Barcelona // oh my god a dragon!

The update on my Reading Week trip is going to be split in two, not just because I visited two cities and countries (and continents!) but also because I don't quite have the time to sit and write out the whole thing at once! But right now I have just about enough time to write about the three nights and two full days I spent in Barcelona. (I haven't managed to upload my pictures yet, but my photographer friend Drew who was with me on the trip has his up; you can view them here.)

One of the first things that I liked about the trip was that the four years I spent studying Spanish in high school suddenly seemed much more useful. Despite the fact that Barcelona is the center of the Catalan region, which has its own peculiar dialogue (called Catalan) which is about as different from Spanish as Italian is, it's still in Spain so everyone speaks Spanish in addition to Catalan and I was impressively able to make myself understood. Also, the street signs are (sometimes) in both languages.

I'm not usually all that into pure architecture -- I appreciate buildings that have a history as well as a beautiful facade -- but my favorite things about Barcelona were purely architectural and 90% Gaudi (Cliffs Notes version: he was an architect associated with the movement known as modernisme and built a lot of really awesome stuff that makes me think of a cross between early Disney fairytales and Dr. Seuss). Saturday, our first full day in Barcelona, was spent visiting the two coolest Gaudi sites in Barcelona: the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell.

Sagrada Familia is a giant unfinished cathedral that rears unexpectedly out of the heart of the Eixample section of Barcelona. It's massive, intricate, and still under construction. Gaudi spent the last years of his life working on this masterpiece, knowing that he wouldn't be alive to see it completed; since his death, other architects and artists have contributed to different aspects of its current design (Gaudi did leave behind some plans, but apparently a lot of them were destroyed or lost during the Spanish Civil War). It's a little schizophrenic as a result, but no less beautiful. The interior is still very stark, with most of the design work having been done on the exterior, but the two facades which are complete (only one of which was completed by Gaudi) are stunning. I personally favored the facade that wasn't designed by Gaudi because its style is a lot more sparse; there's a lot going on still, but it's mostly going on in one color, at least, and with a lot fewer random elements.

When we were there, you couldn't see half of the church's interior because they were doing construction work on it, and overall the interior is (as I said before) not that impressive. But it's worth it to pay to go in because only from the inside can you take the elevator (or stairs) to the top of one of the church's towers. We did, and I had another Eiffel Tower-esque experience (albeit at a much decreased height) in which all of a sudden the church was a lot taller than it had seemed from the ground -- and it seems pretty damn tall when you're standing at the base of it, feeling like one of the towers ought to fall over any minute now! This is why I like climbing things: it gives you a completely different idea of how tall things really are.

After Sagrada Familia we went to Parc Guell, which was originally meant to be a posh housing development outside of central Barcelona...however, it was far enough from Las Ramblas (the main boulevard) that no one wanted to live there when Gaudi began it! (Ironically, now some of the most expensive Barcelona real estate is near Parc Guell.) The result is a large park sort of in the middle of the city, with a few instances of classic Gaudi design. The gatehouses at the entrance to the park look like literal gingerbread houses; there is a terrace at the top lined with mosaic benches ergonomically designed for comfortable lounging. (We took advantage of this.) We spent a couple of hours just wandering the park before heading back to central Barcelona and Las Ramblas for dinner.

Barcelona is the #1 city for pickpocketing, and most of it occurs on or near Las Ramblas, the busiest pedestrian corridor in the city. My friends and I escaped unscathed, but I can understand why so many people lose their wallets there: we weren't there during tourist season and the place was still pretty busy, especially on a weekend night. The actual street which cars can drive on is separated by a giant meridian which is a pedestrian zone, full of stalls selling wares, street performers, living statues, tourist traps, and outdoor dining for the many tapas restaurants lining either side of the street. We ate at one of those restaurants (albeit at the inside portion) two of the three nights we spent in the city. I cared less about the tapas and more about the fabulous chicken paella. Somehow, neither I nor any of my friends ever managed to get a picture of all the food -- possibly because we were too busy eating it!

Sunday, we spent the morning in the Picasso Museum (mostly his earlier stuff -- more mature works are at the Prado in Madrid, I think -- but still well worth the admission fee), the afternoon strolling Las Ramblas, and the late afternoon/evening making our way to Montjuic, something larger than a hill but smaller than a mountain atop which rests a fortified castle looking out over Barcelona's harbor. The view of the city from there rivaled the view from Parc Guell (and there was a castle!). Apparently, Franco took over the place during the Spanish Civil War and made it into a stronghouse. It's not a very castle-y castle in the medieval (or even gothic) architectural sense, just a place on top of a hill with a lot of guns around it so that you'd be an idiot to try to storm it. But it had a clear view of the ocean -- the first time I've seen the sea since leaving California! I do miss saltwater, apparently.

We turned in pretty early because we had to catch a bus back to the airport the next morning to continue our journey to Marrakesh. (Stay tuned!)

Marrakesh // somewhere I have never traveled

Again with the ‘impressionistic’ updates (to borrow a term from Mr. Vargish). I have two essays due in the upcoming week and a friend flying in to visit from Dublin on Wednesday, but I don’t want to forget the things I wanted to say about Marrakesh before then!

It would be a stretch to say that being there was like being in another world (anyplace that has a McDonald’s is obviously Earth — other planets would likely have more sense), but it was definitely like being on another continent. That fact hit home before the airplane even landed; when I looked below me as we began our descent, instead of streets, towns, and city lights, there was red dirt, green fields, sunlight reflecting off thin streams of water used for irrigation, and slate-blue mountains in the hazy distance.

