Dr. Kelly had a science conference in Barcelona this summer, so the rest of us invited ourselves along. The plan was for the four of us to fly over together, spend a week being tourists, then the three non-scientists would come home together leaving her to devote her time to papers and networking during the conference.
It almost didn't happen. We got money, we got a friend to feed the cat, we put the dog in Dog Camp, we packed our bags, and on Sunday we set out for a leisurely drive to Boston. Everything was fine . . . until around Gardner the clutch stopped working. The sensible thing would be to pull over right there, but I wanted to get closer to Boston before giving up -- our chances of finding transport to Logan Airport would be better the nearer we could get.
So I nursed the car along in fourth gear, and we were doing great until we reached the rotary at Concord and had to downshift. That killed the engine, and with no clutch I couldn't restart, or even coast. The car's remaining momentum carried it into a side street next to the penitentiary, and that was that.
Sunday afternoons are a bad time to need immediate towing or car repair. I finally found a nice gentleman with a lift truck who loaded up our car and let the four of us squeeze into the cab with him. We abandoned the car at Colonial Chevrolet in Acton, then begged SF writer and workshop poohbah Steve Popkes for a lift to Logan in time for our flight.
The flight itself, on SwissAir, was happily uneventful. They give you chocolate. I had to explain to my kids that once upon a time you didn't have a personal TV with a vast library of videos and movies to choose from, you had to watch the same movie as the rest of the passengers, on a screen not much bigger than the seatback ones. And it was always one of last year's movies that nobody really liked.
We entered the SCHENGEN ZONE in Zurich, and changed planes there for the hop to Barcelona. Then a long delay waiting for baggage, as there was a strike either going on, or just ended. Lots of sweaty clerks in yellow vests being yelled at by people unable to locate their bags, and long rows of unclaimed bags lined up. Fortunately ours eventually appeared on the carousel and we got a cab into the city.
Barcelona is built in layers. For the first part of the trip into town we might have been driving in Phoenix, Arizona. Lots of big new apartment blocks, highway interchanges, billboards, and supermarkets. Then we entered the city proper, which looks a lot like Paris: five- and six-story Beaux-Arts walkups on tree-lined avenues packed with traffic. The taxi driver got us to the old city, the "Barrio Gotic," where we had to proceed on foot because the streets are closed to traffic during the day.
Despite the name, the buildings in the "Gothic Quarter" all look to have been built in the 18th and early 19th Century. Still quite dense: even in the oldest parts everything is four or five floors, and the streets are barely wide enough for a delivery truck to pass through. (I think they are too winding for buses, because I never saw a tour bus even attempt the old section.)
We made it to the flat we'd rented, which had a lovely view of the square below, called "El Fossar de les Moreres," and of the church of Santa Maria Del Mar beyond. The four of us collapsed for a couple of hours, then went out for a dinner of tapas and half a liter of wine. If anyone's interested: the restaurant was called "Lonja de Tapas" and they have a very good 18-Euro tasting menu. The wine was a white from Penedes, a few miles away.
Next time: Picasso!
Jim....back when I was still a Spanish student in college, my text book was more or less a travel guide to Spain....the one phrase that was repeated was "las calles estrechas y tortuosas" (the narrow and torturous/winding streets)....my roommate and I got to hate that phrase....
Posted by: Melissa Katano | 07/08/2013 at 02:44 PM
The old section certainly has narrow and tortuous streets, but the much larger 19th-century part of the city is all Enlightenment-era planning done with a T-square. And at some point someone carved two broad perpendicular avenues through the old quarter as well. As with Baron Haussmann's redesign of Paris, this may have combined the goal of traffic flow with the goal of clear fields of fire for government troops.
Posted by: Cambias | 07/09/2013 at 11:33 AM