Nicky and I talked about the things that are different between Barcelona (and Rome and Paris) and Atlanta. In Nicky's view, the toilet flushing mechanism in Europe is far better than here. Oh, and when he is here, he has to talk to people who are not his family. I hadn't considered it, but Nicky's conversation (and Cassie's and Greg's) was largely limited to people who speak English, except, as he pointed out, "really brief conversations with no depth whatsoever." Greg had his students totally to, and I could get by in Spanish for essential conversations, but the kids were on their own.
As usual, Nicky is an insightful little beast, in between his moment of testosterone-fueled boyness. He quickly got to the heart of one of the little hurdles of re-entry to our real life. It takes a minute to re-adjust to conversations with people again, but for me, it's like medicine. I can hear chatter around me and understand the tone of the room, but I can also tune it out a little more, because my brain isn't trying to translate at all. And I can joke around with people, say silly things to amuse myself with people's reactions, or respond to the way they are behaving, because I know what is expected here.
Jeez, I never realized how important it is to me to banter with people, get a grin out of someone, or even just make sympathetic noises to someone who is in the middle of some small dilemma. Did you ever think about how often people in Atlanta wish you a good day? Or did you ever enjoy some quirky little offhand conversation you had while waiting for the cashier? I never realized how much I missed that until I got back.
I went to Target this morning to pick up some stuff to send over to Cassie. Going to Target is not usually a healing experience of any kind, but my exhausted, purse-losing, re-Americanizing brain was actually really happy to cross paths with maybe ten employees who all said good morning, asked if I was finding things okay, chatted a minute, or wished me a good day. Even when I cracked a joke that didn't work, I understood why. And because, let's face it, I'm used to my jokes failing, I laughed at it and moved on, whereas in Barcelona if have felt very insecure.
All this was so ordinary, but after not-experiencing it for a month, the ordinary feels like a little gift.
And that is why, at the end of this blog, I am glad that I convinced my travel-hating, over-committed, stressed-out, logistics-hating, homebody self to go to Spain for a month: because going to an extraordinary place can reconfigure the ordinary until it feels like a treat.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Missing the great John Candy
I've been thinking about "Planes, Trains and Automobiles," which hilariously depicted the weirdness of travel as it existed back then. I'd shudder to think of the post-9/11 version of that flick. But I've had a lot of time on planes and trains, as well as buses, lately, and my overall conclusion is that I really love my automobile.
That's the danger of being an American over-consumer: I know perfectly well that my car helps destroy the environment, clog the roads, and rocket my blood pressure. I'm feeding the evil oil industry and reducing my participation in social life by being in my car all the time.
But damn, I love to drive. I love controlling where and when I go, how hard I brake or how fast I accelerate, and deciding on my musical selections and temperature. I love not being ill from lurching and bumping. Not breathing fumes. Not sitting under someone else's armpit stank. Not hearing travel noise. Not listening to other people's mindless cell phone calls or smelling their meatballs-and-onions lunch while I'm riding backward in an overcrowded bus.
I've truly come to hate trains. I still haven't been on the super speed trains, because they were too expensive for last-minute planners like me. Those might be better. Subway trains and passenger trains just suck. Yesterday, I had to sit and talk myself out of just stomping off the damn train and calling a cab for a hundred euros.
Suddenly, I started respecting air travel. At least air travel isn't restricted to one damned track.
But then we had today's flight, which was actually quite smooth and glorious until the end, when Nicky felt sick from trying to concentrate on the video-sudoku game while the flight got bouncy.
Overall, nothing except trams seems likely to get me out of my comfy car anytime soon.
Unless I can drive the trainor plane, that is.
That's the danger of being an American over-consumer: I know perfectly well that my car helps destroy the environment, clog the roads, and rocket my blood pressure. I'm feeding the evil oil industry and reducing my participation in social life by being in my car all the time.
But damn, I love to drive. I love controlling where and when I go, how hard I brake or how fast I accelerate, and deciding on my musical selections and temperature. I love not being ill from lurching and bumping. Not breathing fumes. Not sitting under someone else's armpit stank. Not hearing travel noise. Not listening to other people's mindless cell phone calls or smelling their meatballs-and-onions lunch while I'm riding backward in an overcrowded bus.
I've truly come to hate trains. I still haven't been on the super speed trains, because they were too expensive for last-minute planners like me. Those might be better. Subway trains and passenger trains just suck. Yesterday, I had to sit and talk myself out of just stomping off the damn train and calling a cab for a hundred euros.
Suddenly, I started respecting air travel. At least air travel isn't restricted to one damned track.
But then we had today's flight, which was actually quite smooth and glorious until the end, when Nicky felt sick from trying to concentrate on the video-sudoku game while the flight got bouncy.
Overall, nothing except trams seems likely to get me out of my comfy car anytime soon.
Unless I can drive the trainor plane, that is.
Final day activities
Our last day in Barcelona was one of those days that serve as a showcase for all the ups and downs of traveling. We decided on Montserrat for our last outing, because we hadn't been to the hills or mountains much. We started out late, as has become our norm, and took a series of buses and trains up to Montserrat.
In my head, the train trip would be a lovely breather from the city, a chance to see some gorgeous Spanish countryside. In reality, it involved a lot of waiting, even more sweating, an epiphany about why the Southern US has no mass transit systems, losing five euros in the drinks machines, listening to traveling college kids holding entire conversations based entirely on the word "like," and so on. The scenery consisted mostly of factories and their surrounding towns, which ran the gamut between bleak and depressing, with occasional glimpses of comfort. I had envisioned a place where people lived in actual houses, rather than apartments, but there were not many areas like that. People here seem to live in apartments, apartments or apartments. I amused myself by trying to calculate the exact time when "abandoned buildings in an exurban hellscape" can transition to "ruins."
Finally, we got past some of the uglies and hopped to another (better air-conditioned) train, called the Cremallera, which took us the rest of the way to the monastery area. The mountains and valley views were unreal. Remember when we were kids at the beach, and we would take wet sand to drizzle on top of our sand castles for drippy effect? The mountains reminded me of that. And standing at the top, you could see all the layers where a body of water had once been, and the way it had drained out of the valley, just like a toilet flushing. How could anyone who had been to such places think that the earth has only been here for a few thousand years!?? Utterly ridiculous.
It was blissfully cool and breezy, and a perfectly clear day. We ran into a few of Greg's students who had spent the whole day up there, which would be easy to do. There were walkways, pathways, a few shops, a cafeteria that actually served decent food, a hotel or two, and street carts selling cheeses, honey, fig cakes, almonds and such. The vendors would cut little pieces of cheese and hand them out, and I swear there is no better foodie experience than walking around a mountainside where they make their own cheese, nibbling and enjoying the view. I never need restaurants if I can get that. The whole place was built to blend with the monastery, which has been there for literally a thousand years (though it had to be rebuilt a couple hundred years back).
"Do you want to see the basilica?" we asked each other. We had been told the last train left fairly soon, and Cassie world-wearily said, "I don't think I'm gonna be impressed by a basilica after the ones we have seen." I kind of agreed...and then someone told us there was another train a couple of hours later, which opened up some free time. So we got some gelato, and wandered toward the basilica. While we walked, the bells started tolling, and they echoed off all the mountains around us. What an awesome sound. I can imagine a world up there in the mountains, where everyone for miles and miles relies on the sound of the bells to divide time.
We didn't have time to take the funiculars up the mountain, but Cassie says she will take Gwendolyn and Uncle Butch up there next week, so at least someone will get to see it.
It took Cassie about a nanosecond to admit that she had been wrong about being basilica-jaded. This basilica was jaw-dropping. The feel of it was totally different than Rome, Paris or Barcelona. It felt far more medieval, though not in the cruel way I think of medieval churches. With a few modifications, I can see how the place would be an Inquisition stronghold, but now it is just a stunningly beautiful building. There was some glorious, faint monk-song audible while we sat in the church, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. No one was at the altar, but something was happening in another language, and it seemed like another time.
There was much more to do up in the monastery complex, but another person told us that last train left soon. I swear, the train schedule was a giant prank played by the monks, who probably changed last-minute changes during those mysterious hymns. We jumped back on the Cremallera, looking forward to the air conditioning that unfortunately didn't exist. The next train wasn't much better, and was supremely crowded as well. Everyone from the exurbs seemed to be heading into Barcelona for a night on the town, and the train got more and more crowded as we got closer. There were twenty-some stops to make, all of which were completely nauseating as we stopped, packed in more people, lurched to a start again...
..and this is why, in part, I think we don't have good train systems south of DC. Trains suck for those of us with motion sickness, and the stifling heat of the train cars makes it much worse. Even if the cars are air-conditioned, opening the doors in 90-degree heat twenty times will result in misery. We were hot and sweaty to start the trip. An hour later, we were hot, sweaty, irritated, motion-sick, and grumpy. My chief source of comfort was knowing that the Scouting Masters who had three dozen young cub scouts were probably even less comfortable.
When we popped out of the train in Placa Espanya, we found ourselves at the Pride parade-rally-party. It looked like fun, particularly when the guy pushing an empty rainbow-colored stroller was trailed by his toddler, pushing his own baby stroller at full speed, yelling like a banshee. It always cracks me up when exhausted parents push empty strollers while their kids zoom around like party animals.
But alas, the party blocked off the Placa, which meant hauling our asses halfway home before we found a bus that was running. But every second of it was worth it, because we had such a phenomenal experience on the mountain.
In my head, the train trip would be a lovely breather from the city, a chance to see some gorgeous Spanish countryside. In reality, it involved a lot of waiting, even more sweating, an epiphany about why the Southern US has no mass transit systems, losing five euros in the drinks machines, listening to traveling college kids holding entire conversations based entirely on the word "like," and so on. The scenery consisted mostly of factories and their surrounding towns, which ran the gamut between bleak and depressing, with occasional glimpses of comfort. I had envisioned a place where people lived in actual houses, rather than apartments, but there were not many areas like that. People here seem to live in apartments, apartments or apartments. I amused myself by trying to calculate the exact time when "abandoned buildings in an exurban hellscape" can transition to "ruins."
Finally, we got past some of the uglies and hopped to another (better air-conditioned) train, called the Cremallera, which took us the rest of the way to the monastery area. The mountains and valley views were unreal. Remember when we were kids at the beach, and we would take wet sand to drizzle on top of our sand castles for drippy effect? The mountains reminded me of that. And standing at the top, you could see all the layers where a body of water had once been, and the way it had drained out of the valley, just like a toilet flushing. How could anyone who had been to such places think that the earth has only been here for a few thousand years!?? Utterly ridiculous.
It was blissfully cool and breezy, and a perfectly clear day. We ran into a few of Greg's students who had spent the whole day up there, which would be easy to do. There were walkways, pathways, a few shops, a cafeteria that actually served decent food, a hotel or two, and street carts selling cheeses, honey, fig cakes, almonds and such. The vendors would cut little pieces of cheese and hand them out, and I swear there is no better foodie experience than walking around a mountainside where they make their own cheese, nibbling and enjoying the view. I never need restaurants if I can get that. The whole place was built to blend with the monastery, which has been there for literally a thousand years (though it had to be rebuilt a couple hundred years back).
"Do you want to see the basilica?" we asked each other. We had been told the last train left fairly soon, and Cassie world-wearily said, "I don't think I'm gonna be impressed by a basilica after the ones we have seen." I kind of agreed...and then someone told us there was another train a couple of hours later, which opened up some free time. So we got some gelato, and wandered toward the basilica. While we walked, the bells started tolling, and they echoed off all the mountains around us. What an awesome sound. I can imagine a world up there in the mountains, where everyone for miles and miles relies on the sound of the bells to divide time.
We didn't have time to take the funiculars up the mountain, but Cassie says she will take Gwendolyn and Uncle Butch up there next week, so at least someone will get to see it.
It took Cassie about a nanosecond to admit that she had been wrong about being basilica-jaded. This basilica was jaw-dropping. The feel of it was totally different than Rome, Paris or Barcelona. It felt far more medieval, though not in the cruel way I think of medieval churches. With a few modifications, I can see how the place would be an Inquisition stronghold, but now it is just a stunningly beautiful building. There was some glorious, faint monk-song audible while we sat in the church, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on. No one was at the altar, but something was happening in another language, and it seemed like another time.
There was much more to do up in the monastery complex, but another person told us that last train left soon. I swear, the train schedule was a giant prank played by the monks, who probably changed last-minute changes during those mysterious hymns. We jumped back on the Cremallera, looking forward to the air conditioning that unfortunately didn't exist. The next train wasn't much better, and was supremely crowded as well. Everyone from the exurbs seemed to be heading into Barcelona for a night on the town, and the train got more and more crowded as we got closer. There were twenty-some stops to make, all of which were completely nauseating as we stopped, packed in more people, lurched to a start again...
..and this is why, in part, I think we don't have good train systems south of DC. Trains suck for those of us with motion sickness, and the stifling heat of the train cars makes it much worse. Even if the cars are air-conditioned, opening the doors in 90-degree heat twenty times will result in misery. We were hot and sweaty to start the trip. An hour later, we were hot, sweaty, irritated, motion-sick, and grumpy. My chief source of comfort was knowing that the Scouting Masters who had three dozen young cub scouts were probably even less comfortable.
When we popped out of the train in Placa Espanya, we found ourselves at the Pride parade-rally-party. It looked like fun, particularly when the guy pushing an empty rainbow-colored stroller was trailed by his toddler, pushing his own baby stroller at full speed, yelling like a banshee. It always cracks me up when exhausted parents push empty strollers while their kids zoom around like party animals.
But alas, the party blocked off the Placa, which meant hauling our asses halfway home before we found a bus that was running. But every second of it was worth it, because we had such a phenomenal experience on the mountain.
On Atlanta from barcelona
My friend Beki said I should write about Atlanta from the perspective of a month in Barcelona, so here goes...
First, in a gross over-simplification, Catalonia bears a certain resemblance to the American South, in both the climate and the fiercely held belief that the region deserves its own nation, which would naturally be far superior to Mother Spain. Of course, not everyone holds this view, but it is reminiscent of the whole "South's gonna rise again" kind of anti-Federal perspective. Catalonians don't seem to be rednecks about it, just very populist, and convinced they can be their own little world.
But back to Atlanta.
A key difference is in the size. Atlanta is enormous, and so spread out that you have to drive everywhere, which leaves it polluted, snarled and obese. In tiny Barca, they walk everywhere, or take buses, trains or trams, or bicycle. They seem to have healthier bodies for it, but the trade-off is in their independence and time. They rely on someone else to get them where they need to go, and it takes longer. Your bus might leave every 20min, but it takes you to the train that only runs every 30min, which means you could either be really punctual or really screwed. If you have kids, you know it is a nightmare to get anywhere on time, and that adds another wrinkle. It is hard to take kids to a lot of places when it means pushing a stroller over stone sidewalks, lifting the kid onto a bus, etc. The sweat factor is ridiculous. No wonder people smell like hell and then think they need perfumes (though it is worse in France by far.)
Inevitably, you can spend 3hrs/day on transit, but more often, it seems people live their lives in their little neighborhoods, shop smaller and more often, and depend on each other in ways that an Atlantan like me would rather not.
Barcelona is a city of apartments, with everyone living in their little shoeboxes decorated in Early Ikea. Nice places have terraces, where people are creative with plants and gardens. But that's the limit of their own, private green space. In Atlanta, while there are lots of apartments, there are also tons of houses, and the greenness of the place almost assaults you. Trees, plants, grass, everything is everywhere and it is trying to murder me every spring. But more than that, the greenness separates us a bit from our neighbors gives us our own space. It is that separation, space between things, more than anything, that hits me as a major difference in Atlanta.
Some might think the separation is a bad thing or not. There's no point questioning it. After apartment living for a month, I'm longing to be in a house with a big, comfortable bed, central air conditioning, and my own car.
First, in a gross over-simplification, Catalonia bears a certain resemblance to the American South, in both the climate and the fiercely held belief that the region deserves its own nation, which would naturally be far superior to Mother Spain. Of course, not everyone holds this view, but it is reminiscent of the whole "South's gonna rise again" kind of anti-Federal perspective. Catalonians don't seem to be rednecks about it, just very populist, and convinced they can be their own little world.
But back to Atlanta.
