Travel by Map #4: Spain
Spain
We really only visited Madrid and Barcelona, but it was super cool.
Filtering by Category: spain
Dwayne-in-Spain's Stay, Mainly Entre Planes
February 7 - 26, 2015 / Madrid & Barcelona, Spain
It turned out that our three weeks in Spain inspired both Tricia and I to start a blog post at the same time....so this blog post is a bit of collaborative effort.
Out of Africa
Our visit to Tanzania was "a sort of homecoming" for us, having worked there between 1998 and 2002. We were pleased with how much Swahili we were able to resuscitate, and it was great to go a bit "deeper" culturally after 3 months of just getting by in Turkey.
We were also grateful to have the support of the World Renew Tanzania team, who helped us with bookings, let us stow our extra stuff (e.g. winter clothes) in their office storeroom, and set us up with some volunteer assignments that we could plug into very easily.
Overall, it was a great way to revisit Tanzania, to contribute to their work and to see some old friends and familiar places. The children seemed to take everything in stride, and they managed well during the days we were volunteering when they had to make friends quickly (and briefly :-( ), or even to fend for themselves for a day during our last workshop.
But after two months in Tanzania, it seemed like it was time to either settle down or go.
We left hot, humid and dusty Dar es Salaam on February 7 at 1:45 am, changed planes in Cairo, and then pulled into Madrid several hours later. It took a bit longer for the last of our bags to catch up with us, but all was fine in the end.
Madrid - Part 1
Walking out into the Madrid airport (MAD) felt like we were on the set of the LEGO movie: crowds of people moving between multiple floors on moving sidewalk-ramps, escalators and elevators, sleek space-age trains and espresso-coffee-vending machines. An hour train ride later, we found our Air Bnb downtown and made ourselves at home.
Why Madrid? Well, partly because Madrid is the last stop of our Aeroplan ticket -- we'll fly home from here in July -- but also because Madrid is close to a few other places that we'd like to visit (e.g. Barcelona, Morocco, France). Although the shoulder season, February turned out to be a great time to go there because the weather was cooler and the line-ups were much shorter than they would have been during the high season.
Knowing that we'll be coming back through here, we were content to wander around and take a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus to get an overview of a city. However, the tour bus narration consisted of a lot of jazz fusion muzak interspersed with obscure factoids about architecture and the royalty that commissioned it. A bit dry, I'm afraid, and after a while, the names, dates and styles started to just overflow our jet-lagged brains.
We also managed to do a bit of shopping and visit the Museo Nacional El Prado, home to what some say is one of the finest collection of European art, including Velázquez, El Greco, and Goya.
Madrid certainly plays the role of impressive, imperial capital, and it will be interesting to visit it again in the summer when it's hot. But our main objective this time was to make it to....
Barcelona
Barcelona. What a city. It really warrants a fanfare. Please watch the video below before continuing....
Yep, Barcelona is really that epicalistical, as the kids say.
We spent two and a half weeks in Barcelona, and it was wonderful. The two Air BnB apartments where we’ve stayed were in very pedestrian-and-bicycle friendly neighbourhoods, close to subway stops, and within three banister-slides to cheap-but-good-red-wine, espresso, and all the groceries we needed. It reminded us a lot of Montreal, and indeed there is a strong separatist movement that very nearly resulted in Catalunya becoming an independent nation last year.
Barcelona has small, angled streets like Istanbul, minus the steep hills, and a great mash-up of Roman, Renaissance, Medieval, Gothic, Romantic, Modernisme / Art Nouvelle, Post-Modernist, Post-Colonial, Hyper-Post-Modern-Meso-Whatchamacallit styles.....Okay, I’m obviously not an architect, (although I do have the glasses….). But we’ve really enjoyed Barcelona’s joyous cacophony of styles, angles and colours.
One of the city's most famous architects was Antoni Gaudi, and we had the chance to see three of his projects, including La Pedrera, the Parc Güell, and of course....
La Sagrada Familia
The highlight for me (Trish) was the Sagrada Familia. What a space! I have been wow’ed by buildings before (Ste Chapelle in Paris, the Aya Sophia in Istanbul, and even the Skydome J), but the Sagrada Familia actually brought me to tears. It’s astonishingly beautiful, especially inside where the stain glass windows really shine.
The architect behind the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí, certainly makes you rethink our propensity of making walls straight! His apartment blocks, churches, cellars, - all his buildings take their cues from nature, and are full of spirals, parabolaoids, and lots of sticky-outie bits. He certainly wasn’t shy about adding flashes of colour, and even words on his buildings. It’s like he built with exuberance.
