This feels very true.

I was so excited to go to Barcelona, but ended up thinking it was overrated. I guess I expected it to be a Spanish version of other major cities I’ve been to in Europe—Rome, Paris, London, etc.—but it isn’t really up to their level. Barcelona is touristy, expensive, and the people are kind of mean and grumpy, and yet the city doesn’t have the great museums or sites that make putting up with all that worth it. It is not that I regret going; you have to see Barcelona when you’re in Spain. But we were there too long. We went for three days, and two days would have been plenty.

All the guidebooks told us to go to La Rambla, a popular street that everyone walks in Barcelona. We thought it had an unfortunate Las Vegas-like feel about it and soon learned to avoid it. La Rambla is jammed with tourists, scam artists, questionable restaurants, and overpriced stores selling things like this for $700:

Luckily, there is the Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter), which was more our speed. It has little alleyways that you can wander and, with a little hunting around, we managed to find a few good restaurants, some cool shops, and a nice vermouth bar, where we sampled Spanish vermouth. We also bought a piece of art by the photographer Willy Rojas and other souvenirs.

Alley in the Barri Gòtic

Barcelona is different from the rest of Spain. They even speak a different language, Catalan, and as a result (because no one else speaks Catalan) they tend to speak more English in Barcelona. Also, although I found the food to be lacking, Barcelona style is worth paying attention to. There are unexpected quirks everywhere in the city, cool statues or weird manhole covers or a buoy shaped like a boy staring up at the stars:

Of course, many of these details descend from Antoni Gaudi, the architect whose work is all over Barcelona. We stood in line for an hour-and-a-half and paid $40 to see the Sagrada Família, otherwise known as Gaudi’s cathedral.

Gaudi’s cathedral was the single thing that lived up to its reputation in Barcelona. It was amazing. Inspired by churches like Notre Dame in Paris, which took 185 years to complete, Sagrada Família was designed by Gaudi in 1883 and is still being worked on today. Although they hold services on Sundays, it really is a construction site–there are workers and cranes and hammering going on everywhere.

Here is what I wrote to a friend about Sagrada Família while still in Spain:

It takes an hour-and-a-half to get into the cathedral, and then you realize that you have paid $40 to walk through a construction site. (The cathedral may take a couple hundred years to finish. It is already in year 114, or so.) But you walk in and you forgive because it is so amazing and beautiful–long columns like the branches of–is it flowers? trees? human bones?–and just the start of all the color–stained glass along the walls, “jewels” of glass on the columns. Some day, the building will be completely covered with color, but right now they are just starting to put it on. The outside of the cathedral is covered in intricate details and figures, all depicting the life of Jesus. It may be one of the only long-term projects I have seen where people who work on it can feel proud that they are contributing to something lasting and real.

Pictures:

Inside the cathedral

Stained glass

Spires with the beginning of color at the top

Turtle holding up the weight of the world

Jesus carrying the cross

The crucification

Inside, again

Another picture to give a sense of the size of the cathedral

We also went to Park Guell and toured Gaudi’s home. He lived a rather stripped down, Spartan existence and seemed more sober as a person than I expected. The park itself had great views of Barcelona:

But other sites in Barcelona disappointed. We walked down the Block of Discord, a section where Gaudi has two houses, but found they would cost us $60 to tour, which didn’t seem worth it. We also drove to the nearby town of Figures to see the Salvador Dali museum, and then wished we hadn’t. The museum was designed by Dali at the end of his life, after he had become a full-blown hack and had sold off all his good paintings. There are probably 3 or 4 paintings worth looking at in that museum. The rest are holograms and pretend bedrooms and toilets glued to the ceiling and so forth. It all looked dated, plus the museum is expensive and really crowded. Skip it.

Finally, we went to the Picasso museum, which I had mixed feelings about. The museum clearly demonstrates what a genius Picasso was. I mean, he painted this when he was 15 years old:

But the museum only has a few of Picasso’s major works, which would have been okay except that the way it is designed sets up expectations that you will see most of his great paintings. When you don’t, you feel a little ripped off.