A key difference is in the size. Atlanta is enormous, and so spread out that you have to drive everywhere, which leaves it polluted, snarled and obese. In tiny Barca, they walk everywhere, or take buses, trains or trams, or bicycle. They seem to have healthier bodies for it, but the trade-off is in their independence and time. They rely on someone else to get them where they need to go, and it takes longer. Your bus might leave every 20min, but it takes you to the train that only runs every 30min, which means you could either be really punctual or really screwed. If you have kids, you know it is a nightmare to get anywhere on time, and that adds another wrinkle. It is hard to take kids to a lot of places when it means pushing a stroller over stone sidewalks, lifting the kid onto a bus, etc. The sweat factor is ridiculous. No wonder people smell like hell and then think they need perfumes (though it is worse in France by far.)
Inevitably, you can spend 3hrs/day on transit, but more often, it seems people live their lives in their little neighborhoods, shop smaller and more often, and depend on each other in ways that an Atlantan like me would rather not.
Barcelona is a city of apartments, with everyone living in their little shoeboxes decorated in Early Ikea. Nice places have terraces, where people are creative with plants and gardens. But that's the limit of their own, private green space. In Atlanta, while there are lots of apartments, there are also tons of houses, and the greenness of the place almost assaults you. Trees, plants, grass, everything is everywhere and it is trying to murder me every spring. But more than that, the greenness separates us a bit from our neighbors gives us our own space. It is that separation, space between things, more than anything, that hits me as a major difference in Atlanta.
Some might think the separation is a bad thing or not. There's no point questioning it. After apartment living for a month, I'm longing to be in a house with a big, comfortable bed, central air conditioning, and my own car.
Friday, June 27, 2014
The untrained ear
On the bus to the beach, I met a very nice woman with a kid who seemed to be her granddaughter. The kid was far too happy to be a kidnap victim, but the woman was too old to have a kid that young, so let's stick with grandchild for the purposes of this story. Like most kids in Europe, she would not speak to me, just stared at me like I was an alien, which bums me out. Kids are the best way to learn the elements of a language. I can still remember certain Urdu words from listening to Shanila and Irfan teach Gibran.
The bus-grandmother and I spoke Spanish to each other, which taught me a lot, namely that I "speak well" (according to her). I know I'm good at imitating accents, and I can usually put my sentences together accurately, but I do not understand half of what I hear. If I can read it, I'm fine. But hearing...my ear is so untrained. Sure, I can sail through a Spanish course with no errors at all, because everyone enunciates carefully. But an old woman on the bus? Poor thing had to use multiple descriptions to help me understand what she was talking about. To be fair, I didn't know they called the cable car a funicular. She clearly wanted to tell me that the funicular was awesome, and gradually I figured out that she meant the cable car. I knew I couldn't speak intelligently when I couldn't say things like, "launch point, cable car, landing area," so I cheated. I told her I was afraid of heights (I'm not), just to end further inquiries about a topic I can't adequately discuss.
I realized that this was an auditory-training problem when I stopped to buy us some drinks at a stand. "Tres y uno," said the vendor. And I stood there dumbfounded, thinking, really? He wants me to give him three euros and a penny? Why the hell would he bother with a penny? No one uses pennies, for petesakes. They aren't useful for street traders.
Then (solely by ruling out the stupid notion that a street vendor would deal in pennies), I figured out that he was saying, "Tres euros." Here is the difference:
Tres y uno sounds like "Trace ee-ooo-no."
Tres euros sounds like "Trace eh-ooo-doce."
Any idiot could tell the difference, if they knew what they were listening for. I'm just not trained to listen.
I don't know how much time it would take for me to learn this well. I'm not sure I know enough people who would be patient with me while I learn to say things like, "excuse me, is that really your grandchild, or did you kidnap her?"
Down to the wire
I have that end-of-vacation anxiety in which you think, "Quick! Hurry up! Have as much fun as you can before you have to go home!" Perhaps I need to re-think my whole life strategy, and just stay on vacation.
Overall, I'm very happy with our coverage of Barcelona and the variety of things we have seen, between here, Paris and Rome. I know we could have crammed in a lot more, but we aren't into over-scheduling anymore. My days of returning from a vacation completely exhausted are long over. I'm taking the week off this coming week, just to deal with jet lag and several pieces of life-maintenance that I've put off for this trip. Dentists, veterinarian, car servicing, oh the fun!
The one thing we haven't done, and maybe we should have, is explore culinary Barcelona. I know, my foodie friends will be horrified at us, but we never really wrapped out heads around going out to teensy restaurants at 10pm for dinner. I'm not an enormous fan of sitting on the sidewalk amid a dozen smokers and eating paella. (For calamari, I'll deal with the smoke.) Money is another factor: it seems to melt away in European restaurants to a horrifying degree. But mostly, the kids weren't very comfortable dining here, because you rarely see kids in restaurants. I assume you're supposed to leave your little mini-mes at home while you and your spouse go out and eat a $100 meal, but food just isn't important enough to me to bother doing that. Of course, I love all the fresh food markets and the bakeries. I like being able to go and get crepes, or gelato, or whatever strikes your fancy, at late hours. Atlanta doesn't really have that.
Tomorrow we are going up to Montserrat to look around, because we have only seen it from the air. It looks very cool (the name comes from the fact that the mountains are serrated, like a good bread knife). It'll be good to see a bit more nature and a little less of the human influence, though I guess the Montserrat monastery that's about a thousand years old counts as humanity. Perhaps I will join a contemplative order and live out my life free of technological influe---hahahahahahaha, sorry, I couldn't get through that with a straight face.
I'm also trying to drink in as much of the moderate weather as humanly possible, before getting back to the steam bath of Atlanta. And of course, I finally had to brave a couple of the tourist shops to try to find truly raunchy souvenirs for my minions. Cassie spent the day saying, "Oh my God, no Mom, you cannot buy that." Alas.
Overall, I'm very happy with our coverage of Barcelona and the variety of things we have seen, between here, Paris and Rome. I know we could have crammed in a lot more, but we aren't into over-scheduling anymore. My days of returning from a vacation completely exhausted are long over. I'm taking the week off this coming week, just to deal with jet lag and several pieces of life-maintenance that I've put off for this trip. Dentists, veterinarian, car servicing, oh the fun!
The one thing we haven't done, and maybe we should have, is explore culinary Barcelona. I know, my foodie friends will be horrified at us, but we never really wrapped out heads around going out to teensy restaurants at 10pm for dinner. I'm not an enormous fan of sitting on the sidewalk amid a dozen smokers and eating paella. (For calamari, I'll deal with the smoke.) Money is another factor: it seems to melt away in European restaurants to a horrifying degree. But mostly, the kids weren't very comfortable dining here, because you rarely see kids in restaurants. I assume you're supposed to leave your little mini-mes at home while you and your spouse go out and eat a $100 meal, but food just isn't important enough to me to bother doing that. Of course, I love all the fresh food markets and the bakeries. I like being able to go and get crepes, or gelato, or whatever strikes your fancy, at late hours. Atlanta doesn't really have that.
Tomorrow we are going up to Montserrat to look around, because we have only seen it from the air. It looks very cool (the name comes from the fact that the mountains are serrated, like a good bread knife). It'll be good to see a bit more nature and a little less of the human influence, though I guess the Montserrat monastery that's about a thousand years old counts as humanity. Perhaps I will join a contemplative order and live out my life free of technological influe---hahahahahahaha, sorry, I couldn't get through that with a straight face.
I'm also trying to drink in as much of the moderate weather as humanly possible, before getting back to the steam bath of Atlanta. And of course, I finally had to brave a couple of the tourist shops to try to find truly raunchy souvenirs for my minions. Cassie spent the day saying, "Oh my God, no Mom, you cannot buy that." Alas.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Success Iin souveniring
Finally, thanks to my friend Dan, I found some souvenirs I actually want to take home! And they aren't t-shirts with dirty jokes! They come from a cute ceramics shop down in the Barri Gotic, and my only real dilemma is how I can manage to buy another ton of the stuff and get it back to Atlanta. Luckily, Nicky (who packed light on the way here) can be my pack mule. The ten pounds of ceramics I've bought so far are likely to kill my luggage weight limits, but I can likely jettison useless things, like shoes.
I found a replica of Sagrada Familia as requested by my friend Becky, and Cassie even found a gift or two for some of her friends. We had a great day shopping while Greg worked, and the overcast skies guaranteed that we wouldn't get too stanky in the process. It's definitely getting hotter than I like here, but still nowhere near as bad as Atlanta, where summer misery has started in earnest.
Nicky and I went to the park a couple of blocks from our house, and fed the big goldfish. There is something about feeding bread crumbs to fish that I have always loved...though my OCD and my liberalism both kick in and I try to make sure every fish gets some food. Nicky and I worked hard to get as many fish interested in our food as possible, luring them from all over this huge pond...because he was trying to get the fish to create a bait-ball, revealing that he has clearly seen one too many NatGeo specials. No, Nick, the goldfish in a four-foot-deep pond do not make bait-balls.
We were going to go on a walk with one of the professors who knows a lot about Barcelona, but he has a bad cough, which he is apparently treating by doubling whatever cough medicine dose has been prescribed by the docs here. I'm hoping we don't have to take him to a detox center. We did manage to go out for Barcelona's version of crepes tonight, and we decided they are better than Paris's version.
As we munched on our crepes, a big group of interns from UT-Austin came in. They are all from the same university, but interning in different places according to whatever their academic speciality is. There were a lot of these kids, so the woman sitting next to us looked over and said, "I theenk ees time for me to go. Adios."
Barcelona seems a popular place for summer interns. I'm not sure who hires the kids, but what a great experience for them. One of the kids we met tonight is looking at Georgia Tech for grad school in MechE, so it was fun to chat.
Tomorrow Greg has to work again, which is really irritating, because it means I cannot accuse him of being on a boondoggle.
Tomorrow I might hunt up the espadrille shop that Janet recommended, en route to taking the kids to Montjuic. Rock on!
Sent from my iPad
I found a replica of Sagrada Familia as requested by my friend Becky, and Cassie even found a gift or two for some of her friends. We had a great day shopping while Greg worked, and the overcast skies guaranteed that we wouldn't get too stanky in the process. It's definitely getting hotter than I like here, but still nowhere near as bad as Atlanta, where summer misery has started in earnest.
Nicky and I went to the park a couple of blocks from our house, and fed the big goldfish. There is something about feeding bread crumbs to fish that I have always loved...though my OCD and my liberalism both kick in and I try to make sure every fish gets some food. Nicky and I worked hard to get as many fish interested in our food as possible, luring them from all over this huge pond...because he was trying to get the fish to create a bait-ball, revealing that he has clearly seen one too many NatGeo specials. No, Nick, the goldfish in a four-foot-deep pond do not make bait-balls.
We were going to go on a walk with one of the professors who knows a lot about Barcelona, but he has a bad cough, which he is apparently treating by doubling whatever cough medicine dose has been prescribed by the docs here. I'm hoping we don't have to take him to a detox center. We did manage to go out for Barcelona's version of crepes tonight, and we decided they are better than Paris's version.
As we munched on our crepes, a big group of interns from UT-Austin came in. They are all from the same university, but interning in different places according to whatever their academic speciality is. There were a lot of these kids, so the woman sitting next to us looked over and said, "I theenk ees time for me to go. Adios."
Barcelona seems a popular place for summer interns. I'm not sure who hires the kids, but what a great experience for them. One of the kids we met tonight is looking at Georgia Tech for grad school in MechE, so it was fun to chat.
Tomorrow Greg has to work again, which is really irritating, because it means I cannot accuse him of being on a boondoggle.
Tomorrow I might hunt up the espadrille shop that Janet recommended, en route to taking the kids to Montjuic. Rock on!
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
The end is near
Nicky and I are in our final few days in Barcelona, so I'm caught in a multi-day variant of Sunday Slump. You know, that feeling you get at about 5pm on Sunday because you haven't done all you wanted with your weekend, and a whole week is looming over you? Well, this Sunday I leave here with Nicky, spend a week in Atlanta taking the cat to the vet, getting Nicky's checkup, dental appointment, haircut, and all that nonsense done, re-a stocking the house...and then I go back to work. Reality is about to kick me in the ass, and I'm not ready.
So these last few days are bittersweet, particularly as yesterday was a post-Paris, post-travel recovery day that also saw us (minus Greg, who had to work) trotting off to buy a suitcase-packing-impaired Cassie a swim suit. By the time we had finished that task and dragged home a boatload of groceries, I wanted to slowly pull every hair out of my head. To be more honest, I wanted to drag the kids home by the hair, but some vague fear of prisons kept me from doing so.
But the groceries were a necessity, because many restaurants, stores and businesses were closed today, St. Joan's Day, more accurately called Hangover Day as Catalonians, gone deaf from blasting firecrackers, try to regain non-painful sensations above their necks.
We headed to the beach today, on a strict mission to observe an entire hungover town, which wasn't particularly crowded, but was actually a bit chilly due to overcast skies and strong breezes bringing "weather." The "weather" took the form of panic-inducing drizzle, creating mayhem as we all ran for the buses to take us back home. Oh, but it's a holiday, so there were fewer buses, and they were all chock full of sweaty, slippery, sandy tourists whose children were howling mad about being ripped from the beach. A hangover cure is NOT best used on a hot, stuffy, steamy bus filled with sticky, salty people.
The beach really wasn't worth all that. It was a nice place to go, and it has the requisite sand and water, but the toplessness was just not my thing. Don't get me wrong. I fully agree that men's bodies and women's bodies are not treated with equal respect and admiration, when they should be. I just don't admire middle-aged, overweight, saggy-boobed women hanging out and chatting while half naked. I'm glad they feel free, liberated enough to expect equal treatment. I agree with that principle. I just don't need to know the state of my friends' lady lumps. I find it hard to take them seriously with body parts hanging out.
I guess that becomes a theme as you take adolescent children to Europe: what do you do with all nudity in arts, and the actual naked people on their towels. How do you explain when people are expected to get naked, and when they might want to for art, and so on.
I explored this deep topic with my kids by saying, "damn, I wish they would cover up all those boobs." So my kids probably will join nudist colonies, just to irritate me.
But not before Sunday. I still have things to do here.
Sent from my iPad
Sent from my iPad
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Business as usual
I've mentioned here that I'm a behavioral statistician, a person who looks for trends and patterns in the sometimes bewildering array of human behaviors. It's a skill that serves me well when traveling. But back home, I earn money by applying that skill to sexual behavior d STD prevention. There is a long and weird pathway to becoming a professional observer of the nation's sexual health, but that's a whole other blog.
Here in Europe, I find myself automatically checking out the sexual trends. Apart from teens making out, 20-something people arguing passionately, and some trophy-wife types of relationships, the most observable trend for a tourist is in commercial sex. There aren't so many differences from the States, though I'm aware that some of the hotel-based sex traders are less visible than the streetwalkers, of whom I have seen relatively few, compared to Atlanta. But here are a few things I'm noticing around town.
The first one hits you when you come in from the airport, and an enormous billboard advertises the Apricot Call Girls. The fact that the advertisement says, "Very discreet," in probably 5-foot-tall lettering, is kind of ironic. Do discreet people have billboards? And are "call girls" legal here? Do they mean the same thing as in US? I haven't checked.
As you drive into town, there are sex shops with signs that indicate whether the shop features glory holes, private cabinetas, etc. Do shops in the States advertise glory holes so blatantly? I honestly can't recall whether I've seen that or not. It surprised me to see sex venues advertising quite so openly. I've seen that in the big cities in the States, but even then they try to cloak them as "steam rooms," "bath houses," or "men's clubs."
I haven't seen specific STD clinics or GUM clinics yet, but I haven't really looked. I'm just noting what the tourists see. There isn't any condom litter like in Atlanta, but the Durex brand has great presence in shops.
The funny thing is that I'd like to ask around, and find out what some of the trends and norms are here. But my Spanish isn't good enough to explain that I'm not LOOKING for sex, nor do I want to look AT sex, but rather I STUDY sex. Statistically. Almost academically (but not quite). That's tough enough to explain to Americans, in their own mangled language. So for now, I can only see what is in front of me.
