eat them, you put the stick into a small metal container on the table, and when you are done, they count the sticks (different prices for different colors) and give you your check. Five of us ate a BUNCH of these, and the total bill was less than $80 and that included a bottle of wonderful Catalan wine. An amazing value, and every one of them is delicious. Here are some pictures from this part of the tour.

The ancient cathedral which has had modern buildings built into it to support it.
This reminded me of the Bridge of Sighs in Venice.
Picasso’s drawing on a building front.
On the other side of the building.
These are the beautiful street signs in the old city.
I took this exact same photo in 2007.
Beautiful art on every wall.

After lunch, we walked from the cathedral campo towards another campo where Olga was hoping she had a surprise for us, and she did. Hopefully, you remember a couple of posts ago when I wrote about the human pyramid building contests in Tarragona. Sadly, I could not see any of the actual pyramid building itself when we were there. I only got to take photos of the parade before the competition, which got rained out.

But when we walked around the corner in Barcelona, there it was, a castella (the Spanish name for the human pyramids) right in front of us. We got to watch this team (who were doing a demo, not a competition) build a three-story high human pyramid. Just look. It’s amazing.

We arrived just as they started building.
I got to see the entire thing.
From differnt angles.
As they built up higher and higher.
Just watch it build.
The top person just has to get to the top, turn around and come back down.
Those that climb to the very top are usually just children.
Watching videos of the actual competition…
I have learned that they are judged for a number of things…
…height of the pyramid…
…degree of difficulty…
…time it takes to build it…
…and get everyone back down.
If you go to YouTube, search for Taragonna Human Pyramids.
Truly amazing stuff.
These kids blow me away.
Totally confident.
And Barcelona supports Ukraine. We saw this in a lot of places.

A walk on my own

After watching the amazing human pyramids being built, our tour time was over. Olga had released our driver when it got to five hours, but she stayed with us to walk the other Kathleen, Dave and Pam to Las Ramblas to grab a cab and walked with me as I headed back to the hotel about four miles away. I wanted a few more photos to show you the huge crowds and incredible craziness that is Las Ramblas, the main tourist street in Barcelona. Here’s my last set of pics for Barcelona. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

La Boqueria Public Market was closed for the festival. I had gotten some great photos there in 2007.
The scene on Las Ramblas was crazy.
The old Opera House.
Looking down an incredibly packed side street.
When you are photo walking during day, this is an obligatory shot.
The Columbus monument.
With a very cool lion.
Columbus pointing to a land he though he discovered. Someone needs to tell the indigenous people who were already there.
I think I just liked the sky here.
All up and down Las Ramblas there are artists…
…doing charicatures.
There are beautiful buildings.
Now you know what he did after he finished being president.
On my way back to our hotel.
This building is really old.
Loved this painted door on a garage.
Finally found the queen of Barcelona in our shower window. And yes, our shower had a window.
In the park next to the hotel there was this dragon.
With a not so happy message for me on the back.
But there was a part of the festival going on in the park.
Lots of colorful costumes
The Nobu Hotel, our home in Barcelona…chosen by Viking.

That about did it for our day in Barcelona. It so far exceeded my expectations and gave us a wonderful end to this incredible 29-day adventure that had started in August in Amsterdam. I guess you could say that when it comes to European cities, we went from A to B on this trip. I have one more trip-related post for you. Hopefully, I will have it up by tomorrow. It will be my review of the entire cruise and what we loved and didn’t love on Viking Sky. Then after that, I promised a post on how I shoot my photos. I so appreciate all the comments I have gotten on them. They are my pride and joy. If you want to see more of my pics, please follow me on Instagram (jimbellomo13) or Facebook (Jim Bellomo) where I post a single travel photo every day. Just one. Or you can see a lot of my photography that I sell here on my Picfair site.

Barcelona is my life, and I do not plan to leave.   —Gerard Pique

Disembarkation and our trip to Barcelona

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography7 Comments

When we cruise, the first thing the real cruisers want to know about is the food. But the second is the embarkation/disembarkation. It’s been my experience after more than 30 cruises that if things are going to go wrong, one of these two times is when that will happen.

With this disembarkation, I am happy to say that nothing went wrong…except to say that they made us get off the ship (this is every cruiser’s lament). Pretty much everything went off without a hitch getting off the ship. We got up, had breakfast, and were asked to be out of our stateroom by 8:00 am. Sat for an hour in the Atrium, got our tag colors called, grabbed our luggage, took it to a van (since we were doing Viking’s post-cruise two-day extension), it was loaded into a van that followed our “luxury motor coach” into Barcelona from Tarragona.

