…I know I said this would be about my second week in Stockholm, but now that I’m here looking at my photo reel, guess what I took more pictures of: 40 hours in a fancy office building plus chores and sleeping from M–F, or 67 hours in Barcelona?
Anyway, my definitions of ‘week’ are getting kind of fuzzy, and I just spent about 15 minutes staring at a calendar trying to decide whether weekends should be part of the week before or the week after given that I arrived in Stockholm on a Friday, but because I don’t want to move all these pictures into a different post, we’re just going to say for now that a ‘week’ is a weekend and the following 4–5 work days.
Plus, let’s be honest here: my work week isn’t very exciting to take pictures of, so most of these blogs (can you just call them blogs, or are they blog posts?) are going to be about whatever I get up to on the weekends, anyway. Which adjacent week gets rolled into a given weekend probably isn’t going to matter most of the time.
Introductory ramble over. Let’s get into the good stuff!
Week 2 Barcelona
As those of you who I was bothering at a wholly ungodly hour of my morning on the way to Spain will already know, my flights in and out of Barcelona sadly both involved waking up before 2:30 am. On the way out of Stockholm, I got a nice sandwich in the airport to save and eat in Barcelona, but the rest of my group (we were 6 of the 8 students in my program) didn’t pack any snacks, so our first port of call in Barcelona after dropping our bags off at the tiny apartment we were renting was a café for something to eat. I wasn’t that hungry, so I just had an empañada and a café bombón (sweetened condensed milk and a shot of espresso).
The café bombón was especially nice! Coffee culture in Sweden is a big thing, and my lab (read: office, none of us are doing wet lab stuff) building has fancy free coffee machines in the lunchroom, so I think I might try to find some sweetened condensed milk next time I go to the grocery store so I can replicate it for myself.
Fortified by our food, I dragged everyone to Casa Milà, where I immediately abandoned the rest of the group’s quicker pass through the building in favour of poking my nose in all the corners and listening to all the secret extra information on the audio guide. Be warned if you ever go to a museum with me: I can be an absolute menace to anyone on a schedule in that I love reading all the placquards and watching the little interpretive films.
This was a VERY pared-down subset of my photo album, but it captures some of the highlights: the cool courtyards inside the building, the facade, the attic inspired by a whale or snake skeleton, and the first of what you’ll soon see are Gaudí’s absolute favorite architectural quirk: building little conical mosaic thingies onto chimneys.
By the time I surfaced from the museum, everyone else had already left, so they missed out on my further adventure to cupcakes.
Unfortunately, I fear I must conclude that this cupcake shop gets by primarily on its Instagrammability, not the stand-alone quality of its baked goods. The mini cupcake sampler I got was about half OK-to-good, and half a bit disappointing. I could have done better…
My evening adventure was a tour of Casa Amatller, a fancy house NOT designed by Gaudí (in contrast to about 75% of Barcelona’s famous architecture) that was formerly owned by a family of wealthy chocolate industrialists before they gave it over to become a museum and café. The most exciting parts of the tour to me were the gorgeous stained-glass work, mosaiced floors, and intricate wooden paneling/embellishment on the ceilings.
Another point in the somewhat overpriced tour’s favour: they gave us all vouchers for free hot (or in this case, cold) chocolate at the café afterwards!
After Casa Amatller, it was tapas for dinner at the half-pragmatically and half-confusingly named Tapas 24 (they sold tapas, obviously, but they neither had 24 menu items nor were they located at an address involving 24?), then back to the apartment to sleep so I could get up early for the walking tour I’d booked on Saturday.
I got breakfast before the walking tour at a food market called Mercat de la Boqueria, which hosted some impressive fruit displays! My fruit cup didn’t quite live up to my hopes, as it turned out to be a bit past its prime, but the mango-coconut juice and onion-cheese empañada were both tasty.
Then, it was on to the Gothic Quarter walking tour, where I got to learn about the history of Barcelona from its founding by the Romans up to the present(ish) day.
My pre-dinner stop was a visit to the Picasso Museum. Upon walking in, I realized that everything looked oddly familiar inside not because of some weird deja vu but because I’d already visited the last time I was in Barcelona. But, I’d gotten in for free for some reason I’m still not wholly clear on, and having visited once already made me feel freer not to try to read every plaque in detail or look at every painting, so it was a good thing on the whole for my schedule. Behold: a curated selection of weird little creatures from the Las Meninas series.
That evening, I had my favorite meal of the trip at Desoriente, a vegan Asian fusion restaurant. Not exactly what you think of for Barcelona, but it was just weird enough in a good way!
The next morning, I tried to visit the Sagrada-Familia, but despite showing up an hour and a half early, just barely didn’t get in. I’ve already been once to do the tour properly, so this wasn’t the end of the world. Still a bit disappointing, though. Next time, I’m making it two hours…
So, instead, I headed off to the Palau de la Música Catalana for an early-morning guided tour rather than the self-guided wander I’d originally planned. This turned out to be a great decision, because the Palau was way cooler than I’d expected. There was a ton of gorgeous mosaic and stained glasswork inside—this is just a tiny sample—and the acoustics were great. I’d love to have attended a real concert inside.
After the Palau, I got the obligatory churros con chocolate—because how could I not in Spain, really—on my way over to Palau Güell, my final Gaudí stop of the trip. Once again, lots of fancy ceilings and the usual mosaiced Gaudí Chimney Thingies. Probably not my favorite of the Gaudí houses, but I don’t regret visiting it.
By this point it was getting on late afternoon, so I took a little walk down Las Ramblas to the waterfront. I would have felt silly going to Barcelona and never even setting eyes on the water! All the buoys were shaped like little people in this pose, for some reason. I’m sure there’s backstory, but I don’t know it, so just enjoy this majestic seagull I happened to capture in the picture.
After the waterfront, my final stop was an early dinner of tapas, in deference to the fact that I had to wake up before 2am for my flight the “next morning.” 😦 They built me a very nice little artistic cheese structure, though, and the sangria was good, so hooray for Guell restaurant. No relation to the Güells of Palau Guell, as far as I know. I don’t actually know anything about the restaurant’s backstory, though, so maybe there is a relation…I don’t think the Güells were restauranteurs, but you never know.
Not documented is the unfortunate redeye back to Stockholm or my subsequent sleep-deprived next couple days of work. It’s been long enough that I unfortunately don’t remember which set of hexagons I crocheted this week, so no blanket update, but there’ll be one soon once I catch this blog closer up to real time.
…I’ll do that soon.
So soon.
Perhaps this week, even, if I’m lucky.
I’m about to go start writing week 3, so here’s hoping I’ll actually catch up this time! One down, two to go. See you there!
Lyra Cromwell 