In sexuality related observances, I've been near some LGBT centers in BCN and Paris, and of course the Pride parade in Rome, and I've seen various gay venues, but nothing has been very active when I've been around. I'm on tourist time, so I'm not likely to see a lot of real activity, but I'm looking for trends in tolerance and out-ness. Roman pride was fairly tame, by US big-city standards, but the crowd was a great mix of straight, gay, kid-carrying and not-kidful, trans, etc. The best thing I can say is that it was often tough to tell who was with whom, nor did anyone seem to care. Are the parades more tame because the issues are already out in the open and acceptance is better? Or because there is more hiding going on? Gay couples seem much more accepted and can be more open in Barcelona than anywhere else I've been to date, but Paris seemed pretty open minded as well. At least in Marais. Nowhere have I seen any of the pursed-lip disapproval that I often see in the States.
And finally, in a non-sexual way, everyone kisses everyone in Rome and Paris (haven't seen it so much in BCN). Men kiss men, women, and probably exceptionally well-groomed pets, as a way of saying hello. People in Miami do that, a single kiss on the cheek, but here it is usually a kiss on each cheek.
And no, not butt cheeks. Get your minds out of the gutters. Those gutters are MINE. I'm a professional.
Here in Europe, I find myself automatically checking out the sexual trends. Apart from teens making out, 20-something people arguing passionately, and some trophy-wife types of relationships, the most observable trend for a tourist is in commercial sex. There aren't so many differences from the States, though I'm aware that some of the hotel-based sex traders are less visible than the streetwalkers, of whom I have seen relatively few, compared to Atlanta. But here are a few things I'm noticing around town.
The first one hits you when you come in from the airport, and an enormous billboard advertises the Apricot Call Girls. The fact that the advertisement says, "Very discreet," in probably 5-foot-tall lettering, is kind of ironic. Do discreet people have billboards? And are "call girls" legal here? Do they mean the same thing as in US? I haven't checked.
As you drive into town, there are sex shops with signs that indicate whether the shop features glory holes, private cabinetas, etc. Do shops in the States advertise glory holes so blatantly? I honestly can't recall whether I've seen that or not. It surprised me to see sex venues advertising quite so openly. I've seen that in the big cities in the States, but even then they try to cloak them as "steam rooms," "bath houses," or "men's clubs."
I haven't seen specific STD clinics or GUM clinics yet, but I haven't really looked. I'm just noting what the tourists see. There isn't any condom litter like in Atlanta, but the Durex brand has great presence in shops.
The funny thing is that I'd like to ask around, and find out what some of the trends and norms are here. But my Spanish isn't good enough to explain that I'm not LOOKING for sex, nor do I want to look AT sex, but rather I STUDY sex. Statistically. Almost academically (but not quite). That's tough enough to explain to Americans, in their own mangled language. So for now, I can only see what is in front of me.
In sexuality related observances, I've been near some LGBT centers in BCN and Paris, and of course the Pride parade in Rome, and I've seen various gay venues, but nothing has been very active when I've been around. I'm on tourist time, so I'm not likely to see a lot of real activity, but I'm looking for trends in tolerance and out-ness. Roman pride was fairly tame, by US big-city standards, but the crowd was a great mix of straight, gay, kid-carrying and not-kidful, trans, etc. The best thing I can say is that it was often tough to tell who was with whom, nor did anyone seem to care. Are the parades more tame because the issues are already out in the open and acceptance is better? Or because there is more hiding going on? Gay couples seem much more accepted and can be more open in Barcelona than anywhere else I've been to date, but Paris seemed pretty open minded as well. At least in Marais. Nowhere have I seen any of the pursed-lip disapproval that I often see in the States.
And finally, in a non-sexual way, everyone kisses everyone in Rome and Paris (haven't seen it so much in BCN). Men kiss men, women, and probably exceptionally well-groomed pets, as a way of saying hello. People in Miami do that, a single kiss on the cheek, but here it is usually a kiss on each cheek.
And no, not butt cheeks. Get your minds out of the gutters. Those gutters are MINE. I'm a professional.
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Hey, what's all the music about?
"What are we going to do tonight?" the kids asked. Well hell, I don't know, but pick your butts up, we aren't sitting around the apartment.
We walked back over near the Pompidou Center, where there are loads of restaurants, and found ourselves at a middle eastern sandwich shop. I have only the vaguest clue what I ate, but it was tasty. There was an Asian drum group playing nearby, and when they finished, a rock band was getting set up. Walking past the art museum, we saw a Venice Beach kind of scene: break dancers, singers, chalk artists, and so on. Touristy, but still fun, and the crowds were all good-natured and not too rowdy...and we were standing under a Dali mural, for petesakes.
We went down to City Hall, where people were walking around on a surface that converts to an ice rink in winter. Everyone was staring at the ground, so we investigated. Turns out they had printed two huge, huge maps on some sort of ground covering: one of Paris in 1914, and one in 2014. You could walk around and see what your neighborhood map looked like, and people were roaming all over the place, following some sort of personal maps in their heads. Very cool.
We walked back over to Notre Dame so Greg and the kids could see the back and sides of it, and strangely, it was open and free and had no lines. Now that's odd, we thought, because the line to get in last night was across the plaza. Then we got inside and there was a choir concert going on. What a choir. It was like one voice, but a hundred voices, and the cathedral amplified everything and made it unreal. I wish I could have called someone from my cell phone to say, "Listen, I'm up in heaven," to see if anyone would believe me. That's certainly the music you'd expect.
I lit a candle for my brother in there. I figure he would have liked that kind of thing. It felt a little silly, but still the right thing to do.
We walked back in the direction of our rental, stopping for crepes and glacé, and nearly every street corner had a band performing. What on earth is happening in this town? Ohhhh, it's the Fete de Musique. Translation: everyone is everywhere, many are drunk, and everyone is dancing and singing. I was trying to press through a crowd behind two old men, when suddenly they stopped and started dancing to some rock band. It would have been hilarious, except I was trying to steer Nicky through the throngs and it wasn't easy. I must have had a grim warrior-face on, because one guy saw me, whooped like, "Hey, this is awesome fun!" and gestured for me to dance. I had to crack up. Everyone was ridiculous and happy...except maybe the guy who was completely asleep/unconscious under the weak shelter of two ATMs, where people just kept stepping over him to get their cash. He didn't budge. I suspect he was on another cosmic plane.
Every kind of band was out there somewhere, including the Irish Orchestral Music of Paris group, just down our street a block or two. I live in fear of bagpipes, so we hurried past while they were playing some sort of flutey tunes. It was the perfect ending to a night that started with an Asian drum group and went through a Catholic choir, rock bands, pop cover bands, and a whole city full of people dancing and acting like fools.
Awesome.
We walked back over near the Pompidou Center, where there are loads of restaurants, and found ourselves at a middle eastern sandwich shop. I have only the vaguest clue what I ate, but it was tasty. There was an Asian drum group playing nearby, and when they finished, a rock band was getting set up. Walking past the art museum, we saw a Venice Beach kind of scene: break dancers, singers, chalk artists, and so on. Touristy, but still fun, and the crowds were all good-natured and not too rowdy...and we were standing under a Dali mural, for petesakes.
We went down to City Hall, where people were walking around on a surface that converts to an ice rink in winter. Everyone was staring at the ground, so we investigated. Turns out they had printed two huge, huge maps on some sort of ground covering: one of Paris in 1914, and one in 2014. You could walk around and see what your neighborhood map looked like, and people were roaming all over the place, following some sort of personal maps in their heads. Very cool.
We walked back over to Notre Dame so Greg and the kids could see the back and sides of it, and strangely, it was open and free and had no lines. Now that's odd, we thought, because the line to get in last night was across the plaza. Then we got inside and there was a choir concert going on. What a choir. It was like one voice, but a hundred voices, and the cathedral amplified everything and made it unreal. I wish I could have called someone from my cell phone to say, "Listen, I'm up in heaven," to see if anyone would believe me. That's certainly the music you'd expect.
I lit a candle for my brother in there. I figure he would have liked that kind of thing. It felt a little silly, but still the right thing to do.
We walked back in the direction of our rental, stopping for crepes and glacé, and nearly every street corner had a band performing. What on earth is happening in this town? Ohhhh, it's the Fete de Musique. Translation: everyone is everywhere, many are drunk, and everyone is dancing and singing. I was trying to press through a crowd behind two old men, when suddenly they stopped and started dancing to some rock band. It would have been hilarious, except I was trying to steer Nicky through the throngs and it wasn't easy. I must have had a grim warrior-face on, because one guy saw me, whooped like, "Hey, this is awesome fun!" and gestured for me to dance. I had to crack up. Everyone was ridiculous and happy...except maybe the guy who was completely asleep/unconscious under the weak shelter of two ATMs, where people just kept stepping over him to get their cash. He didn't budge. I suspect he was on another cosmic plane.
Every kind of band was out there somewhere, including the Irish Orchestral Music of Paris group, just down our street a block or two. I live in fear of bagpipes, so we hurried past while they were playing some sort of flutey tunes. It was the perfect ending to a night that started with an Asian drum group and went through a Catholic choir, rock bands, pop cover bands, and a whole city full of people dancing and acting like fools.
Awesome.
Your souvenirs are being held hostage
I'm not bringing anyone back any souvenirs until someone tells me where to buy actual, original gifts in these godforsaken tourist towns. I'm not even kidding. Every single shop either sells the kind of crap you can buy at Party City, or I Heart Paris shirts. Or, inexplicably, scarves. And every shop sells the same crap as the shop next door. The thing we would really like to bring home is food, but that isn't allowed into the country. What the heck is wrong with the tourist market?
All that aside...we went to the Pompidou Center today, checking out the kind of art that seems more accessible and less intimidating. It's still Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and Dali, but it seems more...viewer friendly. I still got very overloaded very early, so after a museum-cafe lunch, I headed out with Cassie to browse the utterly useless shops. As an aside, you really have to love a museum that serves wrap sandwiches with tapenade, feta cheese and tomatoes, along with fresh-pressed orange juice and bowls of sliced strawberries. It all costs a fortune, of course, but everything in Europe is outrageously priced.
I have decided, based on today's artistic forays, to cross the Picasso museum off my Barcelona to-do list. I don't really like Picasso, and while the museum would be really good for my brain, I'm not sure it would be good for my patience. With only one week left in Barcelona, I don't have time to do all the things I would like.
Now it is time to nap before the evening foray into the eminently strollable Paris. Greg went off to see the remainder of the Louvre (I can only assume he is trying to drown himself in art), but the rest of us are far more sensible.
All that aside...we went to the Pompidou Center today, checking out the kind of art that seems more accessible and less intimidating. It's still Picasso, Chagall, Matisse and Dali, but it seems more...viewer friendly. I still got very overloaded very early, so after a museum-cafe lunch, I headed out with Cassie to browse the utterly useless shops. As an aside, you really have to love a museum that serves wrap sandwiches with tapenade, feta cheese and tomatoes, along with fresh-pressed orange juice and bowls of sliced strawberries. It all costs a fortune, of course, but everything in Europe is outrageously priced.
I have decided, based on today's artistic forays, to cross the Picasso museum off my Barcelona to-do list. I don't really like Picasso, and while the museum would be really good for my brain, I'm not sure it would be good for my patience. With only one week left in Barcelona, I don't have time to do all the things I would like.
Now it is time to nap before the evening foray into the eminently strollable Paris. Greg went off to see the remainder of the Louvre (I can only assume he is trying to drown himself in art), but the rest of us are far more sensible.
The must-sees and the quirky accidents
Sometimes, a day in Europe can feel like an endless parade of churches and palaces, monuments and museums...especially (if memory serves) if you're on one of those tours with a high school group, the leaders of which should all be sainted, or at least provided with a lifelong supply of Xanax.
We have tried to break things up a little with the kids, but really the only cure for museum fatigue is wandering, and accidentally bumping into weirdness. Also, I have a habit of fixating on themes that are sort of offbeat, and we focus on those as we wander. For example, men in Paris don't just wear blue jeans. Their jeans are orange, green, cobalt blue, red...jeans for which up you'd probably get bullied mercilessly in an American school. Another trend involves the beggars who bring their pets to help them beg; after all, no one wants to help a grimy man, but a lot of people will stop to pet a cute mutt. The most creative of these guys had a rabbit. Who begs with a pet rabbit?
Doors are another oddity in Europe. Some of these old buildings had massive doors, big enough for a horse and rider to go through, so modern architects have simply converted those doors to walls, and cut smaller doors into them; people are always coming out of small doors cut out of big doors, which makes them look like they're in a kids' lift-the-flap book. I find it really baffling that the doors have doorknobs, but the doorknobs do absolutely nothing. They are located in the center of the door. They aren't connected to the door's opening and closing at all. WTF?
And finally, we have been looking for a fountain in Paris that can compare to anything in Barcelona or Rome. We found a relatively small, but lovely one at Saint-Michel...but Parisian officials clearly have decided the Seine is enough water for anyone, and fountains are overkill.
Greg and the kids headed off to the catacombs on Friday morning, trying to get there super-early to avoid waiting in line. They waited 2.5hrs anyway, but they got to climb underneath Paris and see the remains of formerly alive people. The three of them came back and collapsed for a nap, so I went for a walk in our section of the city. I went down to Notre Dame, which is much nicer than I remembered it, though poor old John the Baptist is still toting his own head in the statue by the left-hand door. I went over the Seine on one of the bridges where people have attached hundreds of padlocks to the fence. It is a thing in Paris to buy a padlock, put your name on it somehow (carving? I dunno), and padlock it to one of these fences over the Seine. I guess this is better than people cutting their names into trees, but it still seems like a sad attempt at immortality.
Later, we all went to the Eiffel Tower, where poor Greg once again had the tough job of keeping up with Nicky, climbing up to the second platform. I've been on the Eiffel Tower and climbing stairs holds no thrill for me, so after Cassie had gone to the first platform and returned, we wandered around the park. The gardens are really quirky here, because they have some humble flowers like marigolds, which no one else puts in these public showcase gardens. There are showy roses everywhere, too, but a lot of the gardens look like something I would put together, which means there are philistines in Paris, too.
After a dinner that included the now-required crepes, we roamed back to our apartment, passing Notre Dame, Hotel d'Ville, and -- bizarrely -- a group of maybe a hundred rollerbladers gathering for a street race. One of them was wearing Christmas lights, and another had neon piping around his outfit. Why there was a rollerblade race at 11pm on a Friday will remain a mystery.
I just hope the pet rabbit wasn't involved.
We have tried to break things up a little with the kids, but really the only cure for museum fatigue is wandering, and accidentally bumping into weirdness. Also, I have a habit of fixating on themes that are sort of offbeat, and we focus on those as we wander. For example, men in Paris don't just wear blue jeans. Their jeans are orange, green, cobalt blue, red...jeans for which up you'd probably get bullied mercilessly in an American school. Another trend involves the beggars who bring their pets to help them beg; after all, no one wants to help a grimy man, but a lot of people will stop to pet a cute mutt. The most creative of these guys had a rabbit. Who begs with a pet rabbit?
Doors are another oddity in Europe. Some of these old buildings had massive doors, big enough for a horse and rider to go through, so modern architects have simply converted those doors to walls, and cut smaller doors into them; people are always coming out of small doors cut out of big doors, which makes them look like they're in a kids' lift-the-flap book. I find it really baffling that the doors have doorknobs, but the doorknobs do absolutely nothing. They are located in the center of the door. They aren't connected to the door's opening and closing at all. WTF?
And finally, we have been looking for a fountain in Paris that can compare to anything in Barcelona or Rome. We found a relatively small, but lovely one at Saint-Michel...but Parisian officials clearly have decided the Seine is enough water for anyone, and fountains are overkill.
Greg and the kids headed off to the catacombs on Friday morning, trying to get there super-early to avoid waiting in line. They waited 2.5hrs anyway, but they got to climb underneath Paris and see the remains of formerly alive people. The three of them came back and collapsed for a nap, so I went for a walk in our section of the city. I went down to Notre Dame, which is much nicer than I remembered it, though poor old John the Baptist is still toting his own head in the statue by the left-hand door. I went over the Seine on one of the bridges where people have attached hundreds of padlocks to the fence. It is a thing in Paris to buy a padlock, put your name on it somehow (carving? I dunno), and padlock it to one of these fences over the Seine. I guess this is better than people cutting their names into trees, but it still seems like a sad attempt at immortality.
Later, we all went to the Eiffel Tower, where poor Greg once again had the tough job of keeping up with Nicky, climbing up to the second platform. I've been on the Eiffel Tower and climbing stairs holds no thrill for me, so after Cassie had gone to the first platform and returned, we wandered around the park. The gardens are really quirky here, because they have some humble flowers like marigolds, which no one else puts in these public showcase gardens. There are showy roses everywhere, too, but a lot of the gardens look like something I would put together, which means there are philistines in Paris, too.
