(2009-03-21, sab) Jorge Means Art

Breakfast starts at 8:30am. Now, this ain’t no hostel: it’s a three-star hotel, and that means they do things right. As you walk in for breakfast, a maitre d’ greets you to check off your name from the guest list, then seats you at a table. He asks you whether you’d prefer coffee, tea, or fruit juice. Tea would be lovely, you tell the maitre d’, and coffee for your companion. “Teabags are over against that wall, as is coffee. Here is your cup.” Ah, well, I guess they do things well enough.

9:15am was the hour for Jorge to corral the college kids and trot us over to the Metro station, which was a metro station like any other across the world. Two things of note: the signs were in Catalán, as seems to be the style in all Barcelona; and the ticket-taker doors, rather than opening like a bedroom door or sliding open like a porch door, followed a little down-up swooshy path, very fun.

Following the metro, we followed Jorge up a slight hill, between two tall pillars (which we later learned were constructed for a World Fair, way back when), to the MNAC, or Museu Nacionale d’Art de Catalunya (which is Catalán; en castellano, that’s Museo Nacional de Catalonia, and in English National Museum of Catalonia; incidentally, Catalunya is the autonomous community whose capital is Barcelona). We were introduced to our guide for the weekend, a woman (about 30 years old, I’d say) from Barcelona who had a much clearer accent than Jorge or our señoras maybe ever had. (I’m sorry to say I never caught her name; would someone please remind me?)

In the MNAC, our tour guide led us through only two of its five-some wings, the Romanesque and the Gothic sections, proceeding from antiquity to a little closer to now. Let me read you some of the English version of the map / brochure:

The collection is made up of works from the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries and comprises richly painted panels (the most numerous and oldest collction from Romanesque Europe); woodcarvings (the Descent from the Cross and Majesty pieces are especially famous); metalwork (of space note are the enamels from Limoges); and stone sculpture.

Wonderfully written, but looks like an excerpt from my more formal writings (and we know that I’d rather date an English major than write a paper for English class). Maybe I should cite their translator and technical editors for plagiarism. I won’t bore you with a technical description of the development of artistic styles, save to say that the old Romanesque murals had designs reminiscent of Muslim freizes, repeated geometric designs forming backgrounds and borders. I feel as though 8-bit game artists must have been highly influenced by these forms. The class enjoyed the progression from the more stylized depictions of humans to the more classical renditions to which we are accustomed; that is to say, we were glad to see some real-looking people in the picture frames.

As soon as we were let back out into the sunlight (after taking café in the Museum’s huge amphitheatre, practically a bullring), we were taken for a quick stroll down the lane to the Joan Miró museum, another epic building full of … erm, well, Miró. Additionally, there were a few pieces from his friend Calder, including an eight foot-tall Tree of Life thingie (so dubbed by Karen, although she still has to tell me where she saw the mountain) with a branch a dozen pieces long. It was close enough to blow on it and spin the entire arm. Yay Calder! Yay Miró! Yay … a Guernica-esque Escher-style mercury fountain? Beats me, but it was still pretty cool to see liquid mercury bubbling along.

In order to get back to the hotel for lunchtime, we took a variety of trains. The first was on a 30′ diagonal grade. I don’t really understand why, but it was still fun to go down the hill. Also, there were two little boys (who I don’t think spoke castellano; maybe catalán) perched up a machine box or summat; when I gave them a thumbs-up, they flashed me the peace sign, so I took a photo. Cute kids. Then it was back to the regular metro to Universitat Plaza.

About a block away from the hotel was a fast-food restaurant called Viena (maybe Catalán for Vienna?) where the counter staff wore funny traditionalist Austrian outfits, lots of green with yellow embroidery. They were damn efficient, too, with a dozen trays set out on the counter at a time to fill the orders. However cool the uniforms were, though, the menu was still in Catalán, so we had a little trouble picking out what we wanted. Fortunately, just about everyone in Catalonia still speaks castellano, so ordering wasn’t a problem, nor was getting our food quickly and finding a table upstairs. The hamburgers we ate (which had more than just salad, it practically had the whole garden) were pretty decent, and cheap enough for Barcelona being somewhere around #30 on the list of most expensive cities in the world.

After polishing off that hearty meal of, um, hamburger, it’s back to the hotel for a quick rest before a ride to (wait for it– it’s the theme of Barcelona — GAUDÍ’S) SAGRADA FAMILIA! (In Spanish, that translates as ¡Sagrada Familia!) Well, it’s got its own metro stop, of course, being a Big Freaking Tourist Attraction, and it was only about half-done, I think, when Gaudi died? So, it’s still under construction, which means (A) there’s lots of cranes towering over it and (B) a good three fourths of it looks like new stone, untarnished by the weathering of years. I’m a real big of Gaudí, though, what with his, em, “naturalistic” approach to architecture; that is to say, I like the weird shit he designed that looks like climbing ivy and dripping stalactites in marble. We got about an hour to generally admire it, which meant that we were present for the carillon to ring at 4pm and my, are those some of the most unearthly bells I’ve ever heard. (Appropriate, I suppose.) I’ll put up my video later if I can clean up the audio. Oh, and I bought a cheapskate tourist souvenir: a thimble with a little shield showing the Sagrada Familia, which I’ll probably end up using when I patch up my holey pants.

Back at the hotel, Jorge released us after he mentioned where we could go find the other big Gaudí works in the city, if we took the 24 bus line from Universitat. Laura, Karen, and I got together, hiked over to Universitat (after going down to Plaza Catalunya and getting befuddled by the metro map), and caught the bus all the way up to the north side of town so we could go see Parq Güell, a public park designed by (who else) Gaudí. Out the windows of the bus, we glimpsed both of the Gaudí apartment buildings – and the setting sun. By dint of following the appropriate signs at the bus stop for the Parq, we ended up in … some other public park. Well, there went twenty minutes of scoping around to try and find the place. We eventually got there as the sun had just set, so we had lots of fun seeing how well our cameras could cope with the dark and with Gaudi’s weird works. I absolutely loved the crazy fountains that looked like it came from inside a cave and the multiple caves, although Karen said she doesn’t understand Gaudí’s taste at all. Laura was all “eh it’s cool yay let’s go play in the park!” Once we made it up to the very top, where there’s a curvy bench thing surrounding a dirt plaza, we just sat around and talked about life for a while we overlooked the rest of the park and looked up to the stars. Good Times.

Eventually, it was time to catch the 24 back down town so that we could meet up for folks for dinner at d’Or, a restaurant on the corner by our hotel. The place was lovely, as was the “Delerium” I consumed, a Belgian beer with elephants on the foil label. I nicked that bottle to take back to our growing collection in the hotel, that’s for sure. What was for dinner? Meat! Who served it? … Asians. Weird. Still yummy, though, and the guy spoke both Spanish and a little English. The dinner table conversation was also quite interesting, as we discussed our interactions with everyone we’d met here.

Of course, what comes after dinner? Party at the hotel. =D