Barcelona, Spain 17 August 2023
Between the infinite variety of street life, the nooks and crannies of the medieval Barri Gòtic, the ceramic tile and stained glass of Art Nouveau facades, and the art, music, and incredible food, one way or another, Barcelona commands your full attention. The Catalonian capital greets the new millennium with a cultural and industrial rebirth comparable only to the late-19th-century Renaixença (Renaissance) that filled the city with its flamboyant Moderniste (Art Nouveau) buildings. An exuberant sense of style—from cutting-edge interior design to the extravagant visions of famed Postmodern architects—gives Barcelona a vibe like no other city in the world. Barcelona is Spain’s most-visited city, and it’s no wonder: it’s a 2,000-year-old master of perpetual novelty.
Arteries like La Rambla, Diagonal, and Rambla de Catalunya send the vehicle traffic flowing down both sides of broad leafy pedestrian promenades. Benches and pocket parks are everywhere, often with a striking piece of sculpture. You have to look hard for a building more than nine stories high: locals are reluctant to live too far up away from the street, where all the action is. And the action never stops. Families with baby strollers are a common sight on La Rambla until well after midnight. Restaurants don’t even begin to fill up for dinner until 9 or 10 pm. At 2 am, the city’s bar and club scene is barely in first gear. Creative, acquisitive, and playful in equal doses, barcelonins seem to have learned to do without much sleep; they stay up late and get up early, my kind of town!
Depart Montreal (16 August) on air Canada #822 at 19:30
Arrive Barcelona at 08:50 and transfer to the El Palace Hotel
El Palace Barcelona is the oldest luxury hotel in the city. Since opening its doors in 1919 as the former Ritz of Barcelona, El Palace Barcelona has played host to monarchs, aristocrats, artists, musicians, and more. History has been made within the walls of this hotel in the heart of Barcelona.
Afternoon free to explore the incredible Sagrada Familia
Even though I have been to Barcelona before I have never seen the inside of the fabulous Barcelona's most emblematic architectural icon, Antoni Gaudí's Sagrada Família, is still under construction some 135 years after it was begun. This striking and surreal creation was conceived as nothing short of a Bible in stone, a gigantic representation of the entire history of Christianity, and it continues to cause responses from surprise to consternation to wonder.
Looming over Barcelona like a magical mid-city massif of needles and peaks, the Sagrada Família can at first seem like piles of caves and grottoes heaped on a labyrinth of stalactites, stalagmites, and flora and fauna of every stripe and sort. The sheer immensity of the site and the energy flowing from it are staggering. The scale alone is daunting. I plan to spend at least a few hours here to take it all in.
Dinner at "Casa de Linhares" Restaurant
This beautiful restaurant offers local cuisine accompanied with Fado music. Fado is a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. In popular belief, fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate and melancholy. It is very beautiful and soulful.
Overnight at the El palace hotel