After a dinner that included the now-required crepes, we roamed back to our apartment, passing Notre Dame, Hotel d'Ville, and -- bizarrely -- a group of maybe a hundred rollerbladers gathering for a street race. One of them was wearing Christmas lights, and another had neon piping around his outfit. Why there was a rollerblade race at 11pm on a Friday will remain a mystery.
I just hope the pet rabbit wasn't involved.
Friday, June 20, 2014
Understanding my own issues
I admit that I have long had a problem with looking at the kinds of famous art that we are seeing here in Paris. I've never liked looking at marble statues of people, nor do I particularly like a lot of the paintings of people-scenes from the Louvre. And I finally figured out why. Yes, I'm a philistine peasant with no ability to recognize The Finer Things, but there's an actual reason I don't like the art. It's all in the eyes.
Marble statues have creepy, blank eyes with no irises or pupils. Just round, white eyeballs with no focal point and no personality. They look at you like the undead, and because they are usually in some sort of holy pose or semi-sexy pose, their lack of eyes is even more unsettling. Statue after statue of blank eyes looking like they are pleading for something...that's an odd experience. Watching someone try to be erotic and undead at the same time just feels all wrong. It makes you want to call in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a little bit of cover.
In the paintings, there are pupils and irises in the eyes, but there aren't so many people actually looking at each other. Often they are looking up, asking the heavens why life sucks so much in this particular scene, or in some cases, looking all serene and thankful. In many paintings people are looking at the baby Jesus, who is lying there looking like either (1) a baby, or (2) a little man wrapped in baby cloth. Seriously. Look at some famous Jesus and Mary paintings, and you will see that the baby face isn't babyish at all. Weirdest of all is the way some people paint the baby's hands as grown-up hands, which really is freaky.
A beggar looks at a woman in one scene, but she is looking at the plate where she is dropping her coin. Crowds of people watching Jesus do something famous are mostly looking at Jesus, or the heavens, or out at the viewer, or anywhere, but the people do not make eye contact with each other. You would think, if someone were being put on trial or crowned or asked to change water into wine, you'd have a couple of onlookers whispering to each other like, "What is he even WEARING?" But no one seems to interact, not even when they are killing each other. All the humans are alone in some way, even in this huge crowd. And they usually aren't happy. Maybe they can't look at each other in case they start giggling inappropriately, but they could look at each other once in awhile, don't you think?
My parents always told me to look a man in the eye when I'm about to disembowel him. And that's probably why I don't like this kind of art.
Marble statues have creepy, blank eyes with no irises or pupils. Just round, white eyeballs with no focal point and no personality. They look at you like the undead, and because they are usually in some sort of holy pose or semi-sexy pose, their lack of eyes is even more unsettling. Statue after statue of blank eyes looking like they are pleading for something...that's an odd experience. Watching someone try to be erotic and undead at the same time just feels all wrong. It makes you want to call in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a little bit of cover.
In the paintings, there are pupils and irises in the eyes, but there aren't so many people actually looking at each other. Often they are looking up, asking the heavens why life sucks so much in this particular scene, or in some cases, looking all serene and thankful. In many paintings people are looking at the baby Jesus, who is lying there looking like either (1) a baby, or (2) a little man wrapped in baby cloth. Seriously. Look at some famous Jesus and Mary paintings, and you will see that the baby face isn't babyish at all. Weirdest of all is the way some people paint the baby's hands as grown-up hands, which really is freaky.
A beggar looks at a woman in one scene, but she is looking at the plate where she is dropping her coin. Crowds of people watching Jesus do something famous are mostly looking at Jesus, or the heavens, or out at the viewer, or anywhere, but the people do not make eye contact with each other. You would think, if someone were being put on trial or crowned or asked to change water into wine, you'd have a couple of onlookers whispering to each other like, "What is he even WEARING?" But no one seems to interact, not even when they are killing each other. All the humans are alone in some way, even in this huge crowd. And they usually aren't happy. Maybe they can't look at each other in case they start giggling inappropriately, but they could look at each other once in awhile, don't you think?
My parents always told me to look a man in the eye when I'm about to disembowel him. And that's probably why I don't like this kind of art.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Louvre lover
Today we slept criminally late. We rationalized our behavior by pretending to care about French cultural traditions of sleeping late, about which we know nothing, but it made us feel very self-righteous.
I tried to take us to the cat cafe, but they appeared to be late in opening, and Cassie didn't want to hang around waiting. She got all squirrelly and antsy, because she wasn't "comfortable in this city." Once again, I had to bark at her to deal with it, that sometimes she just has to BE uncomfortable and her discomfort has to be okay while we all adjust.
Of course I can say that, because I have my super-powers of motherhood cranking. These are the same powers that enable me to get rid of insects, but only if everyone else in the room is screaming and crying. If anyone else were willing to get rid of the insect, say Greg for example, I'd be screaming and crying with all other wussy people...but under pressure to act like a grown up, I can totally pull it together. Similarly, if I were on my own in Paris, I'd probably slink around meekly, but I can't let my family turn into slinkers.
We went off to the Louvre, stopping at a local mall to pick up the tickets I'd ordered online. I cannot say enough about online ticket ordering. If you don't do it, you are a boneheaded fool who deserves to stand in line for hours. At the mall, we decided to grab some sandwiches to get us through the Louvre without dying of starvation. Of course, this is Paris, so the mall sandwich shop had smoked salmon and cucumber baguette sandwiches. Yum.
On the way to the Louvre, we passed courtyards of enormous buildings, but they all seemed curiously dead compared to Rome and Barcelona. We couldn't figure out why, till we realized there was no greenery anywhere. These enormous buildings with all kinds of glorious artwork surround a concrete courtyard. There's no life in it anywhere.
We found the Louvre easily enough, and took the requisite photos by the giant glass pyramid. By that time, we had passed enough buildings and monuments to conclude that the French don't know jack about making great fountains. They really need to talk to Barcelona, or if they absolutely can't get Barcelona on the phone, then Rome. French fountains are round pools with water hoses squirting up. Snooze.
But the Louvre, of course, is outrageously awesome. Let's get it straight: I could cheerfully live the rest of my life without seeing another Madonna and Child, Jesus scene, or Greek deity. I would have given big money to have these same guys paint a fruit market, or sailboats, or dead fish, or even the velvet sofa without the unattractive woman lounging naked upon it. But the total tedium of all that stuff just made the more interesting pieces that much cooler. Your senses get dulled by the 450th Jesus scene, but then you come across incredible standouts, like the Pacific Islands work. The Islamic art section was gorgeous. And we never even got to the French and Dutch. We just got overloaded.
We wandered through the gardens whose names I cannot spell (Tuileries or something), where we found some of the life that was missing from the courtyards -- the park is great on a 75-degree day -- up to the Place de Concorde, which disappointingly did not feature a supersonic jet. That's where we finally took a break from our strenuous day (ha) and got some crepes from a street vendor. In all honesty, street-side crepes were my main reason for coming to Paris.
After a quick side trip to a supermarket called Monop' (really?) to stock up on snacks, we are back in our very nice apartment. Tomorrow Greg is taking the kids to the Catacombs, where my claustrophobia prevents me from going. Ohhhhh darn, a morning without the family. Maybe I will finally get to go to the cat cafe.
I tried to take us to the cat cafe, but they appeared to be late in opening, and Cassie didn't want to hang around waiting. She got all squirrelly and antsy, because she wasn't "comfortable in this city." Once again, I had to bark at her to deal with it, that sometimes she just has to BE uncomfortable and her discomfort has to be okay while we all adjust.
Of course I can say that, because I have my super-powers of motherhood cranking. These are the same powers that enable me to get rid of insects, but only if everyone else in the room is screaming and crying. If anyone else were willing to get rid of the insect, say Greg for example, I'd be screaming and crying with all other wussy people...but under pressure to act like a grown up, I can totally pull it together. Similarly, if I were on my own in Paris, I'd probably slink around meekly, but I can't let my family turn into slinkers.
We went off to the Louvre, stopping at a local mall to pick up the tickets I'd ordered online. I cannot say enough about online ticket ordering. If you don't do it, you are a boneheaded fool who deserves to stand in line for hours. At the mall, we decided to grab some sandwiches to get us through the Louvre without dying of starvation. Of course, this is Paris, so the mall sandwich shop had smoked salmon and cucumber baguette sandwiches. Yum.
On the way to the Louvre, we passed courtyards of enormous buildings, but they all seemed curiously dead compared to Rome and Barcelona. We couldn't figure out why, till we realized there was no greenery anywhere. These enormous buildings with all kinds of glorious artwork surround a concrete courtyard. There's no life in it anywhere.
We found the Louvre easily enough, and took the requisite photos by the giant glass pyramid. By that time, we had passed enough buildings and monuments to conclude that the French don't know jack about making great fountains. They really need to talk to Barcelona, or if they absolutely can't get Barcelona on the phone, then Rome. French fountains are round pools with water hoses squirting up. Snooze.
But the Louvre, of course, is outrageously awesome. Let's get it straight: I could cheerfully live the rest of my life without seeing another Madonna and Child, Jesus scene, or Greek deity. I would have given big money to have these same guys paint a fruit market, or sailboats, or dead fish, or even the velvet sofa without the unattractive woman lounging naked upon it. But the total tedium of all that stuff just made the more interesting pieces that much cooler. Your senses get dulled by the 450th Jesus scene, but then you come across incredible standouts, like the Pacific Islands work. The Islamic art section was gorgeous. And we never even got to the French and Dutch. We just got overloaded.
We wandered through the gardens whose names I cannot spell (Tuileries or something), where we found some of the life that was missing from the courtyards -- the park is great on a 75-degree day -- up to the Place de Concorde, which disappointingly did not feature a supersonic jet. That's where we finally took a break from our strenuous day (ha) and got some crepes from a street vendor. In all honesty, street-side crepes were my main reason for coming to Paris.
After a quick side trip to a supermarket called Monop' (really?) to stock up on snacks, we are back in our very nice apartment. Tomorrow Greg is taking the kids to the Catacombs, where my claustrophobia prevents me from going. Ohhhhh darn, a morning without the family. Maybe I will finally get to go to the cat cafe.
Breaching the walls of the fortress
We arrived in Paris late last night, and in typical old-European-city style, it intimidated me into a small and whimpering ball. Our rented apartment is in one of those insanely narrow, old streets that looks like a setting for every euro-murder movie ever shown. All the shops were closed, and they all close by bringing down steel garage doors...so the whole street looked forbidding and unfriendly.
On the sides of the fortress-like walls that make up the street, there are little electronic security panels, which open the enormous old doors, all of which have a perfectly useless doorknob placed in the direct center of the door, presumably for decoration or for confusing people.
Once you get inside the fortress walls, there is a tiny mailbox area where you must enter more codes to open the iron gates. Remember the iron gates where the nuns hid the Von Trapps from the Nazis? It's just like that, only Mother Superior's keys have been replaced by security codes. Something about the combination of medieval and high-tech was exhausting at midnight. First you get intimidated because you feel like you're in a medieval slum, and then you can't figure out the high-tech method of crossing the moat.
But our apartment is lovely, spotlessly clean ("The owner is Korean," said the keymaster, shrugging, as if that explained the perfectly anal-retentive organization of all things.). And we are a couple of doors down from Cafe les Chats (a cafe with rescued cats), so we are headed there for some feline pre-Louvre love.
Oh -- unrelated -- Cassie got noticed on the plane for her intricate drawing on her brother's iPad. The flight attendant guy was chattering and exclaiming in French, until I had her remove her earbuds and repeat the immortal phrase, "Je ne parlez-pas francais." The attendant changed over to gushing in English, and Cassie later confessed that she planned to keep her earbuds attached forever, so she could hide.
But our apartment is lovely, spotlessly clean ("The owner is Korean," said the keymaster, shrugging, as if that explained the perfectly anal-retentive organization of all things.). And we are a couple of doors down from Cafe les Chats (a cafe with rescued cats), so we are headed there for some feline pre-Louvre love.
Oh -- unrelated -- Cassie got noticed on the plane for her intricate drawing on her brother's iPad. The flight attendant guy was chattering and exclaiming in French, until I had her remove her earbuds and repeat the immortal phrase, "Je ne parlez-pas francais." The attendant changed over to gushing in English, and Cassie later confessed that she planned to keep her earbuds attached forever, so she could hide.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Ordinary needs in an extraordinary place
When I'm on vacation, I usually don't have to buy anything ordinary. I might have to pick up some sunscreen or a bottle of shampoo if I forgot to pack it, but that stuff is easily found in a grocery store. I just spend money on irreverent t-shirts from museum stores. This vacation, however, is a whole new world: never have I been gone from home for a month, and needed something ridiculously ordinary.
In this case, I needed socks. Yes, socks. I always say socks should be free, because there is no joy in buying socks. No one gets excited to see that you have new socks. You just need them.then you destroy them and you need some more. Dullsville.
The thing is, I'm in a place where I walk more than I have walked since living in Chapel Hill. Parts of my feet are bleeding and/or self-amputating daily. I need some serious socks for people who beat up their feet. But where in hell do people buy something like athletic socks in Barcelona?
We got all Sherlock on Barcelona's ass. The first stop was an asics store, where they not only sell high end running shoes, but they also have an in-store treadmill with complicated-looking devices for -- I dunno, maybe performing neurosurgery while you run. The socks sold there were ultra-moisture-wicking, space-age blah blah blah jillion-dollar socks.
This is getting irritating, I thought. Let's just go to the mall. (When I say, "Let's go to a mall, " it is a clear sign that desperation and hysteria are setting in.)
At the mall, there were more stores with mega-expensive specialty socks (wool socks for mountain climbers! funny socks with faces printed on them!) and not a useful sock to be seen. I was about to give up and let my feet bleed themselves down to stumps, when we found the store Decathlon.
To imagine Decathlon accurately, you must envision Sports Authority. Then you must make it the size of Target, and include things you would never see in Sports Authority. From the front of the store, for example, I spotted karate gi hanging in the back. I went back there and discovered that the martial arts supplies (including many colors of obi, which seemed odd) were hanging next to the ballet leotards and shoes. A sports store that sells ballet supplies? They also sell rhythmic gymnastics gear, wet suits and other diving equipment, camping crap, and bikini tops and bottoms sold separately (first sensible thing I've ever seen in bathing suit sales). My favorite of their products was a set of bikinis in which you could replace all the strings/straps, and they sold replacement strings in funky colors and patterns. So you could buy a bikini top and bottom that didn't match, and you could make them even weirder by changing up the straps.
I love this shit. I'm never voluntarily wearing a bikini again, but I love looking at the way people shop, the things they think are fun and valuable. Apparently they have decided, in the this beach town, that the very strings of the bikini should be a matter of individual choice.
Cool. But there's no more avoiding it. I gotta get socks. So, after looking through the soccer, basketball, baseball, and bicycling sections, I finally found the tennis area and found some socks I could live with.
Which brought me to the cash register, and the realization that there is a form of Spanish at which I suck. It is the part where the cashier asks if you have a Special Points for Big Spenders Card. The cards at each store are all called something different, as in the US, and the cashiers rattle off the question so fast that I always stare at them.
They stare back and then realize they are dealing with a human of sub-standard intelligence. "In English?" they ask me. Of course they are right, but just once I would like to say, "No, I would like you to say it in Aramaic, please. But if English is all you've got..."
It really is the ordinary stuff that tells you how people live, but I still want the irreverent t-shirts.
In this case, I needed socks. Yes, socks. I always say socks should be free, because there is no joy in buying socks. No one gets excited to see that you have new socks. You just need them.then you destroy them and you need some more. Dullsville.
The thing is, I'm in a place where I walk more than I have walked since living in Chapel Hill. Parts of my feet are bleeding and/or self-amputating daily. I need some serious socks for people who beat up their feet. But where in hell do people buy something like athletic socks in Barcelona?
We got all Sherlock on Barcelona's ass. The first stop was an asics store, where they not only sell high end running shoes, but they also have an in-store treadmill with complicated-looking devices for -- I dunno, maybe performing neurosurgery while you run. The socks sold there were ultra-moisture-wicking, space-age blah blah blah jillion-dollar socks.
