Girona
Girona has great historical importance for many things involving Iberians, Romans, French armies and a massive wall that the Gironaians built to keep armies out, which worked just great until one of those armies knocked part of the wall down. Because it is so picturesque, many movies and TV shows have been filmed here, including Game of Thrones. The most important historical aspects of Girona are illustrated in the photos below, so you don't have to learn anything further.

I took the audio-guided tour of the Girona cathedral (pictured at left), fulfilling my requirement to do something educational while on this trip. Not to get too theological here, but why would a merciful, forgiving God require people to walk up this many steps to go to church every Sunday?

While on my educational cathedral visit, these dogs barked at me, ready to take me on just in case I had any plans to mess with the stroller they were attached to.

This picture, taken from the top of what remains of the city wall, shows the Pyrenees and France, the country that provided the soldiers who successfully knocked part of the wall down.







But what intrigues me the most about Girona is the illumination settings control panel in my hotel room. It has many buttons that are set to do things that are not written on the buttons and they don't include options for things you might need, like, oh I don't know, like "turn on light." Rather, the lights are controlled by the buttons surrounding the image of the heart below, and instead of being labelled "bathroom" and "bedroom," they are labelled "eros," "passion," "romantic" and "love" (no, you cannot rent rooms by the hour here, it is a three-star hotel). For example, the "eros" setting closes the drapes and turns the bedroom lights on low. "Passion" turns off the room light, but turns on the shower light along with the mood lighting above the bed. Unfortunately, there isn't a setting that says "hey, I'm 60 years old and sometimes I have to get up at 3:00 am and pee so can you turn on the light over the toilet."  

And, while I would not bother to write this last part if I had anything better to do, this hotel (which is quite nice and has a 4.5 star rating on Trip Advisor) also has three "Eros Suites" that contain, according to the website, "The Eros Sofa (tantric chair) specially thought for couples and designed to enhance your sexual pleasure." I kind of know what we're all thinking here about a public, reusable Eros Sofa so I'll stop right there.

On the plus side, the orange juice machine makes up for everything:

The Time Now is to Say the Goodbye to the City Grand of Barcelona
As I start to lose my ability to speak English, I say au revoir to the giant dancing bird, the puzzling t-shirts and the fire-laden festivities, and I travel to Girona to begin a 5-day bike ride. Hasta Luego, Barcelona.

Begins the Merce
The big moment finally arrived, ushered in by the dance of the enormous spinning bird, the minuet of the giant king and queen, the construction of the first of many human towers presided over by the very large people, and of course, some fire. Samples below:

And if you are fond of light shows that change the front of an actual building (in this case the Barcelona city hall at the Plaza San Jaime) of into a fantasy world in which solid stone changes form and four colored blobs cavort (and who isn't?), the Merce is the place for you. Actually it was really cool. If you're just going to watch one YouTube video today, make it this one. The whole thing lasted quite a while, but there are a few minutes worth in the video below:

Getting Ready for La Merce
Everything is almost ready for the big event. All over town everyone is practicing their Merce stuff. Below are two examples, a band with a smoking tuba player (not to say that the tuba player is really great, but rather, that he chain smoked whenever he wasn't playing), and a Spanish ukelele guy.

In the interest of ensuring that I'll be able to do my 5-day bike ride next week, I chose not to attend the falconry practice, the running-through-fire practice or the human tower practice.

La Merce

Big day today - this is the last day before the Merce, Barcelona's so-called Festival of Festivals. It's the biggest annual party in a city that knows how to party. There are over 100 events all over town for four days in a row. The official program ends at 2:00 am each day, but unofficially, it goes 24 hours a day.

Here are just a few of the highlights, grouped by whether they involve fire and ranked in order of how likely it is that someone will get injured:

Fire
1. Fire run - Anyone who wants to gets to run through fireworks while being chased by devils. According to the program, "If you are going to experience the Correfoc it is highly advisable to take protective clothing because often powerful sparkler fireworks are sprayed into the crowds. People should bring hats, protective glasses and thick long sleeved tops that will protect you from the flying sparklers." I'm in.
2. Fire run for kids - hey, why should adults have all the fun?
3. "Parade of Dragons and Fire Breathing Beasts" (copied straight from the program)
4. Fireworks

Non-Fire
1. Human towers - many, many stories tall
2. Falconry - no details provided, but I understand that their claws are pretty sharp and, well, they're birds
3. Parade of the Blunderbusses

Plus many concerts, light shows, parades and who knows what else? Wish me luck.

September 20

Like most people, you have no doubt often wondered what would happen if slightly crazy and unlimited budget got together one day and decided to build a theater. I found an answer tonight when I saw classical guitarist Aniello Desiderio, who has played with Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Paco De Lucia, play a solo concert at the Palau De La Musica Catalana.

The building, whose official website describes the interior as "a mystical, paradoxical hall, packed with figures" was, at times, louder than Aniello's music, despite the fact that he had a microphone and speakers. "Why is there a 20-foot long carved stone horse emerging from the back wall of the balcony?" I would wonder as Aniello played a slow, reflective passage in an 18-century Italian composition. Paradoxical indeed. But nonetheless, a good time was had by all.