That’s where thing kind of went bad. Viking now had to do something with the 35+ people on the “luxury motor coach” from 9:30 am when we got on until 1:00 pm when the Nobu Hotel in Barcelona would be ready to check us in. So they arranged a “luxury motor coach” tour that would drive us from the ship to Barcelona and then drive around Barcelona, showing us some of the sights. This started with them getting us lost before they even got the “luxury motor coach” out of the port (Seriously!).

Then they sent us a guide who admitted up front that he usually worked with Japanese tourists, so his English was not very good. On top of that, he also (like other guides we had previously toured with) felt like they had to fill every moment of the three-hour sojourn with the sound of his voice. He even started singing at one point. I overheard another passenger say, “I thought the guy with the flute yesterday was bad, but this guy is so much worse!” I had to agree. And since he was not confident in his English, he seemed to be much less confident in his directions and tour facts.

It took us about 70 minutes to get from Tarragona to the outskirts of Barcelona. He talked about 90% of the time. Mostly gibberish to us because his English was so poor. Our first stop in Barcelona was at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. This gorgeous art museum we thought was built high above and far from the city and not near anything. I took the header photo I am using today from in front of it.

We later learned that we were less than a mile from our hotel but that it would take almost three full hours to get there. And we didn’t stop to see the museum, just to use the bathrooms. Viking had bought tickets for us to get into the museum, but then we had 15 minutes to use the bathrooms and get back on the “luxury motor coach”…so we could be driven around and mumbled at while seeing the sights through a “luxury motor coach” window. As a photographer, this is my idea of torture. Seeing things I want to shoot but not being able to shoot them because the reflections in the “luxury motor coach” make it impossible to get a good shot. I did take a few when we got off at the museum. Here’s what they look like. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The inside of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya
From here, I could have walked to our hotel in 30 minutes but, it took us 2.5 hours to drive there.
La Sagrada Familia from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Once we arrived at the hotel around 1:15 pm, we were told to go up to the second floor and that we would be checked in at a special desk just for Viking cruisers. When we got to the second-floor room they were using, there was about an hour’s wait to get registered. This is because they had planned well by sending the first “luxury motor coach” off and then not sending the second one for about 30 minutes. That way, we should have been staggered when we reached the hotel and able to check in without any lines. But this was not to be after our “luxury motor coach” driver got lost getting out of the port, and by the time he figured out how to get out, “luxury motor coach” number two was ahead of us, and we were not that far ahead of “luxury motor coach” number three. That meant we all pretty much got there at the same time. Viking had close to 250 people staying at the Nobu Barcelona. It was very much like the Marriott where we had done our pre-cruise extension in Athens. Both of them were four or five-star, high-rise hotels that were well outside (not in easy walking distance) of the main attractions of their respective cities. The rooms were nice, and the included breakfast at both places was delicious, but I would have traded that for something a little closer to where I wanted to shoot pics.

So instead of standing in line to register, we left our bags with the bellman at the front desk and took a taxi to a wonderful restaurant that Kathleen and I had eaten in when we were here in 2007—La Rita. The restaurant had been there for about 10 years before that and is still going strong. The menu was exactly as we remembered it. I made reservations almost a month in advance because when we go to Spain, we make our main meal, our lunch. People in Barcelona eat dinner around 9:30 pm, and we just can’t eat that late. So we have our main meal at lunch (around 2:00) and then grab some tapas in the evening.

After lunch, we came back and were able to check in easily, with no lines at all, and our rooms were ready. We unpacked, I did some posting on this blog and some photo processing, and we hit the hay for a very busy day on Sunday, our only full day in amazing Barcelona.

I had thought I could wind up the entire cruise with two more posts, one about Barcelona and disembarkation and one to sum up the cruise. But once I started talking about disembarkation, this one got too long to include our awesome day in Barcelona, so you will have to read two more. See you tomorrow. (BTW: we are home in Redmond after a hellacious day of flights and being up for 26 hours straight.)

You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I’d probably want to die in San Sebastian.  —Anthony Bourdain

 

Let’s do lunch…in Barcelona

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences3 Comments

Here’s the second of my posts about our most memorable food experiences during our travel together. Since we started with breakfast last time, I thought we might try lunch this time. And if there is a memorable lunch, it’s the one we had at a marvelous restaurant in Barcelona, Spain—La Rita.

Part of the reason this experience was so good was the contrast to what had happened the day before, during our first full day in Barcelona. We had done a lot of touring and after we finished touring Gaudi’s Casa Mila, Kathleen decided it was time to eat. We had previously decided that lunch would be our big meal of each day as Barcelonians don’t eat dinner until well after 9:00 pm and that is just too late for us. It also seems that on every trip we have one really bad food experience and this lunch was to be that experience.

