Barcelona: Part 1

Yippee yay, we were headed to Barcelona for a couple days! We flew out of Bergamo's Orio Al Serio airport early Friday morning. This is the low-cost airline, Ryan Air's hub out of Milan, and it's about an hour away from where we are and to avoid the morning traffic, we had to hit the road before 6am. (Needless to say, we were pretty tired by the time we arrived).

Here's a shot of what I think is the French Riviera coast from the airplane.


It was only an 1 hr 10 min flight. Next thing we knew, we were landing in Gerona. We then got on a bus that took us into downtown Barcelona. That took another hour but it wasn't bad. The bus was comfortable and we got to see some scenery. From the bus station, we hopped on to the Metro (underground) and headed to our hotel. We grabbed a small bite to eat, took a quick nap and we were ready to hit the streets.

Our hotel was just a 5 minute walk from the Hospital de St Pau metro station. This is the Hospital de St Pau. It was built between 1901-1930 and is still a working hospital. It was designed by a Catalan architect, Luis Domenech i Montaner, who heavily influenced Catalan's Modernisme.


Just down the street from the hospital is La Sagrada Familia, one of the legendary Gaudi's masterpieces which he started in 1883 and is still a work in progress until today.


It's quite a breathtaking sight. The detailed finishings, the towers that soar up into the skies, capped with the whimsical looking spires, the nativity scene and the many sculptures. It was alot to take in. And boy, does Gaudi have some imagination.


From here we walked on towards Passeig de Gracia, which is a beautiful wide avenue lined with lots of high end stores. I loved the ornate street lamps and benches all along the street, great for resting our weary feet and people-watching. ;-)


At the end of the street was Placa de Catalunya, a huge square with fountains and statues, right before where the Ramblas starts.



The Ramblas is a pedestrian-only street where you can find loads of locals and tourists almost all hours of the day.


It's pretty interesting. There are small shops selling all kinds of small pets (birds, hamsters, bunny rabbits), flower shops, newspaper stands...


And lots of street performers entertaining the crowds. There were some pretty creative stunts out there.


At the end of the Ramblas is the harbor where Barcelona meets the sea. Look at what a beautiful day we were having...


This was an awesome looking bridge called Rambla de Mar, continuing the Rambla over the harbor waters. When we got there, we saw the crowds of people standing in the middle and wondered what was happening.


Turns out that parts of the bridge/walkway slides open every hour or so to let boats through. How cool was that! I really liked the graceful wavy look of the walkway.


There were lots of people out and about. Check out the cute looking buoy floating nearby.


The whole area around Port Vell was nice. There's an aquarium, shopping center, marina, and restaurants there. And for those of us who couldn't afford our own boats, there were lots of nice ones to look at and admire.


Especially this 178-foot beauty of a sailboat all sleek with decks of shiny teak. We stopped here to gape for quite a bit, along with many others.


Wow, what a great first day. The sun was going down and we had walked for hours! I really enjoyed the sights and the atmosphere with all the locals and tourists around. We took the convenient metro back to our hotel and rested up for the evening.

Barcelona: Pinotxo Bar

We took last Friday off for a long weekend trip to Barcelona, just an hour's flight away from Milan. It was only 3 days but there were so much to see and do there. This post is for our friend Sergio, who's also headed to Barcelona next week with his girlfriend.

One of our most memorable experiences in Barcelona was lunch at Bar Pinotxo, located smack dab in the middle of the La Boqueria market, just off the Ramblas. We headed there on Saturday around 1pm, and already there was a line of people waiting to grab one of the few seats. (Supposedly anytime before 2pm is considered 'early' for lunch in Spain).


Luckily we only had to wait about 15 minutes before two stools freed up. Our tummies were hungry looking at the other diners eating.

We noticed there were no menus, and we looked at each other a little worried. How are we going to know what to order? Turns out we didn't have anything to worry about. The cooks/servers there were extremely friendly and helpful, pointing out and explaining the different offerings of the day.

