Barri Gotic / Gothic Quarter on a Sunday

The Gothic Quarter of Barcelona is old, cramped, dark, and full of charm. Here is the kind of place where you hear of visitors to Europe getting lost in the winding alleyways and loving it. Every turn of the corner varies greatly - street performers here, rows of restaurants or confectioners' shops here, and deserted alleys there. As always, click to enlarge the pictures..

A typical, old Gothic Quarter street.

Lights coming through the Christmas/Nadal/Navidad decorations.

Here you can get an idea of the narrow streets crowded by the tall apartment buildings.

Clásic Gótic Restaurant, on a street leading to the seafront.

Spraypaint artist in quiet Plaza Mercé.

Colors of the walls in the sunset

One of the exterior city walls from the old Roman settlement.

Some oddly-shaped rounded plaza in the Barri

One elaborate Santa/Papa Noel!

Um... curio store? Who knows... they have Phrenology head.

What would Europe be without delicious pastries?

Papabubble confectionary

Who knew there was a market for artisan caramels? The signage is sharp.

Random photos from today

A few random photos from around Barcelona...

"Obama British Africa"... bar? I'm assuming so, but so far I haven't been able to find any more information about this business on Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes. Neither Carlos nor I have seen it before today and I haven't found any info about it online. Maybe I will have to swing by for a drink one day...

Chestnuts (and yams) roasting on an open fire...

I haven't had any yet, but these chestnut stands are popular around Barcelona. Apparently they are mostly run by women who travel from Galicia in Northen Spain. It's so Christmassy!

This was a really cool drawing until someone lame tagged it.

It's really popular to have some sort of artistic statement at the entrance of apartment buildings. Usually, they are some 70s-style aberration of a tree sculpture. This is one of the only 2-D attempts and was really interesting to study as you walked by on the street. Now it's still interesting to see, but it really bothers me that yet another person used graffiti as a tool for vandalism rather than artistic expression. More on graffiti in Barcelona later.

Our part of Barcelona

And now, a short trip around our area...

When you turn from one of the main streets in Barcelona, named Diagonal, onto our street, Balmes, you see this building (which reads "CIRCULO ECUESTRE 1856" ...

...directly across from this one.

There are a lot of buildings from the early 1900s and then the late 1930s in our area. This is under a doorway, looking up.

These apartments are across the street from where we live, but ours doesn't look anything like these!

Some of the interior streets around us are very quiet. Here´s an old car repair shop.

Cookbook store!
¨Know Food¨ in the Gracia section

This basically means bakery in Catalan.

So elaborate!

¨1905¨

There was a market yesterday for the local shops on this street. They had a chance to display some of their wares to draw people inside. I think the most unexpected one was a shop that sells only olive oil.

New construction, old posters, major street, a grouping of little cafes and restaurants...

Motos are the way to travel in this town.

One day I have to go to this creperie!! Along with a few crepe places close to us, there are 4 or 5 sushi restaurants, a Polish bar, an Uruguayan restaurant, 2 Mexican restaurants, and plenty of traditional food and pastry shops!

It ends here, at our nice entrance.

A bit of architecture

Barcelona is a city filled with diverse architecture. Since it´s got thousands of years of history and multiple cultures contributing, there are some interesting things to see. Here´s just a bit of what you can see in a day.

Detail of a church in the Born district.

and again

Hm I think I was about to say something.. oh wait this isn´t about me!

Arc de Triomf in Barcelona. Better picture next time..

blech. new and very expensive apartment complex called the Windsor. It overlooks the med sea. At least it has a cool cafe in the bottom floor.

These apartments are NEW and so nice looking. This picture doesn´t do them justice.

As you can see, most of the pictures we have have been very overcast. It´s been raining almost every day we´ve been here and is supposed to continue for another half a week or so. :(

Hopefully we will get to use our Eurail train passes to go to northern Italy or southern France very soon. It´s raining in these places too for another week!

Barcelona is filled with firecracker explosions right now. I think what is happening is that a festival is coming up at the end of the month, so they´re already selling explosives for that day. Since there is no school today, all the kids are out blowing things up! The problem is that they aren´t the fancy 4th of July style ones with fun colors and movements, they´re just... explosives. Being in a big city where it´s all apartments, the sounds echo and amplify off of the cement and brick walls. punk kids. I should throw my leftover cooking oil out the window and onto them.

FYI: if you want to see more of Barcelona in photos, here´s a link: http://barcelona.photobloggers.org/2007/05/26/shoot-barcelona/