I just got back from this trip, uploaded all the photos, and am parceling out and editing the notes I took as I went. The trip was for 2 weeks, with 4 or so days in Barcelona, and the rest jumping around Andalusia.
We were in Barcelona and doing interesting enough things there that I am splitting that part up into three chunks. The agenda after Barcelona was:
Málaga
Granada (to see the Alhambra)
Córdoba
back to Madrid, mainly to be able to fly out.
Day 1: Hamburg to Madrid.
Hamburg is actually sort of an inconvenient airport to fly out of, despite it being Germany's first airport. There are almost no direct flights to anywhere, so one always have to connect through another airport, which drives up the prices. This time, I'm flying Brussels Airlines, which is a step above EasyJet and maybe the same tier as airBerlin. That ends up meaning that while there is, technically, a ''business class'', an ''economy plus'' and the rest of us, the line between is not drawn thickly. Business class passengers do not get a little curtain between them and the rest of the plane, or comfier seats. They *are* guaranteed a seat in between them and the other person (so, all seats are aisle or window) and free snacks and beverages. I think they were offered 4 types of snacks in the course of our 1 hr flight.
Something about European flights -- their carryon-bag restrictions are tighter than the states. So, everyone has these teeny tiny carry-on bags. They're cute. Everyone who's not EasyJet allows you to have one checked bag and one rather tiny carryon. So, rather than as in the states, people check a smallish bag and maybe take a tiny wheely bag as well on the flight. Maybe this speaks more to the purpose of most flights. Maybe most inter-Europe air travel is business-related.
We spent the first night at Hostal Alaska, which has a very small sign and a very unobtrusive door on a street off of Plaza del Sol, which is clearly a very major train stop. The plaza was covered with people in various costumes and also ones doing the whole 'statue' gimmick. Also guys wearing vests which advertised a place that buys gold (weird).
Walking around looking for food, we came across this mural:
Day 2: Madrid to Barcelona.
Breakfast was sandwiches (on toasted white bread). I got one with salmon (and egg, apparently) as well as a coffee. We ate at a place on the Plaza del Sol that seemed easy to order from, and wasn't particularly remarkable.
We made our way to the Madrid train station, where C. (thankfully fluent in Spanish) figured out how to turn our tourist 4-trip passes into actual train tickets. We passed by the inner area of the train station that was very lush and tropical and had some turtles:
Around the corner was a store that sold skull balloons with bows:
We took the Renfe (high speed) train from Madrid to Barcelona (going ~286 km/hr), which took about 3 hrs. There was even an in-train movie.
It was not until we got to Barcelona and our second dwelling place (via airbnb) that I realized that in Spain, they do sheets like we do in the states. And quilts/light blankets on top. Turned out, we were right around the corner from Sagrada Familia:
Here was our view:
And our balcony, which it was too cold to really use:
Lunch was what we prepared after going through a grocery store (full of delicious meats, which my companions do not eat but which i bought myself a selection of). We went to a real bakery (Supan ("your bread")) and got the most German-looking bread, which is apparently made with spelt flour (in German, it's "Dinkel", and is also a very common flour). Also got some sheep's milk cheese that was like a soft manchego. I thought it was delicious. Two of our party thought it tasted like feet or smelled like fish (weird).
After dark, we went by the Sagrada Familia (we stayed quite nearby) and took some pictures.
We also found a columbia bakery and had some delicious foods, as well as some weird Yucca bread:
Day 3: Museum of History of Barcelona, etc.
This includes stuff from Roman-colonial-era of Barcelona up until Medieval times.
The timeline is roughly:
- [~11 B.C.] Roman Barcino
- [2nd Century] Textile processing/dying factory.
- [3rd Century] Garum(fish sauce) factory.
- [3-4th Century] Wine-making.
- [5th-6th Century] Roman bath, built atop the garum or the textile factory.
- [4th Century] (still Roman) defensive towers and remains of workshops.
- [6-7th Century] Church & Necropolis.
- And then more churchy stuff. Maybe also a hospital at some point.
Our self-guided tour started in the stuff excavated from the original Roman colony of Barcino, from about 11 BC.
Some random Roman writing supplies:
Remains of a Roman street, and diagram of said street:
We first saw the "garum"(fish sauce) and salted fish 'factory'. In case you like diagrams of archeological sites, here's the bit on the `garum' era:
Later in the tour, but earlier in time, it was a textile producing place, where people dyed fabrics. You could see the troughs and the special-made floors used in this process, some still with traces of Egyptian blue dye. On top of that, but later, the Romans had built a bathhouse, of which remained the cold water pool.
Laundry-washing floor:
Dying trough:
The remaining cold water pool:
4th Century Roman times yielded a few towers, one of which was left (still underground, but mostly intact), built using stones from the older Roman structures (evidenced by some stones with inscriptions being used on their side in the construction).
