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September 2003

Catalonia - Barcelona

David Aaronson
2005-09-27 22:32:12

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seem to be a little nicer.

Mont Juic (Hill of the Jews) is a dominant landmark in Barcelona. It rises along the coast just south of the center of town. It was the feature location of the 1992 Summer Olympics as well as at least one major exhibition before that. Now it has a slew of museums, palaces, sports venues and landscaped gardens. This is the Catalonian Art Museum which features huge collections of Romanesque and Gothic art from Catalonia and very little else (9). It's still definately worth a visit though, especially since most of the surviving artwork from the Romanesque churchs in the Pyrenees has been relocated here, sometimes along with half the building it was originally in.

This is the view from Mont Juic out at the city of Barcelona (10). On the hill in the distance is Tibidabo which is now a theme park. Closer in is an exciting traffic rotary which we survived twice and in the foreground is Barcelona's magic fountain as it appears in the daytime, which is not all that interesting.

This is about the same view except at night (11). It's a little blurry but Tibidabo is now the yellow light in the distance. What was previously a bunch of reflecting pools is now a line of fountains and amazingly this picture has no tour buses in it. Tour buses arrive on Friday and Saturday nights because that is when the magic fountain is 'on'.

This is what the fountain does when it is on. It performs to music - a mixture of ballet, opera, jazz, classical and whatever might be seasonal. There are countless individual jets within the fountain and a ridiculous number of colors available and shows seems to start every 20 minutes or so and last for about 10-15 minutes. It's an impressive bit of engineering and the setting beneath Mont Juic overlooking the city makes it even more fantastic.

Barcelona has a network of city markets. Just off La Rambla is the largest outpost, La Boqueria which opens early in the morning and becomes less active as the day goes on. It closes for good in mid-afternoon but many of the stores are closed by lunchtime. The countless fruit stands in the market are also good places to get a cheap lunch. We had a mixed fruit salad of various melons (some of which we even recognized).

Even more exciting are the meat markets, like this one (12). Particulary the mountain (serrano) or country hams that Spain is known for. You don't have to buy the entire ham of course, many of the shops sell sealed packages of the different hams. The different types are generally named after the city or region where they are from.