Woman teaching a class about Picasso

So that was Barcelona. Overall, Spain was one of the most exciting, interesting, and surprising places I’ve ever been to. It is well worth the cost and trouble to visit. And look! They had a Spanish translation of one of Kyle’s books in a Barcelona bookstore:

How can you not like a place with such good taste in books?

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

More Spanish countryside

Oh you’re still here? Okay, so the third part of the trip was Granada, which was a lovely town. Kyle and I agreed it was our favorite place we visited in Spain. It was small enough to be friendly but big enough to be interesting. It had a great old Ottoman section with rambling alleyways and free tapas in every bar. Here is a picture of the downtown from above:

Granada also has the coolest street lamps ever:

This is the place where Christianity triumphed over Islam. The Moorish empire set up Al Hambra, a huge castle that we visited, toward the end of Muslim rule of Spain in the 1300s. Then Isabella and Ferdinand took it over in 1492 and ran the Islamic king, Muhammad XII, over to Africa. Spain officially became Christian. To this day, Isabella and Ferdinand have thumbprints all over Granada. We even toured the church where they are buried.

And of course, we went of Al Hambra, which is one of the major sites of Europe–although not that popular with Americans, it seems. Because I did not get tickets ahead of time, we had to get up early and stand in a long line in the dark in the hopes of getting in. Luckily, we did and it was probably the best thing we did in Spain. The castle is at once romantic, gorgeous, historical, and educational. I felt enriched after going there.

It is hard to sum up something like Al Hambra , but I will break it down into a few key points:

1. It is huge. It is the kind of place where you can’t take a good picture of it because it is so big. The castle spans on and on and you just can’t quite take it all into your brain. It has to be experienced to be appreciated.

2. The history is visceral. Here is an example: after Ferdinand and Isabella took over the castle, Columbus came to them and proposed a journey to India, which led to the fabled discovery of America. I walked through the room where he made that proposition to them, and the ceiling, 20 feet above my head, was wooden with an inlaid golden milky way of stars and moons and planets. When you see this, you can’t see how Isabella could have said no to the man. She was sitting under the “sky” in the castle she had just conquered while he proposed expanding her kingdom all over the world.

3. It is gorgeous. I had never seen Ottoman art before and I was amazed by it. The carvings was everywhere, on the walls, on the doors, on the ceilings, and it changed constantly. One moment the ceiling was a milky way, the next we were walking inside a giant honeycomb, and the next we were standing in a courtyard surrounded by fountains and plants. Everything was designed so that your gaze feel naturally to the prettiest places. And the carving–all hand done, of course–was intricate and perfect. Random sample:

Pictures of Al Hambra:

fairy tale…

Kyle

Me in the garden

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona

View from the train on the way to Tarifa

Tarifa is the Southern most city in Spain. We decided to go down there, spend the night, and then cross the water to Morocco to spend a day in Tangier before returning to Tarifa that night.

To get to Tarifa, we took a five hour train trip and then a 30 minute bus ride. Along the way, I got to see a large part of the Spanish landscape. It is a beautiful country with big mountains, dramatic valleys, craggy white buildings, and zillions of olive bushes. Although we saw a variety of agriculture, including cotton, sheep, wine, and lemons, Spain had more olive bushes than I have seen anywhere. I understand now why you get a bowl of olives with every drink you buy, just like you do with pretzels in the United States.

Tarifa is on the poor side, but it has a great old Ottoman section that is completely charming with winding alleys and interesting little shops. We stayed less than a block from the ferry terminal, which every takes people across the Strait of Gibraltar to Morocco every 40 miutes. I was surprised how close Africa is–we could see it from our hotel.

Looking across the Strait of Gibraltar at the famous Rock of Gibraltar.