This is getting irritating, I thought. Let's just go to the mall. (When I say, "Let's go to a mall, " it is a clear sign that desperation and hysteria are setting in.)
At the mall, there were more stores with mega-expensive specialty socks (wool socks for mountain climbers! funny socks with faces printed on them!) and not a useful sock to be seen. I was about to give up and let my feet bleed themselves down to stumps, when we found the store Decathlon.
To imagine Decathlon accurately, you must envision Sports Authority. Then you must make it the size of Target, and include things you would never see in Sports Authority. From the front of the store, for example, I spotted karate gi hanging in the back. I went back there and discovered that the martial arts supplies (including many colors of obi, which seemed odd) were hanging next to the ballet leotards and shoes. A sports store that sells ballet supplies? They also sell rhythmic gymnastics gear, wet suits and other diving equipment, camping crap, and bikini tops and bottoms sold separately (first sensible thing I've ever seen in bathing suit sales). My favorite of their products was a set of bikinis in which you could replace all the strings/straps, and they sold replacement strings in funky colors and patterns. So you could buy a bikini top and bottom that didn't match, and you could make them even weirder by changing up the straps.
I love this shit. I'm never voluntarily wearing a bikini again, but I love looking at the way people shop, the things they think are fun and valuable. Apparently they have decided, in the this beach town, that the very strings of the bikini should be a matter of individual choice.
Cool. But there's no more avoiding it. I gotta get socks. So, after looking through the soccer, basketball, baseball, and bicycling sections, I finally found the tennis area and found some socks I could live with.
Which brought me to the cash register, and the realization that there is a form of Spanish at which I suck. It is the part where the cashier asks if you have a Special Points for Big Spenders Card. The cards at each store are all called something different, as in the US, and the cashiers rattle off the question so fast that I always stare at them.
They stare back and then realize they are dealing with a human of sub-standard intelligence. "In English?" they ask me. Of course they are right, but just once I would like to say, "No, I would like you to say it in Aramaic, please. But if English is all you've got..."
It really is the ordinary stuff that tells you how people live, but I still want the irreverent t-shirts.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
Spanish Sunday
The great benefit of being in a place for weeks is that you can take a day and do very little. You don't have to get up and go to a museum, an event or a market every day. If you feel like napping all day after sleeping late, then you'll still be fine. Today was a Sunday in Spain, so we figured there wouldn't be too many places open. That, plus the fact that my feet needed to grow more skin before I tried walking more, kept us in most of the day. Nicky and Greg went to feed the fish at the park around the corner, but Cassie and I avoided all activity that didn't involve making fried egg sandwiches.
Once we got near dinner time, we decided to go try a tapas place. Cassie was still uncomfy with the lack of children here (we see some kids around town, just not in restaurants), so we went to a touristy tapas place near the Magic Fountains. I may remember this place for life, not because the food was so special, but because Nicky choked on something and started the yacking process at the table, the way a cat starts working out a hairball. I convinced Greg to get the kid to the bathroom before true horrors occurred. No one barfs alone in my presence, so I'm a particularly horrendous mother in these situations. Presumably other mothers aren't urging their husbands, "GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" when the kid is choking.
I further increased my mommy-award potential by giving Cassie sangria. Well, she looks 18. Or at least she did after I had half a pitcher of sangria.
We left the tapas place and walked over to watch the fountain show, which involved only the main fountain and not the 20-some side fountains. So it wasn't as large as Bellagio, but featured cool colored mists that looked like flames or clouds. Unfortunately, there were also some young adult German tourists near the fountain. It seemed to be their mission to remind the world that it's been awhile since the last big euro-war, so it might be time to invade Germany again, unless they promise to keep these idiots home. Now I know how people feel about American tourists. I tried to rationalize this experience by remembering that I was a thoroughly obnoxious teenager in Europe once, and the universe deserves to have a little revenge on me.
We took the subway back north, but hopped off and walked 20min instead of bothering with the connecting bus. The city at night is quiet, but the Diagonal didn't feel dangerous or menacing. Off the Diagonal, the streets got dark in a hurry, and I was glad we didn't live too far off. There weren't any creepy people, but it is still strange when your normally active neighborhood goes silent.
Tomorrow I'm thinking about a Picasso museum trip. Greg has to go back to teaching tomorrow, so we are on our own for awhile. Part of Greg's responsibility is to find out whether all the kids made it back from their mid-summer break alive. We actually ran into one of the students in Rome, but aside from that, we haven't heard a thing. Here's hoping they are all in one piece.
Once we got near dinner time, we decided to go try a tapas place. Cassie was still uncomfy with the lack of children here (we see some kids around town, just not in restaurants), so we went to a touristy tapas place near the Magic Fountains. I may remember this place for life, not because the food was so special, but because Nicky choked on something and started the yacking process at the table, the way a cat starts working out a hairball. I convinced Greg to get the kid to the bathroom before true horrors occurred. No one barfs alone in my presence, so I'm a particularly horrendous mother in these situations. Presumably other mothers aren't urging their husbands, "GET HIM OUT OF HERE!" when the kid is choking.
I further increased my mommy-award potential by giving Cassie sangria. Well, she looks 18. Or at least she did after I had half a pitcher of sangria.
We left the tapas place and walked over to watch the fountain show, which involved only the main fountain and not the 20-some side fountains. So it wasn't as large as Bellagio, but featured cool colored mists that looked like flames or clouds. Unfortunately, there were also some young adult German tourists near the fountain. It seemed to be their mission to remind the world that it's been awhile since the last big euro-war, so it might be time to invade Germany again, unless they promise to keep these idiots home. Now I know how people feel about American tourists. I tried to rationalize this experience by remembering that I was a thoroughly obnoxious teenager in Europe once, and the universe deserves to have a little revenge on me.
We took the subway back north, but hopped off and walked 20min instead of bothering with the connecting bus. The city at night is quiet, but the Diagonal didn't feel dangerous or menacing. Off the Diagonal, the streets got dark in a hurry, and I was glad we didn't live too far off. There weren't any creepy people, but it is still strange when your normally active neighborhood goes silent.
Tomorrow I'm thinking about a Picasso museum trip. Greg has to go back to teaching tomorrow, so we are on our own for awhile. Part of Greg's responsibility is to find out whether all the kids made it back from their mid-summer break alive. We actually ran into one of the students in Rome, but aside from that, we haven't heard a thing. Here's hoping they are all in one piece.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Wandering
Once again, I had attempted to make plans for today, but I think I should quit trying to plan stuff, and just choose a compass direction in which to wander each day.
After a lazy morning and early afternoon, Greg and I wandered over to our local neighborhood market, a couple of blocks away. It was great, a smaller and cheaper and FAR less crowded version of Boqueria...but because they don't really expect tourists so much up here, fewer people speak English and more people think you can haggle in Catalan. I can't even haggle in English. I just want to walk in, pay the price marked, and leave.
For that sort of shopping,there is our local supermarket, Caprabo, which Greg and I have nicknamed Crap-Bo. There's nothing really wrong with the place, but the local versions ain't Publix. Still, if you need laundry soap and a box of band-aids, it's as good as anywhere.
When we brought home the fresh berries and apricots from the Mercat, the kids pounced. The berries were literally gone by the time we unpacked the supermarket bag. Do these kids even chew?
We thought we would head up to Poble Espanyol, another tourist trap down in the Montjuic neighborhood. We knew it would be Epcot-like and overpriced, but I'm tired of all the souvenir shops that sell the same junk (none of which I want), so I figured we would try this.
On the way, we stopped at Parc Joan Miro, where Nicky and Greg played on the zip line and climbing structure, I took photos, and Cassie acted like she did not know any of us.
Unfortunately, we got to Poble Espanyol to find that there was some sort of concert/music festival going on, featuring young people covered entirely in tattoos and making out over beers, while older people in leggings printed with marijuana leaves tried to look young. Groan. Not my scene...not in 20 years. I reserve the right to dye my hair a cheap red and wear cannabis-related clothing at some point in my life, but I'm not that pathetic yet.
So we backtracked to the Magic Fountains, which start high on the hillside at the MNAC (which translates to national museum of art of Catalonia). MNAC is a giant beast of a palace-building, and while we didn't go inside, the many many many many many levels of fountains were really awesome. Nicky and Greg went to play by the fountains, so Cassie and I wandered to the drinks cart and bought cold things and sat in the shade. She sketched...a soccer player. I don't know how to feel about this.
The museum was a great place to hang out and watch the concert-goers shuffle by, some looking more concert-ready (ahem) than others. The half-dozen or so outdoor escalators allowed us to get up to the terrace of the museum and look out over Barcelona. Nicky ran the stairs instead of taking escalators, which to me is like drinking a bucket of sand instead of cold water. But that's Nicky.
We had planned to be in that neighborhood long enough to watch the fountains do their dance routine (think of multiplying the Bellagio casino by twenty), but the sun doesn't set till after 9pm here, and we couldn't hold out. We came back home and collapsed, and started taking bets on whether my pinky toe is still there or if it just fell off around the Arenas. I haven't taken off my sick yet, because I'm too damn tired. I made some dinner and flopped.
And here's where I must confess before all my food and wine peeps, that I have not in fact had a real meal in a Barcelona restaurant yet. Mostly that's because of timing (they don't open till 8-9pm), and partly because Cassie is creeped-out by the fact that there seem to be no children in these places anywhere. Where do kids eat? We don't see many at restaurants. I suspect that the rationale is that every restaurant is absolutely unreasonably expensive, which is the other reason we have been cooking at home. We spent fortunes on meals in Italy, and not even fancy meals, just...decent. Every meal cost us at least $100US, and the prices here are similar. We haven't gone broke yet, but we will if we keep that up! We have had some great sushi and many bites of random goodness, but we haven't been to tapas or paella places as a family.
Instead of going broke on food, we bought plane tickets to Paris. No, not the train, which cost double. When did the plane start costing half of the train fare? We have a rental in Marais and we are hoping to meet Marc & Erin for lunch next weekend.
I bet Nicky runs the stairs on the Eiffel Tower, the little weirdo.
After a lazy morning and early afternoon, Greg and I wandered over to our local neighborhood market, a couple of blocks away. It was great, a smaller and cheaper and FAR less crowded version of Boqueria...but because they don't really expect tourists so much up here, fewer people speak English and more people think you can haggle in Catalan. I can't even haggle in English. I just want to walk in, pay the price marked, and leave.
For that sort of shopping,there is our local supermarket, Caprabo, which Greg and I have nicknamed Crap-Bo. There's nothing really wrong with the place, but the local versions ain't Publix. Still, if you need laundry soap and a box of band-aids, it's as good as anywhere.
When we brought home the fresh berries and apricots from the Mercat, the kids pounced. The berries were literally gone by the time we unpacked the supermarket bag. Do these kids even chew?
We thought we would head up to Poble Espanyol, another tourist trap down in the Montjuic neighborhood. We knew it would be Epcot-like and overpriced, but I'm tired of all the souvenir shops that sell the same junk (none of which I want), so I figured we would try this.
On the way, we stopped at Parc Joan Miro, where Nicky and Greg played on the zip line and climbing structure, I took photos, and Cassie acted like she did not know any of us.
Unfortunately, we got to Poble Espanyol to find that there was some sort of concert/music festival going on, featuring young people covered entirely in tattoos and making out over beers, while older people in leggings printed with marijuana leaves tried to look young. Groan. Not my scene...not in 20 years. I reserve the right to dye my hair a cheap red and wear cannabis-related clothing at some point in my life, but I'm not that pathetic yet.
So we backtracked to the Magic Fountains, which start high on the hillside at the MNAC (which translates to national museum of art of Catalonia). MNAC is a giant beast of a palace-building, and while we didn't go inside, the many many many many many levels of fountains were really awesome. Nicky and Greg went to play by the fountains, so Cassie and I wandered to the drinks cart and bought cold things and sat in the shade. She sketched...a soccer player. I don't know how to feel about this.
The museum was a great place to hang out and watch the concert-goers shuffle by, some looking more concert-ready (ahem) than others. The half-dozen or so outdoor escalators allowed us to get up to the terrace of the museum and look out over Barcelona. Nicky ran the stairs instead of taking escalators, which to me is like drinking a bucket of sand instead of cold water. But that's Nicky.
We had planned to be in that neighborhood long enough to watch the fountains do their dance routine (think of multiplying the Bellagio casino by twenty), but the sun doesn't set till after 9pm here, and we couldn't hold out. We came back home and collapsed, and started taking bets on whether my pinky toe is still there or if it just fell off around the Arenas. I haven't taken off my sick yet, because I'm too damn tired. I made some dinner and flopped.
And here's where I must confess before all my food and wine peeps, that I have not in fact had a real meal in a Barcelona restaurant yet. Mostly that's because of timing (they don't open till 8-9pm), and partly because Cassie is creeped-out by the fact that there seem to be no children in these places anywhere. Where do kids eat? We don't see many at restaurants. I suspect that the rationale is that every restaurant is absolutely unreasonably expensive, which is the other reason we have been cooking at home. We spent fortunes on meals in Italy, and not even fancy meals, just...decent. Every meal cost us at least $100US, and the prices here are similar. We haven't gone broke yet, but we will if we keep that up! We have had some great sushi and many bites of random goodness, but we haven't been to tapas or paella places as a family.
Instead of going broke on food, we bought plane tickets to Paris. No, not the train, which cost double. When did the plane start costing half of the train fare? We have a rental in Marais and we are hoping to meet Marc & Erin for lunch next weekend.
I bet Nicky runs the stairs on the Eiffel Tower, the little weirdo.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Good Gawd I love Gaudi
Today we wandered to a couple of Gaudi places. We went to Casa Batilo, but at 21euro apiece, we didn't pursue the indoor tour. Still, just looking at the outside was an exercise in realizing just how sucky most buildings are, and how much better Gaudi made them. He designed so much of Barcelona that his work is a major part of living here.
Now let's be honest. I don't care about buildings, really. I live in a town whose principal architecture is the strip mall, punctuated by lunchbox houses, of which I live in one. And I kind of don't care, although I do always like to look at the older neighborhoods and see how the people have tried to put their mark on the clone-zone houses after a few decades. Homeowners associations kind of kill the creativity in newer neighborhoods, but even those weird fascists represent a form of evolution.
Anyway, Gaudi is something totally different, and here's why I think he is so awesome: first, a suburbanite plebe like myself can recognize that this architecture is unique, completely separate from the way anyone else built anything. If I can recognize it, that's saying something. I wish there was something, anything I could do that was really unique, but the only talent I really have is for being me. I'm okay with that, but building fabulous structures would be an added bonus.
Second, Gaudi's work is pretty. I mean, I actually like looking at it. Other famous dudes have made famous buildings and I've thought, "Ew." Especially all those uber-modern people whose stuff is all clean and perfectly symmetric and built for people who don't have any possessions or children or pets -- I'm done looking at that stuff. But I could sit and stare at the structures Gaudi built. I don't get bored, which is major for me. I *always* get bored, but not here.
Third, Gaudi likes nature, and natural surfaces and shapes and structures. He makes his buildings like living things, and maybe they work because the shapes are part of the world I understand. I don't understand clean lines and uncluttered space.
And finally, most importantly, I think I could live in a Gaudi structure with Gaudi furniture. Okay, I might not necessarily need a chapel in my apartment, but if he designed it, maybe. The work actually is -- and jeez, I never thought I would use this trite, irritating word -- uplifting. It's fun, it's funky, it's totally outside the lines, but it is like a big celebration: how can we make this ordinary thing more interesting?
Here's one of the coolest things they had in the La Pedrera exhibits: a before and after maquette of Casa Batilo. It was incredible. The building was a block of rectangles, a thoroughly ordinary apartment building. It was nice enough. But now, with a reimagining by Gaudi, the thing is AWESOME. It's awesomeness wrapped in funky wrapped in cool, with a boatload of wacky on top. Color everywhere, shapes everywhere, totally detonated joy.
I don't know why I am all obsessed with this guy, but it is certainly better than being obsessed with Spanish soccer. Spain got a real kick in the nethers from the Netherlands tonight. People all over town had advertised, on cafe chalkboards and such, the game being watched on the cafe tv or the bar's big-screen or whatever. I would be nervous about showing my face near one of those places right now, lest my poor Spanish sound in any way Dutch-accented. Cassie suggested we stay indoors all day tomorrow, so as to avoid hungover, grumpy Spaniards. She might be on to something.