It looks like this:

 The outside of the building

                                                 


  The main stage

The ceiling

 Detail of the back of the stage

Tuesday Sep. 20

I noticed this morning that for the first time since I arrived, there were people walking faster than me, indicating that I am on the way to accomplishing a major objective of my trip. I'm like, whatever. This will probably mean fewer, less witty posts.

I took a couple of kind of shaky videos of my street to assist you in  continuing to be envious of everything I am doing. One  shows me leaving my building and walking down the block. The second shows me walking from the Picasso Museum to my apartment. 

Leaving my apartment:

Returning to my apartment (I am not intentionally stalking the muscular guy with the blue shirt):

Speaking of shirts, I have noticed a lot of people who seem to be wearing T-shirts that have English on them, but puzzling English. Like either they were composed by someone who speaks little to no English or they were composed by a brilliant writer who intentionally embedded clues and double or triple meanings for us to ponder. I see these all day long, these just from this morning:

"I prefer the drummer"
"No phone. Free zone."
"I prefer not to."
"In the fumble, in the rumble." 

And my favorite:
"F**k with Love"

That's it. My afternoon meeting got cancelled, I'm fully re-caffeinated and my t-shirt smells delightfully of the floral-scented shampoo I washed it with last night, so I'm off to explore.

Fulfilling my Dreams
Today was the day I fulfilled my food dreams of Barcelona. And because I know that you care deeply about how happy I am, I am quite sure that you are joyous at reading this news. I've had problems getting into the places on my food list because they're so busy, but somehow today everything seemed to align in my favor (coupled with the fact that I'm alone and kind of skinny so can fit at the end of the bar where the dirty dishes get passed over to the kitchen), and I was able to eat at two great places.

I'm not one to post pictures of my food, so I'm not going to do that. But I highly recommend:

Bar Central
At the Boqueria, the main fresh food market in Barcelona. This place has lots of great fresh seafood of all types, surrounded by open-air markets selling every tasty and disgusting thing you can think of:

The Bar Central with the great seafood.

                                                         Candy

                                                               Fruit

Why just buy ham when you can get the whole leg, hoof included?










Eldiset:

Then dinner at Eldiset (in my hipster neighborhood). Excellent food, excellent prices. It's just really busy all the time. They're even too cool to have more than a one-page website, so you just have to trust me. The menu is in Spanish, but I highly recommend that thing about halfway down the left page that starts with a "B".

I now go to bed happy, hoping that tomorrow at my Spanish class, no one asks me what I did tonight so that I don't have to deal with past tense verbs.

A Run and A Question

The Run - four miles to the beach and back:

The Question: If there is a row of stores near the beach, all selling fresh fruits and cold drinks, and there is marijuana smoke coming out of all of them, and the owners are standing outside their stores inviting tourists to come in, what are they inviting them in for? 

Things I Learned So Far Today
1. Forcing oneself to wake up at a normal local time when one's body is still fully adjusted to one's home local time creates huge cognitive problems.

2. Signing up for a Spanish immersion course at the last possible second requires one to take an "assessment exam" in both written and oral Spanish at 8:30 in the morning on that same day (when one isn't even speaking English very well), which produces something less than completely accurate results.

3. Because my apartment is in the old city, which is full of narrow, winding streets, there are several neighborhoods that look exactly like my neighborhood, so in the future it would be wise to carry a small map.

4. Little coffee makers do not have an "automatic off" feature.

5. Leaving a little coffee maker on for hours while trying to find one's neighborhood does not cause a fire, but it does create a coffee-flavored crust at the bottom of the pot that smells bad.

Time for a run.

Beach Day
My afternoon stroll found me at the beach. I will not make a joke here about calling it Barcelona's best-kept secret. Most of the time it felt like Times Square.

                                                                                Like a lot of cities, Barcelona has a bike share program where people can grab a bike and then drop it off at another location. But Barcelona is pretty hilly, so everyone just rides the bikes downhill and then they take the metro back up. So some guy who works for the city (shown here) has to load the bikes on a truck and drive them back uphill. Yet another reason to love Barcelona.

 

You want stuff? At the beach? We got your stuff right here.

Sunday Morning
I actually slept 14 hours last night. I only woke up because the stupid bells in the Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar (the 14th century church around the corner from my apartment) started ringing. It was either that or the drunk crowds walking through the streets singing getting ready for the Barcelona soccer game that was about to start around the time I woke up.

Got dressed and ran a little over 3 miles:

These are some of the places I passed on my run. No big deal, really.

Time to figure out what the rest of this afternoon looks like. Then tomorrow, I start looking for a full-time job in Barcelona. Ha ha. Just kidding. No one works full-time in Barcelona. I'll be looking for a part-time job.

First Day
My brain is no longer working very well but I wandered around the neighborhood until it was late enough to go to sleep. Found an outside band that was featuring some clarinet-like instrument and playing music that at first I thought was a soundtrack to a Bugs Bunny cartoon but turned out to be traditional Catalonian music that a bunch of people who looked like they have never seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon were dancing to. Judge for yourself below:

My neighborhood: