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.
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