Today's other amusement was going into the Tiger Store for the first time since my friend Andy recommended it. What a blast. Andy described it as "ikea meets the dollar store," and there can be no more perfect description. It's another great example of design and arrangement of objects, because I don't need a damn thing from that store, yet I considered buying several things anyway, just because I was having fun.
Which is kind of a good description of Barcelona as a whole. I've never cared about Spain or Barcelona or cities or traveling much at all, but something about the combination of fun, function, beauty and accessibility makes this city phenomenal. I've never been anywhere like it.
Now let's be honest. I don't care about buildings, really. I live in a town whose principal architecture is the strip mall, punctuated by lunchbox houses, of which I live in one. And I kind of don't care, although I do always like to look at the older neighborhoods and see how the people have tried to put their mark on the clone-zone houses after a few decades. Homeowners associations kind of kill the creativity in newer neighborhoods, but even those weird fascists represent a form of evolution.
Anyway, Gaudi is something totally different, and here's why I think he is so awesome: first, a suburbanite plebe like myself can recognize that this architecture is unique, completely separate from the way anyone else built anything. If I can recognize it, that's saying something. I wish there was something, anything I could do that was really unique, but the only talent I really have is for being me. I'm okay with that, but building fabulous structures would be an added bonus.
Second, Gaudi's work is pretty. I mean, I actually like looking at it. Other famous dudes have made famous buildings and I've thought, "Ew." Especially all those uber-modern people whose stuff is all clean and perfectly symmetric and built for people who don't have any possessions or children or pets -- I'm done looking at that stuff. But I could sit and stare at the structures Gaudi built. I don't get bored, which is major for me. I *always* get bored, but not here.
Third, Gaudi likes nature, and natural surfaces and shapes and structures. He makes his buildings like living things, and maybe they work because the shapes are part of the world I understand. I don't understand clean lines and uncluttered space.
And finally, most importantly, I think I could live in a Gaudi structure with Gaudi furniture. Okay, I might not necessarily need a chapel in my apartment, but if he designed it, maybe. The work actually is -- and jeez, I never thought I would use this trite, irritating word -- uplifting. It's fun, it's funky, it's totally outside the lines, but it is like a big celebration: how can we make this ordinary thing more interesting?
Here's one of the coolest things they had in the La Pedrera exhibits: a before and after maquette of Casa Batilo. It was incredible. The building was a block of rectangles, a thoroughly ordinary apartment building. It was nice enough. But now, with a reimagining by Gaudi, the thing is AWESOME. It's awesomeness wrapped in funky wrapped in cool, with a boatload of wacky on top. Color everywhere, shapes everywhere, totally detonated joy.
I don't know why I am all obsessed with this guy, but it is certainly better than being obsessed with Spanish soccer. Spain got a real kick in the nethers from the Netherlands tonight. People all over town had advertised, on cafe chalkboards and such, the game being watched on the cafe tv or the bar's big-screen or whatever. I would be nervous about showing my face near one of those places right now, lest my poor Spanish sound in any way Dutch-accented. Cassie suggested we stay indoors all day tomorrow, so as to avoid hungover, grumpy Spaniards. She might be on to something.
Today's other amusement was going into the Tiger Store for the first time since my friend Andy recommended it. What a blast. Andy described it as "ikea meets the dollar store," and there can be no more perfect description. It's another great example of design and arrangement of objects, because I don't need a damn thing from that store, yet I considered buying several things anyway, just because I was having fun.
Which is kind of a good description of Barcelona as a whole. I've never cared about Spain or Barcelona or cities or traveling much at all, but something about the combination of fun, function, beauty and accessibility makes this city phenomenal. I've never been anywhere like it.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Dis de Los fiascos
Today we greeted the handyman, Alejandro, so he could finish working on the gas pipes. He replaced them all, which involved the poor not-young guy kneeling on the kitchen counter and leaning halfway out the window. We are on the fifth floor, which is really the seventh floor, which would make more sense if you ate hallucinogenic mushrooms, and it must have been dizzying to hang out that window. I was delighted that we did not explode, and even happier hat he told me my Spanish was suficiente despite all my apologies. He said all he knows to say in English is, "My name is Alejandro, what is your name?" Strangely, my slurry-sliding way of speaking Spanish is nearly correct into is part of Spain. A little validation felt good after days of feeling incompetent. Maybe he was just being nice because his daughter and I have the same name (as if being named Mary/Maria is so rare here). Anyway, the two-day saga of gas pipery finally came to an end with no boom.
Greg and Nicky weren't needed for this Spanish-only encounter, so they trotted off to the beach where, as Nicky explained, "it wasn't pleasant, but you could swim [referring to water temperature]." That kid would swim in anything. "And we found a cup that we later recycled, but first we tried to catch fish in it." Of course you did.
Cassie and I, meanwhile, went off on a search for the Mercat Sant Antoni, about two miles from here. For some reason, we elected to walk, only to find the Mercat close for construction. As was the next Mercat. The only thing open was the giant blister that used to be my pinky toe.
Greg and Nicky didn't try to walk home...till their bus broke down. They found someone who could speak enough English to explain that the bus was toast, and they had to figure out how to get home without Greg's cell phone or other helpful devices (you can't take that sort of thing to the beach if you want to see it again).
So we all ended up walking home from various directions, only to find our landlord in the hallway saying, "Your hot water is back? Then I'm going to come up in the morning to take a shower." I hope he was kidding.
Of course I needed two ingredients to cook dinner, and of course I'm the only one who speaks Spanish, so I went with Greg to the store. If there are things that I'm truly missing, they are (1) hearing English spoken, and (2) being able to send Greg out to the store or the takeout place. Or maybe I just wish the rest of my family were more linguistically flexible.
I'm also missing a haircut place, especially for Nicky, who looks like a bad 1970s rock drummer. Cassie and I decided to cut his hair, using the one thing we had successfully found for purchase, a pair of moderately sharp scissors. All I can say about this experience is that it would have gone better if Cassie hadn't started screaming that I was ruining him and I.must.stop. Nicky now looks less like a drummer and more like someone whose mother and sister maybe inhaled too much natural gas.
And now I'm "watching" World Cup soccer, and spending most of my time mocking the idea of playing a sport while wearing hair gel and sporting waxed eyebrows. I don't need to watch the game anyway, because I can hear the whole building reacting to it. Every time I actually look at the game, the players are all pointing accusingly at each other and motioning to the officials to show how grievously injured they are. What a snoozer.
Tomorrow it is off to do Lesser Gaudi structures, in preparation for La Sagrada Familia.
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Puttering around
Yesterday on the plane, I met a nice American woman, traveling in a group of eight, whose flights had somehow taken her from the USA to Rome, then Barcelona. She was a little anxious, as anyone is before they land in a city where they don't speak the language, don't know the geography, and haven't a clue about the culture. It was so fun to be able to reassure her, especially after all of my own anxieties about coming here. It feels great to feel comfortable in Barcelona.
Today we had a mishap in that I let the gas inspector in the door, and he proceeded to turn off our gas due to a small "escape" (leak). This would have bothered me less if I hadn't needed a shower so desperately. I ended up boiling a pot of water and using some combination of freezing shower and teacups of warm water poured over my head. The glam life of the jet-set euro-fabulous travelin' mama. When you envy the travel to Europe, make sure you factor in my sad-sack self, pouring hot water from an ikea teacup on my shampoo-covered head, while jets of icy water slash me in the back.
After that, I was ready for some calm adventure, if you can imagine such a thing. You know, I wanted to see sites, but nothing that would attempt to harm me through temperature, inspectors, home repairs or teacups. I'm sure you understand.
Parc de la Ciutadella (Park of the Citadel, or Fort) was the answer. It isn't in the most fabulous neighborhood, but the park itself is terrific. For Atlanta peeps, think of Grant Park, which is near some ordinary neighborhood, some beautiful stuff, and some sketchy areas. The zoo is in there, as is the science museum, though we didn't feel like going to those. Instead, we just wandered around, going past the permanent table tennis area (yes, they put up concrete tables for people to play table tennis; in Atlanta, they would likely be used for public sex or shooting drugs, but here they seem to actually play table tennis), the people bouncing on slack lines, groups of students who seemed to be doing a school project, and people hanging out.
As per usual for Barcelona, we walked around the corner to a jaw-dropping site, an absolutely fantastic set of cascading fountains and sculptures and steps and...hell, I can't describe it. It's like Disney meets gothic in a city park, and sometimes a dog jumps in for a cooing swim. You can walk up the sides of the structure on several flights of marble stairs, which I predictably elected to skip, and there's a little building at the top that makes you look like the ruler of some miniature kingdom of water. But the coolest part is that there is greenery and shrubbery growing in all kinds of areas of the fountain, which means it isn't just concrete and water. It has life, too. All this, and statues of dragons spitting out water.
As we hung out there, a group of people came nearby and started working out, like a boot camp group. These people were fantastically in shape, tan, young adults (up to 30 maybe), and...they were working out in a park on a Wednesday at 3pm. Hmmm. What's their work situation? How do they get to be in a park at that time?
Another guy arrived near the fountain area and started making enormous soap bubbles, using long sticks with strings holding them together. Nicky had a grand time running around, chasing the bubbles like a cat.
Greg had a conference call, so we wandered back to our neighborhood and locked him up with his computer. The gas man and the landlord came and fussed over the gas heater for awhile. Then the landlord said, "He fixed it, you have the gas back on, but tomorrow he wants to come again to check it and make sure. Or change a part. Or something. But you're safe."
Oh. I feel safe now.
Today we had a mishap in that I let the gas inspector in the door, and he proceeded to turn off our gas due to a small "escape" (leak). This would have bothered me less if I hadn't needed a shower so desperately. I ended up boiling a pot of water and using some combination of freezing shower and teacups of warm water poured over my head. The glam life of the jet-set euro-fabulous travelin' mama. When you envy the travel to Europe, make sure you factor in my sad-sack self, pouring hot water from an ikea teacup on my shampoo-covered head, while jets of icy water slash me in the back.
After that, I was ready for some calm adventure, if you can imagine such a thing. You know, I wanted to see sites, but nothing that would attempt to harm me through temperature, inspectors, home repairs or teacups. I'm sure you understand.
Parc de la Ciutadella (Park of the Citadel, or Fort) was the answer. It isn't in the most fabulous neighborhood, but the park itself is terrific. For Atlanta peeps, think of Grant Park, which is near some ordinary neighborhood, some beautiful stuff, and some sketchy areas. The zoo is in there, as is the science museum, though we didn't feel like going to those. Instead, we just wandered around, going past the permanent table tennis area (yes, they put up concrete tables for people to play table tennis; in Atlanta, they would likely be used for public sex or shooting drugs, but here they seem to actually play table tennis), the people bouncing on slack lines, groups of students who seemed to be doing a school project, and people hanging out.
As per usual for Barcelona, we walked around the corner to a jaw-dropping site, an absolutely fantastic set of cascading fountains and sculptures and steps and...hell, I can't describe it. It's like Disney meets gothic in a city park, and sometimes a dog jumps in for a cooing swim. You can walk up the sides of the structure on several flights of marble stairs, which I predictably elected to skip, and there's a little building at the top that makes you look like the ruler of some miniature kingdom of water. But the coolest part is that there is greenery and shrubbery growing in all kinds of areas of the fountain, which means it isn't just concrete and water. It has life, too. All this, and statues of dragons spitting out water.
As we hung out there, a group of people came nearby and started working out, like a boot camp group. These people were fantastically in shape, tan, young adults (up to 30 maybe), and...they were working out in a park on a Wednesday at 3pm. Hmmm. What's their work situation? How do they get to be in a park at that time?
Another guy arrived near the fountain area and started making enormous soap bubbles, using long sticks with strings holding them together. Nicky had a grand time running around, chasing the bubbles like a cat.
Greg had a conference call, so we wandered back to our neighborhood and locked him up with his computer. The gas man and the landlord came and fussed over the gas heater for awhile. Then the landlord said, "He fixed it, you have the gas back on, but tomorrow he wants to come again to check it and make sure. Or change a part. Or something. But you're safe."
Oh. I feel safe now.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
The dogs are here
A few posts ago, I mentioned not seeing many dogs or joggers in Barcelona.
Found 'em.
Tonight we walked down the Diagonal a ways to a mall (gasp, yes a mall, trying to find a specific power cable at the Barcelona equivalent of Best Buy). To really understand the Diagonal, you have to imagine the perfect city street, which does not exist anywhere in the USA. Here's how it goes:
On our side of the street are shops with a sidewalk in front, and a little access street.
Then there is some green space, trees and benches.
Then there is the bike road (2 lanes, paved as well as the main road).
Then there is a sidewalk and a bit more green.
Then the bus/taxi lane.
Then 2 lanes of car traffic in each direction, maybe more.
And as you cross the street, you go past the same stuff on the other side. Taxi/bus, sidewalk, trees and green, double bike lane, sidewalk, etc.
The street is freaking ENORMOUS. And that's where the dogs, joggers, bikers, skateboarders, strollers, old people, young people, and commuters all are. Everyone has room to do what they are doing without killing each other. After Rome, we all needed that experience badly.
The mall was an upscale sort of retail zone, with all kinds of little food markets and restaurants in it. And a HUGE supermarket, worthy of an American shopper. Of utmost importance, we found sushi! And we could almost justify the cost, if we clicked our heels three times and said, "We will buy ramen for a week. We will eat peanut butter. We will not spend more than $100 on a meal for at least three days."
Not that we can possibly keep to these ideals. Barcelona is gonna leave us flat broke. But then, I hope it never leaves us at all!
Found 'em.
Tonight we walked down the Diagonal a ways to a mall (gasp, yes a mall, trying to find a specific power cable at the Barcelona equivalent of Best Buy). To really understand the Diagonal, you have to imagine the perfect city street, which does not exist anywhere in the USA. Here's how it goes:
On our side of the street are shops with a sidewalk in front, and a little access street.
Then there is some green space, trees and benches.
Then there is the bike road (2 lanes, paved as well as the main road).
Then there is a sidewalk and a bit more green.
Then the bus/taxi lane.
Then 2 lanes of car traffic in each direction, maybe more.
And as you cross the street, you go past the same stuff on the other side. Taxi/bus, sidewalk, trees and green, double bike lane, sidewalk, etc.
The street is freaking ENORMOUS. And that's where the dogs, joggers, bikers, skateboarders, strollers, old people, young people, and commuters all are. Everyone has room to do what they are doing without killing each other. After Rome, we all needed that experience badly.
The mall was an upscale sort of retail zone, with all kinds of little food markets and restaurants in it. And a HUGE supermarket, worthy of an American shopper. Of utmost importance, we found sushi! And we could almost justify the cost, if we clicked our heels three times and said, "We will buy ramen for a week. We will eat peanut butter. We will not spend more than $100 on a meal for at least three days."
Not that we can possibly keep to these ideals. Barcelona is gonna leave us flat broke. But then, I hope it never leaves us at all!
Pax out, Rome
We left Rome today. It's funny how quickly your memory starts to filter out all the stuff that was maybe not so fun, and you remember things more kindly than they really were. By the time I get back to the States, I will be like all American tourists to Rome, yammering about the quaint streets and the colorful people. Reality was never as nice as we remember it, but so what? What good is memory if. It doesn't filter out some of the non-life-threatening irritation?
Still, I like remembering the experience warts and all, because I had a great time, and the hard parts were part of the whole journey.
The hard part of Rome is that it is a hot, crowded, crazy tourist trap full of Romans. We were joking at various sites about Disney needing to give these people lessons, with the key difference being that Disney actually cares enough to make people happy (after all, happy people are cash cows). Romans, on the other hand, do not give a flake of dandruff whether you are happy or not. In the United States, I have met friendly criminals. I'm not sure I met an even vaguely pleasant Roman, except our landlady and two different restaurant people. Romans are like, "You wanna see a Rome? Fine. There it is. Now get the f$&k outta my way." And no, this isn't like New Yorkers. New Yorkers are lovely if you don't irritate them, and sometimes they like you FOR irritating them. Romans do not like you.
And the food in Rome is not exquisite. Well, it is in some places, but you cannot afford them until after you knock off rich Uncle Somebody. A good dinner without wine for four people runs 80 euro, or $120. Not a great meal, just a filling and tasty dinner. Rome is for the seriously wealthy. Everyone else is gonna get sick of pasta, tomatoes and mozzarella.