Poor planning on my part had put us in a part of the city that I had not done my research on any restaurants (which I usually do). So we wandered looking for something on a menu that not only looked good but that we could fathom what it was. As most of you know, I am a pretty adventurous eater but my lovely bride isn’t as much. Especially when it comes to fish that we don’t know (she has shellfish allergies).

After turning down a number of places due to their limited menu we finally found a small Italian place who had items on their menu (pastas, etc.) that we recognized. But after we were seated we found that those items weren’t available at lunch when only a fixed-price menu (two course for 8 euro) was served. We had a choice of four appetizers and four entrees. We both went with the simple side salad as our appetizer and I had the calamari as my entree while Kathleen chose what the menu called “beef higado.” The waiter mimed to us that this was a part of the cow that came from somewhere near the flank. We kind of assumed (you know the saying) that it would be flank steak or something close.

After the waiter had brought our salad I suddenly realized that where he had been pointing on his body to indicate the part of the cow the meat came from was a little higher than the flank. So I got out my iPhone and did a quick Google search that revealed (just as the entrees arrived) that higado is LIVER. Now Kathleen likes most beef but not liver and since she doesn’t eat calamari, swapping was out of the question. Besides the liver problem, my calamari was awful–over-breaded with no sauces or even lemon and served over a bunch of poorly cooked french fries. Needless to say we got the check and got the heck out of there with most of our lunch consisting of our appetizer salad and a fairly decent roll. (Looking back on it, this was OK as we got PLENTY to eat for the rest of the week.) So that was our not-awesome lunch experience that brought us to the next day.

Since we had such a bad experience the day before, I tried really hard to wind up in a part of Barcelona that had one of my well-researched restaurants nearby. It is important to note (that I kind of mentioned above) that even though we had experienced late dinners in Italy and France on prior European trips, Spanish restaurants serve dinner latest of all. Many don’t open until 9:00 pm for dinner. That means we would be eating at 10:00 and that’s something we just can’t do. So we had previously decided that we would eat our main meal at lunch and just snack for dinner. Today we promised ourselves we would lunch in one of the restaurants we had previously found online—La Rita. Now, websites promise a bunch but seldom deliver on it. La Rita and it’s sister restaurant (where we ate lunch the next day) came through for us big time.

We arrived as they opened at 1:00 pm (lunch time in Barcelona is 1:00 to 3:30). If we had been even 10 minutes later we would have had to wait at least 20-30 minutes. The place filled up in minutes and mostly with what looked like locals. Lunch exceeded our expectations on every level. The food was outstanding. The service cordial and quick. The menu (available in English) excellent. 

Kathleen started with an appetizer vegetable pie with mushroom sauce. I got to taste and it was wonderful. I had a “vegetable stack” of red peppers, mushrooms and eggplant that was topped with melted manchego cheese. Ooooh la la!

For our main course, Kathleen had the a lamb tangine with couscous, raisins and pine nuts. I went for one of the best pieces of duck I have ever had in my life with mango and raspberry. I wish I had kept taking photos of the food but I just got too busy eating to shoot pics.

For dessert Kathleen can’t remember what she had but I struck it rich with one of the most outstanding desserts of my lifetime, the Catalunyan national dessert. I am still not sure what it is called but it consists of a coffee/nougat ice cream, floating in a wonderful dark chocolate sauce covered with custard. I did some Googling and found that it might be Mato de Peralbes.

People, believe me when I tell you, you have never had anything like this. A few years later we went to a San Francisco restaurant that had a similar dessert called “Slap Your Mama.” It was so named because if you ate it for the first time you wanted to “Slap your mama” for not every having served it to you before. This was the same kind of experience. If I was from Barcelona and had never eaten this dessert, I would have slapped my mama.

Can you tell Kathleen enjoyed her lunch?

So from a lunch of some of the worst calamari and liver to this one at La Rita it made a huge difference in our feelings about Catalan cuisine. I truly believe that this lunch ranks in the top ten meals I have eaten in my lifetime. It was scrumptious. Or maybe it was the contrast to the day before.

And I should mention that the service and the ambience were outstanding. And here’s the good news, unlike our breakfast place (The Elbow Room in Vancouver, BC) that has since closed, you can still eat at La Rita. We plan on going there again the next time we are in Barcelona (in 2022).

I should add that La Rita is part of a restaurant group. A group is different than a chain—a chain is a bunch of identical restaurants but a group is owned by one set of owners but they are all different. The next day we ate at another of their restaurants, La Fonda. Food was on the same par but the experience was better at La Rita.

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.—Orson Welles