Paris and Barcelona

Ok, since I got a bit behind the last week we were in Europe, I will be putting Paris and Barcelona together, so be forewarned that this will be longer than normal...

We were only in Paris for two full days; the third day, Wednesday, our train left about 7:20 am so we would be arriving in Barcelona a bit earlier than originally planned.
Monday, we did our best for an early start, but only managed to wake up around 8:30. We got ready for the day and then went downstairs for the hotel's breakfast. It was scrumptious: two pastries each, one baguette each with butter and jam, one large cup of coffee and one cup of orange juice. All top notch.

After the refuel, it was off to see what we could see! We started by walking to the metro station and going to the Louvre first. Upon arrival, we were dismayed to see the long lines, but hoped our "Paris museum pass" would help us go in a different line. I tried to ask a worker in French where we needed to go, but before I could say anything she saw our pass and told us where to go -- we were on the wrong floor. Ahh, much better, shorter lines! The Louvre was, of course, spectacular. We didn't stay as long as we could have, or see everything, but it is, after all, the Louvre, and would take much longer than part of a day to to experience. We tried to hit at least a few sections, though.

The weather was supposed to be not very good while we were there; forecast: cold-ish, and rainy. By the time we looked out the window of the Louvre, though, it was sunny and beautiful! So, we walk outside, around the block, can't see where the metro entrance is, and then figure, hey, it's nice, let's walk to the Arc de Triomphe! It turns out to only be about two miles, but the neat part was the fact that it was all simply straight down the Champs Élysées, so it was super interesting. We arrive at the Arc, and get to bypass the line again, which was pretty cool, especially since it's much more than 200 stairs to get to the top. It was completely worth it, though. Such a beautiful view of the city. It began to sprinkle rain a bit as we were up there, so we decided it was about time to go down to street level again and find some food.

Down a little side street, we found a small cafe that had lunch specials. The food was great and the people were very cheerful and kind.

Next stop, we wanted to see the Mercedes museum and the ... Um, I forgot, the designer purse place? Hmm... Versace? Gucci? Valentino Rossi? No, he is a motorcycle racer. I don't remember, I'm way off. Well, we just walked in and walked out, basically, just to say we did.

Continuing on, we took the metro to Notre Dame, and got in line to go inside. Tons of people, of course. There were a few military men patrolling the area with machine guns. I really wanted to take a picture, but I don't think I did. Notre Dame was beautiful, and huge...but I must admit, I actually liked Notre Dame in Strasburg better. it was prettier on the inside, I think. Of course, that's just my opinion.

Let's see, what was on the agenda next? I think we were getting tired, so we decided to go to the Sacre Coeur and then the grocery store and call it a day. It took awhile to find Sacre Coeur, but really, it's on top of a huge hill so it was hard to miss once we got in the general area. People. Everywhere. It was ok, just to say we went. We sat in a seat for prayers, because we were so exhausted, so I prayed until I started dozing off. At that point, I decided I shouldn't stay still any longer, so we left.

On to the grocery store! Our feast of the evening was a baguette, nutella, Brie, a few other kinds of cheese, some cereal, and some jam. Oh, and don't forget big bottles of water that would last us til Barcelona, and a bottle of apple juice. We returned to our hotel a few blocks from the store, and ate our meal in the lobby, where there was also free Wi-fi. I believe that was when I posted the entry before this one.

We must have just sat, eaten, and chilled for a number of hours, because before we knew it, it was time to go to bed. This feast would become our lunch and snacks for the next few days as well. Next day: Palace of Versailles!

The day of the Palace (Tuesday):
We overslept our alarm, again, a bit the next day, but I think this day we rolled out of bed by 8:45. No worries, it's raining, and a bit chilly, so we aren't in too much of a hurry to brave the weather. I have my hat and my cotton jacket, and am planning on not using an umbrella, but Korinne doesn't even have a hat, so we stop by a stand on the way out and pick up a small umbrella. Of course the umbrella falls apart bit by bit throughout the trip to Versailles and back, but it somewhat adds to the amusement. We did not go into the gardens, since it was raining, but we did at least see them from the windows.

We stopped by the gift store before we left, and bought some small souvenirs. When I was checking out, I made a valiant yet quite failed effort to speak French to the cashier. I said to the effect of "hello. I have this,unt this." (all French, except the "unt") The German just kinda slipped out without my even realizing it. The cashier laughed and acted astonished, "unt? ... unt!" then started speaking German, with a twinkle in his eye. Switching to English, he asked where I was from. I told him Alabama, at which his response was, "is your family ok after all the storms and tornadoes recently?". I was a bit surprised that he had heard about that, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. We had a brief conversation while he continued the purchasing process, and his goodbye to me was in French, German, and English. It was quite amusing, and it was neat to see someone so obviously enjoying meeting all kinds of people throughout the day.