To start off, we had this tasty dish of chickpeas with pine nuts, raisins and not sure what else. It looked simple but tasted so good.


I was washing everything down with a glass of sparkling cava wine. Next came a dish of lightly breaded and deep fried lamb ribs. Yummy!


All this time we were enjoying the show in front of us, and the busy bustling market all around us. All the ingredients used were so fresh. Anytime they ran out of ingredients, they would just go across the aisle for that bunch of parsley or lemons.


Stef couldn't take his eyes off the fresh seafood they had. The fish sellers at the market had such great looking seafood. But I'll leave that for another post. So he ordered the clams, which were cooked perfectly. They were so sweet and tasted of the sea.


We ended up chatting with another server/cook who ended up sitting on my right on his lunch break. He spoke Italian better than English, so Italian it was. He told us they'd been open since 6am that morning, and closing time was 4pm when the market starts shutting down for the day. Well, even with the hard work, you could tell they enjoyed their job, cheerfully preparing and serving delicious meals for their customers.

Our cook gave us these fried balls of yam? potato? to taste, and they were soooo good.

Finally we decided to splurge and get the red prawns. We had seen them in at the fish stalls and this was our chance to taste them. Our cook carefully picked the biggest ones for us, and then threw them on the cooktop. See the ones on cooking on the right?


With just a sprinkle of salt and a drizzle of oil... these babies were just great. Again, sweet and with the texture that you can only get with fresh seafood.


What a great meal. Our bill came up to 40 euro, but that was only because we splurged on the red shrimp (only four), which was 40% of the bill. We were so sad that we couldn't come back the next day for another meal before leaving as Sunday was their day off.

Coldplay in Milan

We had a little excitement a few days ago. Coldplay was in town! We had bought tickets way back in June, so this day couldn't come soon enough. I had last seen them 2 years ago at the Shoreline and I couldn't wait to see them again.

The ticket buying experience was a rather frustrating one. On the morning tickets went on sale, the TicketOne website went berserk. It was impossible to get tickets. After an hour, we had to give up and head to work. Luckily, Marcello came to the rescue and managed to purchase tickets for us while we were driving to work. I was willing to take any seat - just get me into that show!

Turns out we ended up with general admission tickets to the floor. I was excited... if I got there early enough, I could be up close to the stage. And it sure didn't hurt that the venue was DatchForum, only 15 mins walk from work. I left work a little after 5pm that evening. Stef had meetings and had to join me later, but I was determined to get a good spot. There were already at least 200 people in line when I got there. I stayed in line people-watching. Well, mostly watching people sneakily cut the queue... but this was Italy, what else did I expect?


When the doors opened at 7pm, I squeezed into the crowds and finally made my way inside. I had to forget front row, but I managed to stake out a spot on the 'front row' next to the right stage. I was pretty happy. ;-) When Stef finally joined me, he was grumbling about 'not being able to breathe'. But he changed his mind soon enough.


The show was AMAZING...


The crowds were so full of energy, singing along to all the songs... these were real fans!


Then a nice surprise, the band played a couple songs on the side stage right in front of us, just a few meters away.


The setlist that night:

Life In Technicolor
Violet Hill
Clocks
In My Place
Speed Of Sound
Cemeteries Of London
Chinese Sleep Chant
42
Fix You
Strawberry Swing
God Put A Smile Upon Your Face (techno version)
Talk (techno version)
Don't Panic (acoustic)
Reign Of Love (acoustic)
Postcards From Far Away (piano instrumental)
Viva La Vida
Lost!
The Scientist (acoustic)
Death Will Never Conquer (acoustic - Will singing)
Viva La Vida (remix interlude)
------
Politik
Lovers In Japan
Death And All His Friends
-------
Yellow
Shiver (acoustic)
The Escapist

Chris Martin was awesome.


At one point thousands of paper butterflies fell from the ceiling. It was a magical feeling.


It was an exhilarating experience. The best 48 euro I ever spent!


When are they coming back??


Now the sky could be blue
I don't mind
Without you
It's a waste of time