Where’s Megan?

I´m a little behind on my updates here, but I´ll try to remember the important bits. My first, very brief stop in Spain was a town called Figueres which is known for one thing – the home of Salvador Dali. I had exactly enough time to hop off the bus, run up the hill to the museum, run back to the train station when the museum closed, and hop back on the next train 3 seconds before it started moving.

Dali is a cool guy. This painting is entitled “Soft Self-portrait with Grilled Bacon”

Arrived in Barcelona to find that I was staying at a massive, modern hostel with 400 beds. It was a nice place, right in the middle of everything, and it made it easy to meet people. The main sights in Barcelona are Las Ramblas, a bustling boulevard with a lifetime of shopping opportunities, and several buildings designed by the architect Antoni Gaudi. I saw a few of them, and I must say that I am now a big fan of his unique style of curvy, light-filled designs.

Casa Batllo:

Gaudi died while building the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral dedicated to family with incredible detail. Here´s an angel rockin´out with an oboe:

Proof of my well-being from a restaurant with a tiny hobbit door:

That night I joined the hostel´s “Tapas and Flamenco Tour”, where we sampled tapas (small plates of food, very popular in Spain), and saw a short Flamenco performance. It was exhausting just watching her.

Here´s a short video which may work:
http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3008518340101168197IFWUxB

I wanted to stay in Barcelona for another day, but it had just become “peak season” and I had stupidly not booked far enough ahead, so there was no accomodation under $200/night. So I took the next train to Madrid.

The central area of Madrid is very compact and easily walkable. Madrid has 3 main museums, and not a lot of other attractions. But I did get a good perspective of Spain´s love of ham. Shops like this with a hundred ham legs hanging from the rafters are everywhere:

At the place I was staying, I met a girl from France who was in Madrid for an internship. She spoke a little Spanish and a little English, and I speak virtually no French, but we managed to play charades until we figured things out. We did some sightseeing in Madrid, including a visit to one of the museums and Parque Retiro. This huge park seemed quiet and peaceful, until we reached the area with a big lake where all the locals were enjoying their Saturday afternoon.

I ate a lot of candy…

and took a goofy photo:

My Spanish is getting better every day. Although I´m still in caveman-mode of speaking (“me want drink”), I can successfully communicate what I want, understand numbers in transactions, and ask questions (although only sometimes understand the response). Unfortunately I only have a week or so left in Spain and then I´ll forget everything. In the meantime…

Hasta Luego!

Tags: Barcelona, Madrid, Spain, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.