Leaving Versailles, we did get rather cold and more rained on, so by the time we returned to the hotel, we decided to simply take a nap. Well, that nap turned into at least a few hours of catching up on sleep. It was much needed, though. We had been running pretty hard for awhile. Our Eiffel tower reservation was not until 21:15, so we leisurely got ready for the rest of the day and walked out the door a few hours early to get dinner. Of course, dinner was wonderful. We even shared a dessert and had coffee. The Eiffel tower was only about a five-minute walk from where we were currently, so we left with plenty of time to spare. Of course, the line was super long, again, but we got to go in the "reservation" line. Whoot!

It was, of course, great, and we even took the elevator up to the very very top. Ok, I'm not particularly afraid of heights, but I do not like elevators, it would seem. Shudder. Stairs for me! But not that many stairs. Maybe I will make it a life goal to one day just walk up the entire Eiffel tower stairs? Hmm... Nah, probably not. I don't think I'm quite that hardcore. The sun was setting over the city as we were up there, and I didn't see it, but I was told a couple even got engaged up there. Korinne and I speculated at how many couples got engaged up there. We don't know, but sure it's a lot. Too many, I'm sure.
We stayed up on the top of the Eiffel tower for awhile, until it was dark and we could see all the city lights. It was our last night in Paris - a short trip. The next morning we would hop on the train to Barcelona.

We stayed up rather late that evening, and chatted a bit with the front desk worker at our hotel. Turns out he is from Arabia, so we learned a bit about the different dialects of Arabic, how different they are, and had a neat conversation about just people in general, different religions, different prejudices, and such. It was quite refreshing, actually.

Next morning, we wake up super early and leave by 6 or 6:15 to get to the train station. At hotel worker's recommendation, we start our travels at the bus stop, but then read the schedule and it looks like the buses don't start running until 7:00 am. Well, that won't do! Booked it to the metro. Hurried to the train station, and made it in plenty plenty of time for our fast train. It was a smooth trip, even though our train was a bit late and we were worried we might miss our connection! We needn't have worried, because the connection waited. It was literally the only other platform and train there, so it waited until everyone had safely boarded, then left, a full three minutes late! I think I can safely say: out of all the trains we rode, that one was the only one that left the platform late.


Continuing on to Barcelona...

We knew we were getting close when we could see the ocean out the window of the train, and started going through the long tunnels through the mountains. Barcelona is nearby!

Barcelona is to be our last stop. When we arrive at the train station, our first order of business was to get to our hostal, La Terrassa. We had to call the hostal to get directions, but after walking the wrong direction from the metro stop, we finally found our way to the hostal. One of the things mentioned on the website was the lack of elevator to get to the lobby, so "Don't book a room here unless you can carry your luggage up approximately twenty steps." Korinne was in the lead, with me shortly behind. She made it to the staircase, but, true to form, I somehow failed to see the single step located four feet in front of the staircase. Ha, I'm still not completely sure how I didn't fall flat on my face! *shrugs* maybe because nearly falling down is a regular occurrence in my life.

Finally, we could put our luggage down! Our room was a bit bigger than the Paris room, with a much easier to deal with bathroom too. Oh, how nice it was to be at our second to last destination! We were both very hungry, despite the fact that it was only about 3 pm, so we freshened up from the travel and wandered out to Las Ramblas to find some tapas.

We would not be disappointed. They had plenty of tapas for two people, so we figured we would split one. Our server spoke very good English; we ended up chatting with him about Barcelona and traveling and other assorted topics. Feeling much refreshed after the meal, we decided since it was still late afternoon we would begin with a walk around Las Ramblas and the Barri Gotic. Las Ramblas was, of course, crazy with people everywhere: street vendors, live statue actors, and random people with these squeaky noise makers. They were everywhere, but the farther away we wandered from Las Ramblas, the wonderfully thinner the crowd became, and we were more able to enjoy the sights without worrying about crashing into someone.

We walked down to Placa de Catalunya, then back toward the harbor the back way. There was so much to see, and it was all so different...

We walked all the way back to the harbor and explored a bit of the mall there - it was interesting, I guess. Finally, we were tired of walking, and getting a bit hungry, so we walked back to our hostal and had a dinner of nutella, cheese, cereal, and water - the leftovers from our Paris grocery excursion. I honestly don't remember if by this point we had any bread left, but if weeks, it was part of dinner too. I think that grocery trip was the best twenty Euros spent our entire time there, honestly.

After dinner, we wandered downstairs to the lobby to check our email before going to sleep, and when we returned to our room, we met our neighbors, who were apparently about to go out on the town. (It was now around 10:15 or 10:30 pm) They were a group of three young guys from Sweden, here on holiday, so they invited us out. We politely refused, since we not only were exhausted but also didn't really have a desire to stay out late with guys we didn't know. We did tell them, though, that perhaps we could meet up with them later, like during the day the next day or something to that effect.