Fútbol Mania
Barcelona is the home of Isaac’s (current) favourite team, the celebrated “Barça” FC , led by Messrs. Messi, Neymar and Suarez. Their logos are everywhere you look and it seems that half of the tourists that come to town are making the Haj (pilgrimage) to Camp Nou, their home stadium (capacity 95,000). Every coffee shop and bar plays the games where the fans watch in silent concentration (and perhaps, prayer).
Months and months ago, as we were preparing for this trip, Isaac had said he really wanted to see an FC Barcelona match, so it was great to be able to get out to a game, right around the time of his 9th birthday. It was especially fun, given that Barcelona won. 5-0! Isaac was able to recall all of the highlights for days afterwards.
Viva, Barcelona!
Barcelona also seems to have a museum on every block, and we managed to visit:
- the Picasso Museum, which houses many of his earlier works;
- the 1 Dia / 1 Foto exhibit 365 photos of life in Barcelona in 2014 at the Centra de la creativitat, Arts Santa Mònica;
- the Museu de les Cultures de Mon, a kind of old-school anthropological museum;
- the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, another massive collection of Spanish and Western European art;
- the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, which included a huge Spanish galley;
- the Museum of History of Barcelona for an overview of the development of the city from a small, Roman village to a city of 1.6 million;
- the Caixaforum, where we saw an exhibit celebrating 25 years of Pixar animation;
- the Museum of Design where we saw a temporary exhibit of 99 Projects for the Real World.
Zoe and Dwayne also had a chance to see the opera, Carmen, at the Palau de la Musica, an Art Nouvelle gem.
And best of all, we were able to celebrate Isaac's 9th birthday with another vagabond Canadian family, Paul, Laura, Ella and Wesley, as well as Tricia's mutual friends, Julie & Sam with baked macaroni and cheese and trifle. It was great to have some other kids around for the party.
Viajes fácil
Looking back, our three weeks in Spain was really an “easy” part of our trip:
- Moving around was easy,
- Most things worked, with exception of the WIFI at one apartment;
- We felt safe, and the city was very clean;
- We stayed in two great apartments with lots of space -- after often squeezing into one room in church guest houses in Tanzania,
- We happened upon lots of fun free local events (including Carnaval!),
- We loved all the tiny streets and public squares (plazas)
Trish also speaks passable Spanish (Castilian), so that really helped with the day to day errands, even in a Catalan speaking area.
Of course, we’re aware that Spain faces lots of issues -- there’s a colonial legacy that paid for all of this opulence, and we primarily saw a touristy part of a country facing 23% unemployment since the last financial crisis. But oh, it was nice to travel in a place where the hassle factor is so low.
Mais maintenant.....on to Morocco!
A few photos
Our time in Barcelona, of course, included taking some pictures. Here are a few. Click on them to see them in a larger "lightbox" format.
Warm, Dry & WIFI
Or, the Art of Guesting
When I was a kid, we hardly ever stayed in a hotel, a motel or even a cabin while on vacation. Our preferred mode of accommodation was always to go camping – initially in our trusty TAG-A-LONG, hard-top camper, or later on in tents.
My dad would usually take his two weeks vacation in August and we’d visit our favourite Ontario Provincial Parks: Killbear, Bon Echo, the Pinery, Arrowhead, and when we started going on church canoe trips, the legendary Algonquin Park. We’d hang out for lazy summer weeks on the beach and evening pyjama-clad visits to the amphitheatre to see such classics as The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes, How I Learn to Love Lichen, and advice on how to escape an encounter with a black bear.
Because my mom and I are both August babies, most of our birthdays were celebrated around a campsite picnic table blowing out candles on a homemade, Tomato Soup Cake. It is one of my mother’s classic recipes– and with a brown-sugar icing, it is actually even better than it sounds. And whatever the heck is in Campbell’s tomato soup lets it stay fresh for a week or more without refrigeration. Perfect for camping.
But being the ungrateful third-born child that I was, I always envied the kids who got to stay in hotels with pools. Well, not so much envied, but I was always very curious what it would be like to stay in a place like that.
I finally got my chance in Grade 9 when our family made a three-week car trip out to Alberta . We had taken the “short-cut” through Michigan and faced with three days of constant rain, my parents decided it was too wet to camp.
“At last!”, I thought. “Swimming, here I come!” as we pulled up to a great hotel with a pool.
Not so fast. We actually turned left, across the road from the great hotel with the pool, and decamped at what can only be describe as a rather basic motel: no TV, no restaurant and certainly, no swimming pool. It didn’t matter that I probably wasn’t going to swim the rain; I was still bummed.
