Barri Gotic y El Born

Today, we explored the churches and streets of the Barri Gotic and El Born. The churches (the Cathedral and Santa Maria del Mar) glittered with gold and some VERY impressive stained glass The latter is a very trendy, artsy part of the city. You can tell this because all the young people are all wearing skinny jeans and look like they could be walking the streets of Northside--albeit with a scarf tied fashionably about their neck ( a scarf that would be hiding a tattoo if they were actually FROM Northside). BTW, day three and we’ve yet to see a tattoo—they must be under those scarves. El Born is also the home of the Picasso Museum—which, sadly, had half of the collection closed due to some construction issue. What there WAS, however, was wonderful—especially a temporary exhibit comparing the works of Picasso that were specifically influenced by the works of Degas. This show may be headed to Boston after its run here and would be well worth a visit.


By the middle of the afternoon, it was time for lunch, so we headed out onto the peninsula called Barceloneta and had paella at a place called Can Majo. It may have been the great seafood, dining in the sun, the beach—all of 50 feet from us, but this was the greatest paella ever. Maybe it was the wine. Barceloneta’s streets run parallel to the beach—each block being what appeared to be one apartment wide. If you are three blocks from the beach in Barceloneta, you are less than 100 feet from the sand. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to SEE the beach from the window of any of the apartments because all of the city’s laundry is hanging on the balconies here.

The bonus of being here this week is that it’s the week before elections. There’s a very serious separatist movement here—that is surprisingly very right-leaning. Their ads are ugly—including one that features a video game where the player scores points for shooting illegal aliens. I really think that Jan Brewer ran this ad in Arizona. The best quote, to date, about independence was from a Nationalist party-CiU spokesperson, “Sure, everyone says they want independence. I do too. I also want to be thin, but I don’t want to start dieting and exercising tomorrow.”

Spanish-speaking update: It seems that the Fluenz program works. I can actually understand quite a bit of what is being said to us and no one has had to ask me to repeat anything that I’ve said or asked in Spanish. On the other hand, Terry pointed out today that several people have assumed that I was French or Italian because of my hideous accent. If I work at it for another couple of years, I hope to be able to pass as Southern Californian.