Carina and Alex run the Nisia B&B, where we stayed in Barcelona. This was one of the best places we have stayed in any of our travels. In the morning Alex prepared a simple, tasty breakfast for us. We talked with him for a while, about things to do and Barcelona in general. They are also avid travelers, which is partly why they run the B&B. It allows them to take several months off during the year to do their own exploring.
We noticed Alex using “vale” a lot as he talked. After that, we noticed this phrase everywhere. We figured out that it is a fairly broad term, like the way North Americans use the word, “OK.” “¿Vale?” can start a telephone call. “¡Vale!” can send you on your way or acknowledge understanding. “¡Vale, vale!” seemed very common, like how “sí” usually seemed to be expressed in triplet, “sí, sí, sí.” While the triple “yes” worked its way into my vocabulary during our trip, I never did quite integrate the enthusastica and abundant, “vale.”
Ramblas
We began the morning at Plaza de Cataluyna, a large square at the top of Ramblas which is the main shopping and pedestrian street in Barcelona. Like usual, we were up earlier than the locals, so the shopkeepers were still setting up and the street performers were getting into costume. A half-robot man held his robot torso and laughed with the other performers. An angel let her wings rest on the ground as she smeared on heavy gold make-up.
At the pet market birds, turtles, rabbits, and crazy hamsters (which ran around non-stop, perhaps driven crazy by the squawking birds) sat in cages waiting to be purchased. There were even a few hedgehogs. We spent some time cooing at the fluffy animals (OK, Kelly cooed, Ryan photographed) until the plant and flower shops opened.
We stepped into some of the side streets and discovered a used bookstore (Llibreria Canuda - C/ Canuda, 4 / Barcelona), stuffed floor to ceiling with books. It was the quintessential old bookstore with piles of beautiful books and that musty book smell that Kelly likes. We found series of colorfully illustrated teen books, similar to Nancy Drew or the Bobbsey Twins. We bought one called Cartas de Brita Mari, published in 1949.
Nearby was Plaza Real, with a pair of lampposts which were Gaudi’s first public commission. They are fanciful helmet-shaped structures, festooned with ribbons of metal and accented with red paint. It was cold out, so we stopped at a basement teashop for some tea before continuing on. A few blocks from Plaza Real was a colorful paper maché mask shop, El Ingenio, which had rows upon rows of crazy cartoon-like masks. The mask were fairly expensive and looked hard to transport, so we bought a little finger puppet solider to take home.
Continuing down Ramblas, our next stop was the unusual baroque Betlem Church. The artwork in this church was brightly colored and modern in style which was a refreshing change from the usual dreary darkened paintings that we were used to seeing inside churches.
Nearby was La Boqueria Market, which was large and chaotic, but surprisingly fresh and clean. People were selling nuts, fruit, pastries, fresh fish, and fresh meat. Everything looked tempting. It is a great place to pick up a snack - whether it is a fruit drink or hot tapas. Although choked with tourists, it was still very much a working market, and the locals were filling shopping trolleys full of goods to take home.