“Well,” my mother said in her wise, motherly tone. “At least it’s warm and dry”.
And that became the measure for any place that we’ve stayed since.
“At least, it’s warm and dry”, I now intone as the kids roll their eyes.
To Err, ‘Tis Human. To Air BnB….
Of course, as a kid, I had no idea what anything cost or that part of the reason for camping everywhere was to save money. As a parent now, I’m much more aware of every penny, which is crucial when we’re travelling for an entire year, especially in more cosmopolitan places where our every-shrinking petro-Loonie doesn’t go as far.
On this trip, we’ve had great luck using Air BnB, a peer-to-peer (P2P) website that allows owners to rent out their houses, apartments or even a room or couch in their house. This “sharing economy” website allows you to search by location and dates, and to filter places by key amenities like clothes-washer, elevator or WIFI.
Former guests can also posts reviews so that you can find out if there were any problems; in turn, the landlords can review you as a guest, so there is some mutual accountability. This review system works quite well, and a recent host told me that he finds the Air BnB guests to be much nicer than others who rent through bookings.com
AirBnB worked very well for us in Turkey, and again now in Spain, although there were relatively few options in Tanzania. On the upside, we’ve been able to rent whole apartments with kitchens where we can make our own meals, separate bedrooms for the kids and a living room to hang out -- all for a fraction of the cost of a dodgy hotel in the same funky neighbourhoods of Montreal, Istanbul, and Barcelona. We can also book the flats ahead of time in English and pay in Canadian dollars via a credit card, which eliminates much of the hassle factor.
On the downside, we have found that a lot of the places that we’ve stayed are actually commercially-rented properties rather than private residences. As such, the contact with the host is often limited to handing over the keys and the odd text message. Not so gezellig, I’m afraid. And since we’re often staying in a private residence, we don’t bump into other travellers like we used to in hostels or hotels.
But on balance, it really is the way to go as a travelling family.
More Essential Criteria
The Ruffians have been remarkably easy going about some of the places that we've stayed at during this trip. Some of these hovels have not quite lived up to the "4-stars" rating they had advertised. But having now stayed in something like 30 places since we left Ottawa last August, we’ve added a few criteria to my mother’s list. These include:
- cool: a good night’s sleep in Tanzania often required having air-conditioning, and/or a ceiling fan;
- bednets: essential in places where malaria is common.
- a central location: sometimes it is worth paying a bit more to stay downtown to avoid having to take a bus all the time for every outing;
- more than one bedroom – preferably three, so that our kids can enjoy some alone time;
- a place to play football: although Isaac has been remarkably flexible about this, and has practiced his craft in alley’s and courtyards.
- kids: If a place would have kids for Zoe and Isaac to play with, we’d probably stay in a bus shelter.
Probably the most important additional criteria, however, is access to WIFI. It is hard to imagine that we used to travel (shock!) without the Internet. But these days, we’re online constantly to check the weather forecast; to navigate the backstreets of cities we get lost in; to book tickets for planes, trains and automobiles; to find our next week’s accommodation; and of course, to stay in touch with all of you out there in TV-land. Having WIFI also allows us to download English books from the library back home and to stay in touch with our family via a Voice of Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone.
Again, being connected is a mixed blessing. With the internet in your pocket, you’re never actually as much “away” as you used to be, and it is easy to be only half-immersed in your surroundings. But it also helps you find things and solve logistical issues that used to take up so much time in travelling.
So... here we are (left) in a new AirBnB place in Barcelona. It’s great: warm, dry and WIFI, and even better – an espresso maker in a funky, red kitchen!
Now if only I could just find some Tomato Soup Cake….
Gooooooooooooooooooooooooolllll!
Highlights of FC Barcelona vs. Levante UD, by Isaac Wind
Last Sunday, we went to Camp Nou, which is a completely awesome stadium where 95,000 people can watch FC Barcelona play. When we got there, we went to our seats, which were in the first balcony, but we could still see the players very well.
At the beginning of the game, Messi crossed the ball to Neymar, and I don't know how he did it, but Neymar kicked the ball with the inside of his foot, got the ball over the goalie, and got the first point.
After that, Messi was going up the field, he pretended to kick the ball, then he kicked the ball with the inside of his foot, and scored. Messi scored again. He scored with a penalty shot, getting a hat trick by kicking the ball into the top corner of the net.
Then Suarez got a cross from Pedro, and Suarez did a spectacular bicycle kick right into the net.
So Barcelona won five-nil over Levante UD.
It was totally awesome watching the game!
Below is a video with the highlights!