Day #40 - Barcelona, Spain

View from Catalan National Art Museum

92' Olympic Stadium

La Sagrada Familia

St. Jordi's Day - guys get books

St. Jordi's Day - ladies get flowers

Friday, April 23rd

Great day today. I got into my hostal late last night - just barely making the 10pm cutoff. After saying the trains are "almost always" on time, my train was late into Barcelona by about 45 minutes. I got to the station at 9:30pm and needed to be checked into my hostal by 10. I don't have a phone and didn't have time to email. I needed to make it. Hostals are sometimes different than hotels - staff may be gone after the checkout time elapses.

I jumped off the train, ran for the Blue L5 metro train. When I got there, it was just arriving. I took this 2 stops down and jumped off at Badal. I had the directions written down - supposedly it takes 5 minutes to walk. Luckily I guessed right on the direction and made it to the hostal at 9:55pm. Solid.

Today I spent the whole day walking around Barcelona. It was awesome - discovering new things along the way. Right away when I got off the metro, I noticed that alot of women were carrying a rose. I didn't think much of it - maybe that's the way people roll here. After about 30 minutes, I knew something was up. There is no way this many women would be carrying roses on a Friday in April for no apparent reason. Then, I started to notice that there were many book stands and flower stands on the street. I went up to this lady in the flower booth: "Hola, como esta, what's up with the roses and books?" She smiled and said that today is St. Jordi's Day (St. George's Day). Tradition in Catalonia on April 23rd is for men to give their women roses and for women to give their men a book. She said: "We give books because they need to learn something"

Wow - I keep running into these cool traditions. I just looked this day up on the internet. Supposedly over 4 million roses and 400,000 books are purchased today in Catalonia. This totals over half the book sales all year. This is not a nationally recognized holiday - but I'm told that most people take off work. The street volume was proof of this. There was a sea of people all day. Almost every women I saw had a rose.

I continued to walk around and made my way to La Sagrada Familia. This is a famous momument that stands near the center of the city that has never been completed. Antoni Gaudi was run over and killed by a train before he could complete this masterpiece. See picture above. It's a major tourist spot in Barcelona and has a metro stop named after it.

As I'm really into sports I wanted to see the Olympic complex where the 92 games were held. It's located up on this hillside to the east of the city. It took a little while to walk there, but it was worth it. The Olympic stadium was open so you could walk inside. I got to see where all the events were held. I've been to the Winter Games in 02 (Salt Lake City). I really want to go to the Summer Games at some point in the future. I was bummed when Chicago missed out on 2016. As I want to go to the event while in the US, I'm holding out for 2020 - I hope?

After walking the Olympic venue, I ate lunch outside this small cafe overlooking the stadium. Awesome. I saw this guy eating spaghetti - I ordered the same. It was piping hot, steam rolling off (as it was a brisk day today). This may have been the best thing I've eaten this year.

I walked over to the Catalan National Art Museum. I didn't do the tour, but I read the informational booklet. I'm learning about the different time periods for architecture and art in Europe. Romanesque - 9th-12th century, Gothic - 13-15th century, Renaissance - 16th-18th century, Modern art - 19th-present. I guess that's why all the cathedrals or museums are labelled Gothic, etc that I've been visiting.

I sat and relaxed outside the art museum. It was a great view of the city (see picture). I then decided to head back into the city to see how the flowers and books were coming along. I got back into the city about 5pm. Even more people than before. Books were marked down and some people were giving out free roses. Late afternoon is the time to roam the streets.

Before ending the day, I went to the Picasso Museum in downtown. This was probably the coolest museum I've been to thus far on the trip. It had direction and organization. You walked in and were guided from room to room. There was a written description of the years Picasso painted the particular paintings in the room - and his insprations for doing so. This actually told a story and made sense to me as I went through the 15 rooms of the exhibit. Picasso focused on people and his images were incredible. I guess I enjoyed this because Picasso is a well known name and I learned something. This trip is all about learning new things. I think if I was shown a picture of a Picasso painting in the future, I'd have better than a 50/50 chance of knowing it's his work just by what was painted and the colors used.

Chilling in my hostal room now and will head to the "common lounge" here shortly. Not much going yesterday, everyone was out by the time I arrived.