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel — yes, not a hostel, a legitimate hotel, complete with TVs in the rooms, our own showers that we didn’t have to pay extra for, and continental breakfast each morning. The exchange rate being what it is (roughly 7 Moroccan dirhams to an American dollar), we could afford a little more class than usual. The taxi ride was an entertaining ordeal in itself: there being, apparently, no such thing as traffic police in Marrakesh, the five of us plus our driver managed to fit (along with our hand baggage) inside a car only designed to seat five. I was probably the smallest person there. Four girls shared the back seat — I didn’t even notice if the car was equipped with seatbelts, but I’m inclined to think they didn’t even bother.

Although Marrakesh is pretty touristy in its own right — and the government is doing a lot to promote that aspect of it — it has its rough edges, especially if you’re a white female. We weren’t there during the normal tourist season, so except in the marketplace, we ran into very few tourists on the streets. We weren’t actively hassled (except by vendors trying to sell us things, who referred to one or more of the girls at some time or another as “Hannah Montana” and “the Spice Girls”; we also got asked if we were looking for fish and chips, and whether we were on facebook) but something just seemed different. It wasn’t until one of my friends pointed it out that I saw practically no women (tourists excluded) in the city. There was the odd woman (some in full wrists-to-ankles covering, plus head scarf) doing her shopping at the local market, or speeding along the street on a bicycle/motorcycle hybrid (there are both pedals and a motor; these were surprisingly common), but even they disappeared when the sun went down. Outside the tourist center of the walled city of Morocco, 95% of the people I saw in restaurants were men. I hadn’t realized the kind of inherent menace there is in that until this trip. I was never hassled (and I’m also very good at ignoring what people say and just walking by — the ability to navigate Sproul Plaza at lunchtime without being inundated with flyers and appeals apparently has uses outside of Berkeley), but on the first day especially, something felt a little not right.

This being said, as soon as I had a map in my hand and a general feel for the city’s arrangement (as well as the promise of vigilance from the one male member of our group, God bless him), the feeling went away pretty quickly — and in a way it was something I’d been prepared for, having done enough googling on the subject to get an idea of how conservatively to dress. (Despite approximately 80 degree weather, I spent my time in jeans and t-shirts.)

I am now going to admit to something that, in any other city, would feel like a bit of a cop-out. You know those big red sightseeing buses? Well, there’s one that runs in Marrakesh, and my friends and I took it. It was a great way to figure out where everything was in relation to everything else without having to get lost on the way, and a great way not to walk around in the heat but still get a feel for the place.

My favorite part of being in Marrakesh was visiting the marketplace they’re famous for. I’ve seen its name transliterated in about a billion different ways, but the back of one of the postcards I bought calls it “Jamaa El Fna,” as do the signs in Marrakesh itself, so that’s the one I’m going with. You can get lost in there — in fact, my friends and I almost did. They sell everything imaginable — leather goods, home herbal remedies, ceramics, dried fruit and nuts, scarves, jewelry, live chickens, pig’s heads (freshly removed from the pigs in question) — and you are expected to bargain with them for what you buy. I came home with a hand-made leather purse with an intricate openwork design on the front flap which cost me the equivalent of $25. Other things that came home with my friends included dried apricots, carved and inlaid wooden boxes, and small ornamental daggers.

The market by night is radically different from the market by day. Around the time the sun begins to set, stalls and canopies start appearing in the plaza in front of the market, and soon enough there are a hundred little tent-restaurants ready and willing to serve you everything from traditional Moroccan food to french fries. We ate at one of these restaurants on our last night (ours was #89, I think — the menus are all basically the same, and they use their stall numbers as differentiation). I had kebabs, couscous, really good bread — and, it must be said, really good french fries. Apparently, they’re universal.

The last day of our stay, we took an excursion through some of the Berber villages situated in the High Atlas Mountains. Along with other tourists, we got in a great big van driven by a local tour guide who navigated the windy mountain roads and explained the scenery that rolled past as we gained altitude. In concept the trip was pretty touristy — the van stopped in several locations so that we could get out and snap the obligatory photos — but behind the tourist motivation were vestiges (small, but there) of a more authentic Moroccan experience. To some of the “natives,” we were obviously a way to make money through the sale of traditional arts and crafts. But to some of them we were just a blip on the radar, a small disturbance in a daily routine that (for them) probably hasn’t changed too much over the last few decades. It’s probable that a lot of them had never even been as far from home as Marrakesh.

That day, we ate lunch in a small former hotel, high up in the mountains, which served a very traditional multi-course Marrakeshi meal: bread, salad, vegetable tagine, roasted chicken, finished off with a small glass of mint tea, something Morocco’s known for (and which lives up to the hype — but granted, I was a mint tea fan to begin with).

There are some places that you go to once, just to say that you’ve been there, and to know for yourself what that means. And there are some places you go to and know you’ll come back to. While preparing for this trip, I sort of suspected that Marrakesh would fall under the first category, but after having been, I’m not so sure. There are, of course, plenty of places I plan to go to for a first time before I make a return trip to Marrakesh (or even to Morocco), but in some future where I am obscenely wealthy and can travel wherever and whenever I like, I can see myself ending up back there — even if only to share the experience of the place with a different set of people.