Location: Tarragona
I love Barcelona. Gotta be the 2nd best city worldwide after NYC (listen, I grew up there, let me be biased). It’s a remarkably diverse place, home to people from all over the Mediterranean, who make it a cultural lodestone of a city with so very much to see. We left our dock in Tarragona early, hopped on a train (I adore trains), and an hour and a half later, we arrived at a beauty of train station. If you haven’t seen the main Barcelona station before, imagine an enormous hanger encircling a formerly open-air Romanesque walled inlet. In essence, it’s a gorgeous dead end. Side note (first of many): For those of you who can’t understand my descriptions (don’t worry, I barely understand them myself), you’ll get a visual guide to just about everything I say because I. Love. Photos. On passage, we’re only allowed three, so I’m really rolling in the lap of luxury writing this blog from the dock.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, Barcelona. First up was a lovely walk around near the Picasso Museum, just outside the Gothic Quarter. Some people found cafs and cute shops, while others (aka myself) made a beeline for a bagel shop a mile away. Listen, when you’re a Jew from NYC, and you haven’t had a good bagel in 50 days, it’s an EXPERIENCE to eat one again.
Soon afterward, we all gathered to tour the Picasso Museum. The art? Incredible. The pictures of us mimicking the art? Even better. But staying together? Remarkably challenging. Especially for a crew who sailed across the Atlantic with mountains of built-up trust. Insert something about herding cats.
Next up was La Sagrada Familia. If you’ve never seen it, think HUGE cathedral. Then make it taller. Then also, add some wacky intricate designs all over every outside surface. That’s kinda close. But make it under construction (still). That’s it. Congrats! You’ve now imagined La Sagrada Familia. Some of us (Will, Leo, Maria, Maria, Celia, Alex, Santana, Drew, and Charles) went straight there to take pictures and gawk.
Others (Gabe, Claire, Phoebe, Maya, Lily, and myself) went straight to the first tapas place we found. We discovered olive oil from heaven. I’m not joking. This random restaurant bottle was ridiculously good. If someone told me these olives were hand-picked by a 70-year-old master olive picker (surely that’s a thing, right?) after being loved for 200 years, I would believe them, no question. Gabe was questioning his existence. It was good olive oil.
Afterward, we were dropped off on one end of the Gothic Quarter and given two hours to make our way to the train station on the other side. This was my highlight of the day. See, when I’m going places, I like to give myself a huge time buffer. This results in a period of travel I like to call ‘sidequest time’. There are two rules to sidequest time. Firstly, you must maintain massive amounts of whimsey. If you’re not having fun, sidequest time is over, and you might as well head straight to your destination. Second, you’re not allowed to decline quests. If ANYTHING (and I mean anything) strikes your fancy, you must pursue it until the sidequest is concluded.
See some graffiti you like? Go check it out (and take a picture while you’re at it). Smell good food? Go for it. Strike up a conversation with a stranger, and they mention something interesting? If it’s within your time budget, find or do or see that thing. I firmly believe sidequest time is the way to experience the best of walkable cities. So, during these two hours, Alex and I went full sidequest mode. And believe me, we wandered. Saw hilarious street performers and incredible architecture (including the Gothic church in the center of the city quarter), ate a great baguette from a local bakery, and went shade hunting.
Everyone else did pretty much the same in their own ways. They wandered the tiny crooked streets of the Gothic Quarter, smelled the food, saw the shops, and felt the history in each wall and courtyard. It’s a wonderful place, and we had some incredible times. And after a train ride back, a dinner at a local restaurant together, and some lovely time spent on the bow sprit, we all turned in for bed.