We liked Tarifa. As is usually the case with little towns compared to big cities, people in Tarifa were much friendlier than the people in Madrid. They chatted with us and tried harder to bridge the communication gap. We wandered around and shopped and took pictures. Here are some of them:

View of Tarifa’s old town from on high

Beach with the Rock of Gibraltar in the background

Inside of of St Matthew’s church, built in the 16th century

Example of the narrow roads

The other cool thing about Tarifa are all the medieval ruins that are around the town, including the Guzman castle, an old Ottoman castle built at least 800 years ago. (The Islamic conquest of Tarifa lasted from about 900-1300.)

Guzman

Guzman Castle was a pleasant surprise. It was inexpensive to get into, only $4 per person, and has great views and lots of cool, old details. In some places, you could see the original paint and got a glimpse of how beautiful and colorful the castle must have been back in the day.

Walking the top of the castle

Turrets with city view behind

Kyle by a colorful roof

But not everything about Tarifa was great. The next morning I woke up with food poisoning. I had eaten some bad tapas and something was really wrong with my body.

I had a choice then: I could stay at the hotel and rest, or I could do what I came to Tarifa to do, which was go to Morocco. I chose to go to Morocco. Even though I was sick–and boy did I get sick that day–I was not going to let it stop me from seeing what I could while I was there. So I accepted the fact that I was not going to have the great day in Africa that I had planned, but I would work within my limitations and get what I could out of the day.

So we took the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar. I started getting more miserable on the ferry and it just got worse and worse. I won’t get into specifics, but it turns out that food poisoning is not something you can walk off. By the time we started walking around the Kasbah, Tangier’s shopping section, I had crippling stomach pains combined with waves of nausea that doubled me over. I lasted about three hours in Morocco and then we took the ferry back to Spain.

I realize this state of mind probably affected my point of view, but I did not like Tangier. It wasn’t the poverty so much as how threatened I felt as a woman. Really, the poverty is pretty typical: there is grass growing into the cracked sidewalks, stray dogs and cats running around, people with goiters and teeth trouble and so on. But on the other hand, the people seemed generally well-fed and everyone seemed to have a modicum of material possessions. It certainly wasn’t the worst I have seen.

But even though I had made a point to dress modestly, as a woman I felt a little threatened. At one point, we stopped to take a picture of an old cannon sitting over the side of the city. As Kyle was taking a picture, I walked literally 4 feet away from him and a man rushed by me, turned to face me, and began to make lewd gestures at me. Kyle told me to not leave his side and to not look at the men at all. This felt very strange but I soon saw Kyle was right. The men seemed visibly angry if I glanced over at them. (Although many of the people seemed angry anyway, so maybe that’s just how they are.) When we went into a shop, I became conscious of my confidence, how without thinking about it, I stand with my legs apart and my hands on my hips in a natural power stance. This is just how I was raised as a Western woman, and it was strange to see how cultural it is, and how much it can threaten people in other circumstances.

In contrast, the women in Tangier seemed very meek. At one point, Kyle agreed to take a picture of a tiled door. A woman was sitting on the stair by the door, and she didn’t want her picture taken. Did she just stand up and walk away? No, she dropped her eyes to the ground, then she slowly raised her head and looked over to the side for a moment. Then she slowly, slowly, stood up and walked away. Here was a woman is torn between her modesty and her meekness and she didn’t seem to know which to give her allegiance to. Keep in mind, Morocco is one of the more liberal Muslim countries. I didn’t see many burkas. Most of the women dress like New York grannies with long robes and scarves on their hair. King Mohammed VI even allows his wife to be seen in public sometimes… although not his mother. No one has ever seen his mother.

I wasn’t able to take any pictures that day, so the following were all taken by Kyle:

Street scene

Women in a market

Spices

The aforementioned door

Spain 1: Madrid
Spain 2: Tarifa and Morocco
Spain 3: Granada
Spain 4: Barcelona