Once we squeezed past the El Drac admirers, we made it to the exit and looked at each other in exhaustion, like we were a litter birthed from a selfie-stick-lined womb.
Category: Barcelona
Escaping Crowds: Sunburned Scrotums and Modern Art in Barcelona
The spiritual experience that so many of the more modern, crowded museums lack is the opportunity to be alone in a beautiful place with art. I’ve never found anything but stress in dense crowds, which is probably why you won’t see me at a music festival in a mucky cow pasture, either. We strolled through the concrete spaces and viewed the abstracts and sculptures in silence, with no flag-waving tour guides reciting their histories in sight.
Not all art is spiritually transformative, but I’ve always found a good museum far more inspiring than any cathedral.
Finding the Authentic in a Bourdainified World: Barcelona Dining
This will sound sacrilegious to his fans, but try and block Bourdain and that dusty photo on the wall entirely from your thoughts. You deserve your own authentic experience, or why are you even there? It could be great! He may have been right about that hotdog, and you may feel your atoms realign to become more harmonious with the universe after your first bite. Or, it could just be a regular old hotdog served by an indifferent waiter and a hefty bill because of the Bourdain-endorsed stamp that brings more customers in. Sorry to say, when you leave this place, you may simply be full instead of imbued with any distilled goodwill or cultural understanding.
Barcelona Gothic Quarter: Tiny Alleys and Big History
One of the things that many may not realize is that very little of the architecture in the quarter is genuinely Gothic. Through restoration and romantic flourishes, much of it was styled in the 1900s to appeal to the World’s Fair crowds. Those neo-Gothic additions were a good choice for crowd appeal, which still draws them today. The quarter feels romantic, like you are walking through a movie set made for a Victorian vampire love affair, and I can see how it would have the same appeal to visitors in 1929 as it does today.