At the end of the day, Rome is totally forgiven for being full of rude, loud, grouchy people, because it has so much else to offer. It really is fun to get lost on the side streets (bonus: there are fewer people there). And everywhere you look, every single millimeter, has been home to an interesting event in history. If you don't like history, or you can't appreciate how one building can be a backdrop for everything from an emperor to a pope to a dictator to a revolutionist a president, then skip Rome. Skip most of Europe and just go hiking somewhere.
But don't take any Romans with you. They really are butt heads.
Still, I like remembering the experience warts and all, because I had a great time, and the hard parts were part of the whole journey.
The hard part of Rome is that it is a hot, crowded, crazy tourist trap full of Romans. We were joking at various sites about Disney needing to give these people lessons, with the key difference being that Disney actually cares enough to make people happy (after all, happy people are cash cows). Romans, on the other hand, do not give a flake of dandruff whether you are happy or not. In the United States, I have met friendly criminals. I'm not sure I met an even vaguely pleasant Roman, except our landlady and two different restaurant people. Romans are like, "You wanna see a Rome? Fine. There it is. Now get the f$&k outta my way." And no, this isn't like New Yorkers. New Yorkers are lovely if you don't irritate them, and sometimes they like you FOR irritating them. Romans do not like you.
And the food in Rome is not exquisite. Well, it is in some places, but you cannot afford them until after you knock off rich Uncle Somebody. A good dinner without wine for four people runs 80 euro, or $120. Not a great meal, just a filling and tasty dinner. Rome is for the seriously wealthy. Everyone else is gonna get sick of pasta, tomatoes and mozzarella.
At the end of the day, Rome is totally forgiven for being full of rude, loud, grouchy people, because it has so much else to offer. It really is fun to get lost on the side streets (bonus: there are fewer people there). And everywhere you look, every single millimeter, has been home to an interesting event in history. If you don't like history, or you can't appreciate how one building can be a backdrop for everything from an emperor to a pope to a dictator to a revolutionist a president, then skip Rome. Skip most of Europe and just go hiking somewhere.
But don't take any Romans with you. They really are butt heads.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Vatican-can
Today we headed back to Vatican City, this time with pre-purchased tickets that let us jump all the lines. It's a Disney World fast-pass for Pope Land. I consider it very similar to the old practice of buying indulgences to get your sorry ass out of purgatory.
The Vatican Museums were amazing, of course. These people have one of the best art collections in the world, and the walls themselves are art, including the best tromp l'oeil I've ever seen (I'm sure that's spelled wrong; the only thing worse than my Italian is my French.)
The Sistine Chapel pretty much failed to impress me. That's not Michelangelo's fault -- more on him later -- so much as the presentation of it. The previous rooms, containing some absolute stunners by Raphael, were well-lit and accessible; you could see Raphael's work in all its incredibleness, and you could walk around the whole room and get close to stuff. Michelangelo's poor Sistine Chapel, on the other hand, is kept dark, partly to protect it and partly to keep visitors from being stupid and using flash photography. So here's the greatest artwork on earth, and it's hard to see, though some of the brilliance shines through. You have to look up and try to keep walking through the crowd of demented people, and no matter how hard you try, you end up mowing down small Asian ladies because you're too dizzy and disoriented to avoid them.
Speaking of small women, is there a height limit on nuns? Every one I've seen in Rome seems to be about 5' tall. I feel like a giant around them.
Anyway, the chapel aside, the museums were filled with amazing art. I think it is incredible, though, to look at the difference between Bernini/Michelangelo with their shock-and-awe religion, and Gaudi's works, which are much more a celebration. Rome is the church that scared the shit out of me as a child. Gaudi's church is the one where you buy donuts and coffee and put on Christmas pageants.
After a stop for some fuel, it was on to Santo Pietro and the basilica that ate a planet. There is enough marble in that place to make a small moon. Of course there are papal tombs all over the inside, including the JP II one that seemed to actually have that horrid incense burning (never could stand that smell). Off in one corner is the Pieta, the incredible sculpture by Michelangelo. Now here's the deal with M'angelo: he got the commission for the Pieta when he was 23. Know what I was doing at 23? Perfecting my drunken foosball game at the sports bar on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The mind reels at the talent of this guy, but more importantly, he actually could get commissions, because people cared about art. And how obsessed did he have to be to do all he did?
There was so much to see that eventually I just lost the ability to take in any more. It's so enormous, and everything is so polished and beautiful, that it kind of knocks out some of your senses. And it blows my mind that people made this to glorify their god. People have some need to build stuff, make stuff, to pronounce that they were here and they loved God a whole lot. Frankly, I think you could love God by getting your ass outside and planting a tree or helping the poor or tending the sick, but for some people, creating this kick-ass art really does it for them.
There was a Mass going on (they probably could have had four of them at a minimum, but there was just one). Even the recessional walk of the priests was majestic and gave me that familiar, goose-bump feeling...though I think the priests were starting to joke around and be silly about something. You can be all shock and awe, but life is still funny, for petesakes.
We came home and ate some pasta at home (the euros are melting away; gotta back off the restaurants for awhile), and watched Da Vinci Code. After all that religion, I needed some good, old-fashioned American conspiracy theory.
Tomorrow it is back to Barcelona, and while I am delighted to have seen Rome, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. Barcelona feels so much more civilized, easy, and sane. And there's a chocolate museum that I need to visit.
The Vatican Museums were amazing, of course. These people have one of the best art collections in the world, and the walls themselves are art, including the best tromp l'oeil I've ever seen (I'm sure that's spelled wrong; the only thing worse than my Italian is my French.)
The Sistine Chapel pretty much failed to impress me. That's not Michelangelo's fault -- more on him later -- so much as the presentation of it. The previous rooms, containing some absolute stunners by Raphael, were well-lit and accessible; you could see Raphael's work in all its incredibleness, and you could walk around the whole room and get close to stuff. Michelangelo's poor Sistine Chapel, on the other hand, is kept dark, partly to protect it and partly to keep visitors from being stupid and using flash photography. So here's the greatest artwork on earth, and it's hard to see, though some of the brilliance shines through. You have to look up and try to keep walking through the crowd of demented people, and no matter how hard you try, you end up mowing down small Asian ladies because you're too dizzy and disoriented to avoid them.
Speaking of small women, is there a height limit on nuns? Every one I've seen in Rome seems to be about 5' tall. I feel like a giant around them.
Anyway, the chapel aside, the museums were filled with amazing art. I think it is incredible, though, to look at the difference between Bernini/Michelangelo with their shock-and-awe religion, and Gaudi's works, which are much more a celebration. Rome is the church that scared the shit out of me as a child. Gaudi's church is the one where you buy donuts and coffee and put on Christmas pageants.
After a stop for some fuel, it was on to Santo Pietro and the basilica that ate a planet. There is enough marble in that place to make a small moon. Of course there are papal tombs all over the inside, including the JP II one that seemed to actually have that horrid incense burning (never could stand that smell). Off in one corner is the Pieta, the incredible sculpture by Michelangelo. Now here's the deal with M'angelo: he got the commission for the Pieta when he was 23. Know what I was doing at 23? Perfecting my drunken foosball game at the sports bar on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. The mind reels at the talent of this guy, but more importantly, he actually could get commissions, because people cared about art. And how obsessed did he have to be to do all he did?
There was so much to see that eventually I just lost the ability to take in any more. It's so enormous, and everything is so polished and beautiful, that it kind of knocks out some of your senses. And it blows my mind that people made this to glorify their god. People have some need to build stuff, make stuff, to pronounce that they were here and they loved God a whole lot. Frankly, I think you could love God by getting your ass outside and planting a tree or helping the poor or tending the sick, but for some people, creating this kick-ass art really does it for them.
There was a Mass going on (they probably could have had four of them at a minimum, but there was just one). Even the recessional walk of the priests was majestic and gave me that familiar, goose-bump feeling...though I think the priests were starting to joke around and be silly about something. You can be all shock and awe, but life is still funny, for petesakes.
We came home and ate some pasta at home (the euros are melting away; gotta back off the restaurants for awhile), and watched Da Vinci Code. After all that religion, I needed some good, old-fashioned American conspiracy theory.
Tomorrow it is back to Barcelona, and while I am delighted to have seen Rome, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. Barcelona feels so much more civilized, easy, and sane. And there's a chocolate museum that I need to visit.
Random observations in Rome
I'm a behavioral statistician...I notice trends and patterns in the things people do. I mostly apply this to STD work so I can help pay bills, but it goes deeper than that, because this isn't just my occupation; it's how my brain works, when it works at all.
So naturally, when I'm in another city, I watch the behaviors. When I don't know the language it's even more fun, because if have to try to read conversations, tones, facial expressions, gestures...all the things that words don't say.
In Rome, I find myself deeply distrusting everyone. The place is such an overt tourist trap, and people are always in your face trying to make a Euro. It is exhausting. They'll take your picture for you so you don't have to do a selfie! They'll sell you a cold water! They will dress up like ancient Romans and take your photo (for tips). They will sell you a flower, a parasol, a pair of sunglasses, scarves, sun hats. Arrrrrgh, go away and let me look at stuff! No one is particularly nice about their sales pitch; just aggressive.
Some folks have a clever little deal. Young men and women who speak a given language will charge a few extra euro above the ticket price to guide tourists through the sites. You get to skip the lines with them (guess they bought passes of some kind), and it is probably nice to have someone interpret what you're seeing, as most of Rome is set up in a "Here it is. You figure it out yourself" kind of way. It's probably not such a bad deal, and they're sharing knowledge rather than trying to pickpocket you. And they're trying to be charming, which no one else is.
Nearly all of these hawkers, buskers and salesmen are men. A few tour guides are women, but all of the street sales people are men. Every cart, every stall, every wandering salesman is male. Most have very dark skin, some of them African, but some from parts of India or Bangladesh or Pakistan. In a moment of total absurdity, I found myself wanting to ask where they get decent Indo-Pak food in Rome. But they would probably expect money for the information.
There are women inside some of the shops in the actual buildings. But I haven't seen any outside.
The other thing that I keep pointing out to the kids is that people built most of these amazing structures or artworks to glorify a god or gods (or an emperor, as in the fancy tombs). People believe in their gods so strongly, and they so much want their god to be better than other gods, that they make incredible art. But really, that's only part of it. If you wanted to be an artist and eat, back in those days, you worked on commissions from the rich. And the rich told you what you were gonna paint about. So sometimes it's tough to trust the art, too, because it wasn't necessarily the artist's idea to paint that stuff. But still, there are incredible works of religious passion everywhere, from candle sconces to altar cloths to fountains with old Roman gods. Of course, there's also the Jewish ghetto, a horrid example of religious beliefs gone completely psychotic. And I haven't seen a Muslim or Buddhist thing anywhere. Not all religious passion is positive.
You'll also find the images of Roman gods in frescoes and cycles of story paintings in some very Catholic buildings. Sure, the room was built for a Pope, or other Catholic, but the story of Venus, Cupid and Psyche is depicted in the frescoes.
There are lots more things to notice, like teeth (the most beautiful people seem to have over bites), and hair (oh, to have Roman hair), and the fact that everyone tends to walk more confidently in their home city than anywhere else. Romans are either walking purposefully and somewhat assertively, or they are slowly ambling along, texting. Tourists walk differently, more tentatively.
There's a whole other category of behavior involving the heat in Rome, and how various people deal with being soaked in sweat. But I haven't really picked that one apart yet, because I'm busy trying to rehydrate.
So naturally, when I'm in another city, I watch the behaviors. When I don't know the language it's even more fun, because if have to try to read conversations, tones, facial expressions, gestures...all the things that words don't say.
In Rome, I find myself deeply distrusting everyone. The place is such an overt tourist trap, and people are always in your face trying to make a Euro. It is exhausting. They'll take your picture for you so you don't have to do a selfie! They'll sell you a cold water! They will dress up like ancient Romans and take your photo (for tips). They will sell you a flower, a parasol, a pair of sunglasses, scarves, sun hats. Arrrrrgh, go away and let me look at stuff! No one is particularly nice about their sales pitch; just aggressive.
Some folks have a clever little deal. Young men and women who speak a given language will charge a few extra euro above the ticket price to guide tourists through the sites. You get to skip the lines with them (guess they bought passes of some kind), and it is probably nice to have someone interpret what you're seeing, as most of Rome is set up in a "Here it is. You figure it out yourself" kind of way. It's probably not such a bad deal, and they're sharing knowledge rather than trying to pickpocket you. And they're trying to be charming, which no one else is.
Nearly all of these hawkers, buskers and salesmen are men. A few tour guides are women, but all of the street sales people are men. Every cart, every stall, every wandering salesman is male. Most have very dark skin, some of them African, but some from parts of India or Bangladesh or Pakistan. In a moment of total absurdity, I found myself wanting to ask where they get decent Indo-Pak food in Rome. But they would probably expect money for the information.
There are women inside some of the shops in the actual buildings. But I haven't seen any outside.
The other thing that I keep pointing out to the kids is that people built most of these amazing structures or artworks to glorify a god or gods (or an emperor, as in the fancy tombs). People believe in their gods so strongly, and they so much want their god to be better than other gods, that they make incredible art. But really, that's only part of it. If you wanted to be an artist and eat, back in those days, you worked on commissions from the rich. And the rich told you what you were gonna paint about. So sometimes it's tough to trust the art, too, because it wasn't necessarily the artist's idea to paint that stuff. But still, there are incredible works of religious passion everywhere, from candle sconces to altar cloths to fountains with old Roman gods. Of course, there's also the Jewish ghetto, a horrid example of religious beliefs gone completely psychotic. And I haven't seen a Muslim or Buddhist thing anywhere. Not all religious passion is positive.
You'll also find the images of Roman gods in frescoes and cycles of story paintings in some very Catholic buildings. Sure, the room was built for a Pope, or other Catholic, but the story of Venus, Cupid and Psyche is depicted in the frescoes.
There are lots more things to notice, like teeth (the most beautiful people seem to have over bites), and hair (oh, to have Roman hair), and the fact that everyone tends to walk more confidently in their home city than anywhere else. Romans are either walking purposefully and somewhat assertively, or they are slowly ambling along, texting. Tourists walk differently, more tentatively.
There's a whole other category of behavior involving the heat in Rome, and how various people deal with being soaked in sweat. But I haven't really picked that one apart yet, because I'm busy trying to rehydrate.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
HONK if you love Rome. Or If you don't. Or for any reason.
Rome has taught me some interesting things, including: NYC is not the most annoying city on earth.
NYC is the city that never sleeps. Rome is the city that never shuts up. The noise is crazy. The people are crazy. The drivers are off their freaking nut.
And they are crazy next to two-thousand-year-old structures, which makes me constantly cringe. Why don't they have more respect for the history of this place? Why don't they slow down when they're headed directly for a large building? Why is everyone yelling at everyone else? WHY ARE THEY HONKING AT ME?
It makes sense that they don't bow in reverence to the historical structures. Everything here is a historical structure, some in a hundred different ways. An art gallery that was a palace that was owned by a dude who controlled the papacy...all kinds of history is everywhere. It's fascinating to get lost in it, as my friend Beki suggested, but really there isn't any other option. You get lost whether you want to or not. Don't believe me? Look at a map of Rome. I'm pretty sure you won't find many roads that are at right angles to each other. Or parallel. Or any other geometric relationship that makes sense.
But the buildings, man, the buildings are pure geometric joy. Today we visited the Colosseo, which is just across the street from us. This is where emperors used to allow prisoners/slaves/Hollywood actors such as Russell Crowe and Charlton Heston to battle animals, nature, or each other to gain back their freedom. Most of them were killed in horrific ways, except of course Charlton Heston, who went on to advocate for the NRA and...wait, I'm off topic.
There are some seriously whack bits of history there. For example, there is this crazy set of hallways and other structures on the ground. One of the emperors used to flood the Colosseo floor and have the prisoners re-create naval battles or sea-monster fantasies, or just plain drown. Later, they stopped doing that and built a floor over all those hallways, making a football-field-sized, sub-floor props-and-scenery shop...of the gory kind. Think "Hunger Games" game makers, but with no electricity.
Sure, you think that's barbaric. Ever seen an Ultimate Fighting match? Not much different except the death part.