A sewage channel added in about the 4th Century A.D.:
Wall of workshops and street by the sewage channel (also 4th Century A.D.?):
Then there was the wine-making part, 3-4th Century A.D. It was on the same level as the dyeing and fish-stuff-making parts, and had neat giant round pottery in which the wine was stored.
Diagram of the wine-vat area:
The vats themselves:
In the 6th Century, there was a Church-Palace (it said "Episcopal Palace") and Necropolis built atop. There's a really great part of this where they reinforced this layer, and you are looking at the roman courtyard with the leftover column slabs (just the first stone or so) and then past the courtyard, you see the Roman mosaics, there's about 2 ft of air, this reinforcement, and the wall and windows of the 6th Century building atop.
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| 6th century church-palace on top, roman mosaiced courtyard underneath |
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| another view of the mosaic |
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This is a view of what had been the peristylium (i.e. courtyard) of the 10 B.C. Roman household (looking down at the pillars that had surrounded said courtyard, tucked under the 6th Century church):
Diagram of the Church and Necropolis era of the dig:
Necropolis-era pillars:
More Necropolis-era pillars:
There was yet another church-structure built atop this, a gothic cathedral. Later on, I think it was also a Jewish hospital (there was something like a dedication stone, with a Hebrew inscription).
The whole thing is well designed, with floors or ramps installed between the different eras of buildings. It was really delightful.
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| Diagram of Roman streets under exit of current era cathedral |
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Emerging from all this into the last layer of cathedral (show on the pic above), part of this gothic cathedral houses an exhibit on
calicos (fabrics which were originally imported from India), and how Barcelona started producing them and this leading to Barcelona going from a town of craftsmen to a town of factories, which necessitated tearing down the city's wall.
Calicos made in Europe were originally made by hand-stamping the designs onto the fabric. Later, there was a series of drums/cylinders one could roll over the fabric (makes me think of a printing press), one for each color in the pattern.
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| some old-style calicos |
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| stamps used to make calicos |
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| diagrams of machines involved in the process |
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| The tag says: "Model of a stationary steam engine, similar to those used in Barcelona in the second half of the 19th Century" |
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| Later-era roll for stamping calicos |
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The exhibit included the debate about the wall-tear-down and how the factory growth and population boom necessitated it for safety's sake. I saw a map of then-Barcelona, which included a Citadel. This prompted me to look up the history, which is awesome.
[ASIDE ABOUT AWESOME CATHEDRAL DESTRUCTION:]
TL;DR -- Spaniards built citadel to keep Catalonians in check, who later destroyed it from the nearby fortress on Montjuïc.
Barcelona, in 1714, fell to Philip V of Spain (War of the Spanish Succession). To maintain control and try to keep the Catalonians from rebelling (like they apparently had been doing the previous century), he built the citadel, which was the largest in Europe at the time.
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| Diagram of the old citadel [wikimedia commons pic] |
[By the way, I recommend the wikipedia article for hilarious and mis-used English. E.g. "...was destroyed to obtain the necessary space, leaving its inhabitants audaciously and carelessly homeless" and "[h]undreds of Catalonians were forced to pertinaciously work on the erection for three years".]
Time passed.
Timeline:
- 1841 city decides to destroy fortress.
- 1843, new regime (via its queen) says restore it!
- 1848, after abdication of the queen, "General Espartero razed most of the buildings within the fortress with its walls to the ground by bombarding it from a nearby mountain fortress Montjuic, which helped him beget political popularity. "(This made me really want to go see Montjuïc)
- 1869: new General (Prim) turned over the rest of the demolishment of it to the people, as it "was viewed as by the citizens as a much-hated symbol of central Spanish government".
[END OF ASIDE ABOUT AWESOME CATHEDRAL DESTRUCTION]
Walking out and past out cathedral to lunch, there were the rest of the 4th Century Roman fortifications:
We also passed this super-skinny building (on the left of this picture):
And a storefront that had some really classy alcohol:
S. was stealthily trying to take pictures of the Barcelona people who were walking around in fur or down coats, by the palm trees/plants, in our ~12C weather. Here's my attempt at such a pic:
Nearby was some awesome graffitti:
Later on, we made it down to the waterfront and
Rambla del Mar.
Cool statue/fountain of dude with a star:
I liked the "palace" of post and telegraphs, which was very fancy:
Down by the water there was a really cool buoy:
I liked this Archangel Michael statue we came across. It looked like he was ready to get to business:
Due to the coastal clime, there were also (small) parrots, rooting around with the pigeons. Some of them were tagged, even:
On the train, we saw a group of guys who sounded like they were from the states, all with tricked-out scooters. This was one of the guys:
We also passed the following note in Catalan:
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| Urgent girls for massages -- 24hs -- 20-30 yrs/old (?!?!?) |
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C's pedometer said that at the end of the day, we'd walked about 6.5 miles (~10.5 km) [spoiler: that was about average the entire trip, outside of one day].
