Barcelona, Spain (June 2005)

My friends and I decided to go to Barcelona on a whim halfway through our trek of Europe. We had originally made arrangements to go to Athens and surrounding islands, but we decided we couldn't tackle all that Greece had to offer in 4 short days. Itching to get to the beach, we cashed in our europebyair.com tickets for three flights to Barcelona. Of course when we got there we had no idea where to go. Which was not a huge deal because we had been winging it in most cities. But we realized we didn't even have a guide book on Spain to coach us on what neighborhoods to stay in and what to avoid, as Spain was not part of our original itinerary. Next my friend suggests "let's tell the taxi driver we want to go to "la playa," the beach - there has to be a place to stay by the beach!" We all agree and pile our huge backpacks into a taxi, saying "la playa" to the driver, who looks at us puzzled and then shrugs, speeding off. We arrive at what is nothing more than a long stretch of beach - with what looks like a few cafes but no hostels, hotels, nothing. He drops us off and drives off grumbling "stupid Americans." So there we are stuck on a beach, with no clue of how near or far we are to anything in Barcelona, when it starts to rain. This beach vacation started off great huh?
Well...long story short we found a place to stay after locating an internet cafe, what did travelers do before the internet?
And though it did continue to rain for most of our so-called beach excursion, we were able to indulge in some culture. Barcelona is the home of architect Antoni Gaudi, famous for buildings that are organic, Art Noveau-esque, and almost other worldly in appearance. I studied him in my college architecture classes so I was eager to check out the real thing. We didn't get to see all of his work, but we did walk through Casa Batllo - an apartment building fashioned to resemble an underwater dragon, which was so cool to walk through - I highly recommend it. We also saw Casa Mila and finally Sagreda Familia. Gaudi died while building this soaring basilica that he intended to be "the last great sanctuary of Christendom." Each of the four facades has a different construction, with incredible religious symbolism infused into the structure. To me it kind of looked like an alien space ship, it has these four spindles that pierce the sky, and the tympanum reliefs look like melting wax dripping off the basilica. All in all, we didn't quite make it to the beach. But we got ourselves some culture.