Right now the only torture taking place in the old building is tourism. It is hotter than the blue blazes of hell in Rome right now, and touring an open bowl at noon is for the morons of the world. We were, however, smarter than the people who stood in line for hours. We bought tickets online and skipped all the lines. I also became very good friends with random tourists when I opened up my umbrella and created instant shade.
Sensibly, we went right back home after that, and waited till the temperature dropped just a little. You could still see the air in front of you, it was so hot and humid, but much more bearable than at noon. We roamed up north and found the Pantheon, which is pure architectural awesomeness. In other words, I thought it was pretty, but let's keep moving.
Unfortunately, Greg and Nicky were completely geeked out, taking panoramic photos of the Pantheon, so I had a few minutes to watch people. Cultural oddity: in the USA, I make faces at babies and get them to grin, and their parents love me for it. It is a compliment to the parents when someone wants to giggle and coo over their baby. In tourist towns, people look at me like I'm turning into a vampire before their eyes.
"Mom, they don't KNOW you," Cassie patiently explained (as if everyone in Atlanta knows me), "I mean, they don't know if you want to eat their baby, or what." I had to defend myself: "I rarely eat babies. But if I did, I would make sure to do it at an altar just like that one over there....mwhahahahaha." Cassie edged away nervously.
We wandered outside and saw the usual piazza madness: vendors, horse-drawn carriage dudes, people trying to get cash any way they could. One group of people had huge, hand-made poster that said, "FREE HUGS." Of course, my first thought was, "Excellent pickpocket strategy," which is what I was cynically pondering when Cassie ran over and threw her arms around one of the guys. Greg and I exchanged drop-jawed looks, and Cassie assured me she had nothing in her pockets to steal. She went over and hugged one of the women with the signs. Cassie has serious hug-needs.
We somehow ended up in front of the Brazilian consulate, where we saw a comedian-juggler-unicycle-magic kind of guy, a musician playing Hava Nagilah followed by La Cucaracha, an "invisible man," and a pigeon exhibiting truly inappropriate, intimate thoughts about a statue in a fountain.
We ambled through the old Jewish ghetto, passing what seems to be the only synagogue in town, stunningly beautiful, where a wedding was being held. I wanted to peep in and listen to the singy-like stuff, but it would be rude. Plus, the guard in the security gate was a little reminder that impulsive acts near synagogues might be frowned upon.
A riverside walk took us down to Circus Maximus, which was disappointingly oval and not circular. It's basically a field of pebbly sandy glop that isn't kept up at all, beyond maybe keeping the weed height down.
Finally, we found some food in the neighborhood that didn't embarrass Italy as a nation. I'm not sure what we ate, except the giant rib-eye steak that I just had to have (Wisconsin is in my DNA after all). It tasted great, though.
And now, if you don't mind, I will be deadish till tomorrow, when we attempt the Vatican (this time with online tickets, sensibly!)
There are some seriously whack bits of history there. For example, there is this crazy set of hallways and other structures on the ground. One of the emperors used to flood the Colosseo floor and have the prisoners re-create naval battles or sea-monster fantasies, or just plain drown. Later, they stopped doing that and built a floor over all those hallways, making a football-field-sized, sub-floor props-and-scenery shop...of the gory kind. Think "Hunger Games" game makers, but with no electricity.
Sure, you think that's barbaric. Ever seen an Ultimate Fighting match? Not much different except the death part.
Right now the only torture taking place in the old building is tourism. It is hotter than the blue blazes of hell in Rome right now, and touring an open bowl at noon is for the morons of the world. We were, however, smarter than the people who stood in line for hours. We bought tickets online and skipped all the lines. I also became very good friends with random tourists when I opened up my umbrella and created instant shade.
Sensibly, we went right back home after that, and waited till the temperature dropped just a little. You could still see the air in front of you, it was so hot and humid, but much more bearable than at noon. We roamed up north and found the Pantheon, which is pure architectural awesomeness. In other words, I thought it was pretty, but let's keep moving.
Unfortunately, Greg and Nicky were completely geeked out, taking panoramic photos of the Pantheon, so I had a few minutes to watch people. Cultural oddity: in the USA, I make faces at babies and get them to grin, and their parents love me for it. It is a compliment to the parents when someone wants to giggle and coo over their baby. In tourist towns, people look at me like I'm turning into a vampire before their eyes.
"Mom, they don't KNOW you," Cassie patiently explained (as if everyone in Atlanta knows me), "I mean, they don't know if you want to eat their baby, or what." I had to defend myself: "I rarely eat babies. But if I did, I would make sure to do it at an altar just like that one over there....mwhahahahaha." Cassie edged away nervously.
We wandered outside and saw the usual piazza madness: vendors, horse-drawn carriage dudes, people trying to get cash any way they could. One group of people had huge, hand-made poster that said, "FREE HUGS." Of course, my first thought was, "Excellent pickpocket strategy," which is what I was cynically pondering when Cassie ran over and threw her arms around one of the guys. Greg and I exchanged drop-jawed looks, and Cassie assured me she had nothing in her pockets to steal. She went over and hugged one of the women with the signs. Cassie has serious hug-needs.
We somehow ended up in front of the Brazilian consulate, where we saw a comedian-juggler-unicycle-magic kind of guy, a musician playing Hava Nagilah followed by La Cucaracha, an "invisible man," and a pigeon exhibiting truly inappropriate, intimate thoughts about a statue in a fountain.
We ambled through the old Jewish ghetto, passing what seems to be the only synagogue in town, stunningly beautiful, where a wedding was being held. I wanted to peep in and listen to the singy-like stuff, but it would be rude. Plus, the guard in the security gate was a little reminder that impulsive acts near synagogues might be frowned upon.
A riverside walk took us down to Circus Maximus, which was disappointingly oval and not circular. It's basically a field of pebbly sandy glop that isn't kept up at all, beyond maybe keeping the weed height down.
Finally, we found some food in the neighborhood that didn't embarrass Italy as a nation. I'm not sure what we ate, except the giant rib-eye steak that I just had to have (Wisconsin is in my DNA after all). It tasted great, though.
And now, if you don't mind, I will be deadish till tomorrow, when we attempt the Vatican (this time with online tickets, sensibly!)
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Who is playing Madonna music?
Here's a handy travel tip: if you walk outside your front door, and somewhere near the Coliseum someone is blasting Madonna's "Like a Virgin" to the wildly excited cheers of a bazillion people...
....it's Roman Gay Pride, you idiot.
And it's marching in front of the Metro station where you're trying to go.
And there aren't any fun Mardi-Gras-style necklaces with penis-shaped beads, because apparently, that's less popular in Rome than you might think.
We still made it over to our metro stop (briefly marching in the parade to do so), and headed up to Trevi Fountain, which was impressive and all, but the crazy chick with her rainbow eyeshadow was maybe more impressive. How did she get her eyeshadow to BLEND like that? She's lucky it didn't clash with her skin, which was dead-white anyway.
Then we kept wandering till we came to a cool, big building. No clue what it was. It was white.
And from there, we just walked back through the Pride rally a mile or so, and now we are back on Via Claudia.
Oh, and we finally saw a really cool artisan kind of concept. Guys were creating amazing origami structures with palm fronds. Totally cool.
....it's Roman Gay Pride, you idiot.
And it's marching in front of the Metro station where you're trying to go.
And there aren't any fun Mardi-Gras-style necklaces with penis-shaped beads, because apparently, that's less popular in Rome than you might think.
We still made it over to our metro stop (briefly marching in the parade to do so), and headed up to Trevi Fountain, which was impressive and all, but the crazy chick with her rainbow eyeshadow was maybe more impressive. How did she get her eyeshadow to BLEND like that? She's lucky it didn't clash with her skin, which was dead-white anyway.
Then we kept wandering till we came to a cool, big building. No clue what it was. It was white.
And from there, we just walked back through the Pride rally a mile or so, and now we are back on Via Claudia.
Oh, and we finally saw a really cool artisan kind of concept. Guys were creating amazing origami structures with palm fronds. Totally cool.
The streets of Rome
Rome immediately feels so totally different from Barcelona. For example, Barcelona drivers do not seem to actively aim their vehicles at each other, lay on the horns, and screech their tires. Roman drivers would assume Barcelona drivers lacked all gonads. Yesterday, our driver decided to gamble that there was no tram coming, and he drove up a tram path.
Barcelona people don't seem to size up every person who walks by. There are people in Rome who seem to be calculating your waist-hip ratio, your net worth, and the degree to which you are willing to part with your cash, all while they stare at you and smoke cigarettes.
In Rome, if it isn't a protected monument or a private house, there's a good chance it is covered in graffiti. Some of the graffiti is really lovely, but still...it's a little sad.
In Barcelona, you can park your motorcycles on the sidewalk. In Rome, you can park anything smaller than a bus in pretty much any place where it will fit. And if you don't, you're a gonad-free idiot who should be honked at.
While there are a lot of street side vendors in Barcelona, it is nothing compared to Rome. Strangely, many of the vendors in Rome seem to sell roughly the same things. There are the wooden trains, the Prada knockoffs, and about ten styles of purses in maybe a dozen different prints. There are the parasol vendors and the sunglasses guys and the dudes who dress up like centurions so you can pay them to take a photo with you (hint: if they are standing at the top of the staircase, do not look up at them from below; just don't do it). And they are so in-your-face.
I hear a lot more English here in Rome, although when you're standing near those huge tour groups, English isn't quite the right word. "Like remember in Venice? When we were like waiting for like whatever tour guide? And Rick like wandered off?"
I've seen one truly unique thing here. Some of the peeps who were going to the Vatican had some big cardboard box-like things, all flattened out. Somehow these cardboard slabs were cut just right, and they folded up into a little seat. They were little stadiums seats, but cardboard origami stadium seats. Cool!
Barcelona people don't seem to size up every person who walks by. There are people in Rome who seem to be calculating your waist-hip ratio, your net worth, and the degree to which you are willing to part with your cash, all while they stare at you and smoke cigarettes.
In Rome, if it isn't a protected monument or a private house, there's a good chance it is covered in graffiti. Some of the graffiti is really lovely, but still...it's a little sad.
In Barcelona, you can park your motorcycles on the sidewalk. In Rome, you can park anything smaller than a bus in pretty much any place where it will fit. And if you don't, you're a gonad-free idiot who should be honked at.
While there are a lot of street side vendors in Barcelona, it is nothing compared to Rome. Strangely, many of the vendors in Rome seem to sell roughly the same things. There are the wooden trains, the Prada knockoffs, and about ten styles of purses in maybe a dozen different prints. There are the parasol vendors and the sunglasses guys and the dudes who dress up like centurions so you can pay them to take a photo with you (hint: if they are standing at the top of the staircase, do not look up at them from below; just don't do it). And they are so in-your-face.
I hear a lot more English here in Rome, although when you're standing near those huge tour groups, English isn't quite the right word. "Like remember in Venice? When we were like waiting for like whatever tour guide? And Rick like wandered off?"
I've seen one truly unique thing here. Some of the peeps who were going to the Vatican had some big cardboard box-like things, all flattened out. Somehow these cardboard slabs were cut just right, and they folded up into a little seat. They were little stadiums seats, but cardboard origami stadium seats. Cool!
Soccer for Papa
Today was all planned out and organized ahead of time. Needless to say, all such plans went directly down the aqueduct after I slept till 10am.
We had planned to start out at Colosseo, which I can only spell in Italian. When we stumbled across the street, however, the lines were utterly insane. "This is awful, and it's so hot," I said, "Let's try the Vatican." This will go down in history as one of the dumber things I've ever said. "It's crowded and hot, let's try something likely to be far worse."
Apparently the square was hosting a special event, with a Mass of course, for the sports organization here. Every single soccer player, along with all the soccer moms, was present and many were wearing a shirt of some kind that proclaimed their team's adoration of "Papa" (pope) or "Francesco" (Francis). A martial arts school was arranged around a big mat in the center of a closed-off street, and my kids had to watch. I felt so sorry for those kids. It was in the 90s, with broiling sun, and they had to pour water all over their mat to keep them from burning their feet. For my karate friends: They were doing what looked like a karate form, but they had some different stances and moves, including one where the backs of your hands touch each other in a sort of inside-out-prayer pose (how is that an advantage in a fight?). They also did a thing where they threw punches forward while stepping backward, which I thought was kind of odd.
Well, the Vatican was closed off for the Papal Punchers and Sistine Soccer Moms, so...how about the Castel Sant'Angelo? It is pretty much next door to the Vatican, which means you only have to walk half a mile to get there. Totally worth the whole clusterf%#k of a morning! What an awesome place. It was built as a tomb for Emperor Hadrian, so I have instructed my family to start planning my kick-ass tomb now. It has to beat the Castel, and that will be tough.
Here's one for my public health geeks. On top of the Castel Sant'Angelo is a statue of an angel sheathing a sword. This was built because someone saw a vision of an angel putting away his flaming sword (no flaming sword jokes, please, I've thought of them all) -- and they took the vision as a signal that the plague was ending. That's right...a hallucinated angel putting away his blazing weapon meant an end to plague. No one even asked this guy what funny mushrooms he had eaten...nooooo, they went out and made a giant statue instead. This was clearly an ancestor of all those anti-vaccine, anti-medicine freaks.
We had planned to start out at Colosseo, which I can only spell in Italian. When we stumbled across the street, however, the lines were utterly insane. "This is awful, and it's so hot," I said, "Let's try the Vatican." This will go down in history as one of the dumber things I've ever said. "It's crowded and hot, let's try something likely to be far worse."
Apparently the square was hosting a special event, with a Mass of course, for the sports organization here. Every single soccer player, along with all the soccer moms, was present and many were wearing a shirt of some kind that proclaimed their team's adoration of "Papa" (pope) or "Francesco" (Francis). A martial arts school was arranged around a big mat in the center of a closed-off street, and my kids had to watch. I felt so sorry for those kids. It was in the 90s, with broiling sun, and they had to pour water all over their mat to keep them from burning their feet. For my karate friends: They were doing what looked like a karate form, but they had some different stances and moves, including one where the backs of your hands touch each other in a sort of inside-out-prayer pose (how is that an advantage in a fight?). They also did a thing where they threw punches forward while stepping backward, which I thought was kind of odd.
Well, the Vatican was closed off for the Papal Punchers and Sistine Soccer Moms, so...how about the Castel Sant'Angelo? It is pretty much next door to the Vatican, which means you only have to walk half a mile to get there. Totally worth the whole clusterf%#k of a morning! What an awesome place. It was built as a tomb for Emperor Hadrian, so I have instructed my family to start planning my kick-ass tomb now. It has to beat the Castel, and that will be tough.
Here's one for my public health geeks. On top of the Castel Sant'Angelo is a statue of an angel sheathing a sword. This was built because someone saw a vision of an angel putting away his flaming sword (no flaming sword jokes, please, I've thought of them all) -- and they took the vision as a signal that the plague was ending. That's right...a hallucinated angel putting away his blazing weapon meant an end to plague. No one even asked this guy what funny mushrooms he had eaten...nooooo, they went out and made a giant statue instead. This was clearly an ancestor of all those anti-vaccine, anti-medicine freaks.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Do you like gladiator movies?
We have arrived in Rome, had an overly large meal, and settled into our adorable apartment on Via Claudia. From our apartment, we can step out onto the sidewalk and catch the bus to the Vatican. But even better, we can look down the street and see the Coliseum (how in hell do you spell that? It just looks wrong) about 200yds away.
We spent most of the day in some form of transit, during which my sole objective was to force Cassie to choose some activities for Rome. Of course I wanted to avoid the pouting-brat situation that caused so much pain the other day. She dragged her feet on making a choice, until finally I said, "If you don't choose something, I'm gonna find every single dead-Jesus-person painting in Rome and drag your ass to stand in front of them. Every last one."
She rather efficiently made her choices. She chose the Trevi fountain and, in a moment of perfect irony, the Castel Sant' Angelo. You know...the prison. Which was also Nicky's choice, along with the Colosseo/forum area.
My kids want prison. Is there a message in this?
Meanwhile, I chose the Jewish ghetto. Because if you're gonna look at the Vatican (Greg's choice-- I think he secretly hopes the new pope will pull off an exorcism while we are here) and all the wonders that religion can bring, you have to look at the other side.
Plus, I can't resist the idea of Italian-Jewish food, which the guidebook says is offered near the ghetto. I don't even know what that is, but I'm totally going for it.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)