Finally, we could go to bed! Ahh, sweet sleep. Unfortunately, our neighbors returned somewhere around 7:00 am, which was much earlier than we planned on waking up. They tried to get us to come out of our room by knocking on the door and yelling for us to come out. I don't think they remembered our names, but they did remember where we were from, it seemed, cause I distinctly heard one of them yell, "ALABAMA!!!!! NEW YORK!!!!!" After a few minutes of this ridiculousness, the lady from the front desk came up there and told them to go to their room and quiet down, haha. I was a bit annoyed, so my half-asleep brain decided to turn my alarm off, ha. I think we ended up sleeping til around ten. It was a nice late start to the day.

Since we had already seen a good bit of the surrounding walkable area, after finding a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast, coffee, and other things, we took the metro out to La Sagrata Familia, the huge unfinished cathedral by Gaudi. The line was quite long, but it moved rather quickly - we were in the cathedral in 30 minutes.

This was so spectacular. The pillars inside were reminiscent of trees, and the stained glass was amazing. It was just so huge. Next, we went in search for the bassoon player that Jennifer had told us about. Out the side door, look up, and there he is! So strange to see a group of musicians in stone on the side of a cathedral like that, yet also quietly amusing.

Ok, where to next? The Catalan Concert Hall!!! We didn't know the schedule specifically, but our book said it was open until 3 pm. We arrived at 2:52. Turns out, the last official tour in English begins at three. We hop to the ticket office and order our tickets with plenty of time to spare.

Korinne and I knew nothing about this concert hall, so we had no idea what to expect - all we knew was we probably should go see it, since we are musicians.

This ended up being my favorite part of Barcelona.

Palau de la Musica Catalana


The concert hall was built between 1905 and 1908, designed by Lluis Domenech i Montaner. UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1997, and it remains one of the most unique concert halls anywhere, I would venture to say. During the tour, we were allowed to hear a short Bach piece, played by the organ in the hall. It wasn't overly boomy, like organs in halls can tend towards. The sound was just beautiful!

And that was only part of the hall. The architecture and the stained glass was the truly impressive part. They explained that when the hall was built, the designer took great care to use space and light in the best way they could to make the hall feel open and spacious. There were mosaics, statues, and stained glass everywhere; despite this, it did not feel busy or overly garish. Instead, it was organic and inspiring.

Unfortunately, I do not have pictures from the inside of this Concert Hall because it was forbidden to take them, but I was able to get a book...

After leaving the Catalan concert hall, we went in search of some lunch, and were able to find a good local place. So fresh and yummy, and I must say, I have never had a better mojito.

Dinner was again our snacks from Paris.

Friday, we decided to spend the day lounging on the beach. Leisurely breakfast, then we made it to the beach by about 11:30. It was chilly, a bit, and cloudy, but still comfortable for sitting on the beach. We decided to buy snacks from the local store instead of having lunch, so ended up relaxing on the beach until about 4:30. While there, we met two new friends who were also on vacation, and had random conversations about everything from music to culture to what it means to be a professional musician, or student musician. (They had never met a professional musician before.) In turn, we learned a bit about what it's like to be an accountant for Pepsi and what it's like to live in Dubai. We said farewell to our new friends and decided to stay in touch, and went on our way back to the hostal. Next stop: our first true shopping excursion of the entire trip! No time like the last day for that, huh? It was neat to see some of the stores: a paper stationary store and the few clothes shoppes we visited. In the last shoppe, we met a girl named Ana who said she wanted to come to America to see all things country, like farms and chickens. It was lovely to chat with her.

Our last evening in Barcelona, and we decided that it was about time to see what makes Las Ramblas so different after dark, so we set out in search of some food and then just decided to walk around afterwards. It was kinds neat, I guess, with these people everywhere trying to sell flying light propellors, noise makers and more living statues. I guess it was pretty neat, but it seemed to me to be simply the same as during the day, despite what everyone said.

We decided that for our last night here, we wanted to celebrate with some ice cream, and were just about to take a self portrait on Las Ramblas on the way, when we hear a voice, "would you two like a picture together?". We looked up, and it was Moataz and Joshua, the two guys we met at the beach! All of us were very surprised to run into one another, so when we mentioned that we were in search of some ice cream, they offered to show us where they had just gotten some nearby.

We were enjoying our conversation so much that we all decided to sit down after ice cream and grab some coffee. We discovered, though, the place we chose didn't have coffee, haha, so we order different drinks instead and continued our conversation. It was such an interesting and good conversation that we didn't realize how late it had become - they had an early flight to catch and we had a morning flight as well, so we said our goodbyes and called it our last night in Barcelona.

It was a truly neat experience. Perhaps, one day, we can return. What a memorable adventure!