Barcelona, Day 6: Dos Casas

Well, tres, really, as I went back to Casa Amatller too, to take a couple more pics. But most of my day was spent wandering around Casa Batllo and Casa Mila, or La Pedrera (The Stone Quarry, which it does not resemble to my mind. Go figure.) First, had my first taste of Serrano ham today, at a little cafe not far from the hotel. OMG! Wonderful stuff, and on the usual wonderful bread. Yum. I could take about four tons of the stuff home and eat it every day, especially if I could get it on the bread here.

Then I trudged around looking for another place to change my traveler's cheques, only to get to the rude bank after it had closed. Annoying. Did a little shopping along the way: a couple of jazz CDs, some soap. But Las Ramblas and Passeig de Gracia are both high-end chain store hell for the most part: Gucci, Yves St. Laurent, Armani. When it's not a boutique, it's shoes, when it's not shoes, its a perfumery, when it's not a perfumery, it's lingerie, and when it's none of those four things, it's a cafe or restaurant, many of which are tourist traps. At least I know where the cool and fun stores are in NYC now. I feel sorta like I'm trapped in the new Soho now, when I really wanna be in the old one. The shopping here is really wasted on me, with one exception, which I'll get to later.

So it was on to sightseeing, which made everything all right again. First stop was Casa Amatller, which I'd popped into the other day, and taken some crummy pictures in.  Since only the lobby is open, and it's free, I popped in again. It's right next door to Casa Batllo and given its Neo-Gothic style, it's surprising how well it works sitting cheek by jowl with Gaudi's modernism. Here's a corner of the lobby with its lovely tilework and half of the amazing stained glass door that leads to a gift shop. The facade is all Gothic curlicues and gargoyles and saints, including St. George and the Dragon, which is Barcelona's patron Saint.

Casa Mila, next door, has more open than Casa Amatller, but not a lot. I think the open rooms rotate. There seems to be a lot of maintenance going on right now everywhere, which is thwarting my attempts to see things. First Sagrada Familia, then the central skylight at Casa Mila, which darkened the courtyard/lightwell down significantly. Like Casa Amatller, Casa Batllo was a private house. It was gutted and renovated, rather than built from scratch and is a swoopy, colorful fantasia full of stained glass, interesting doors, and lots of sunlight, thanks both to the large windows front and back, and the central lightwell and rear terrace. The windows that open on the light well have movable wooden louvers for ventilation as well, which went a long way towards temperature control. The stairwell was comfortable all the way up to the top floor. The rooms flow, almost literally, from one to the other because of the sinuous lines of staircases and doorways and windows. As one American college kid on spring break remarked to her pal on the street outside, there's something sort of "Nightmare Before Christmas" about it. The windows, especially, look a little too mouth-like for comfort. But the interior isn't creepy or sinister, only beautiful and organic looking. On the first floor, there's a cozy little nook with a built-in seats flanking a wood stove where I could easily envision curling up with a book on a cold rainy day. The chimney's on the roof were tiled in mosaic, but not especially whimsical.

Casa Mila is a different animal, mostly because it's an apartment house. The layout is similar in that it has a central courtyard (much larger than Casa Battlo's lightwell) overlooked by Juliette balconies. At right is a shot of the model apartment's foyer, which overlooks the courtyard. The rest of the apartment, which is furnished in a style contemporary to the building's construction (i.e., Art Nouveau), curves around from either side. The rooms are light and airy and it would be a great place to live. Lots of square footage (4 bedrooms, two baths, big kitchen, maid's room, sewing/laundry room, dining room, study, living room). One of the things that struck me in both the latter buildings was the ornate plasterwork, which you just don't see anymore. Not only around the doors, but also in rosettes on the ceiling. Gorgeous. And the roof terrace here, which has some really ridiculous chimneys (and more maintenance going on), gives some great views of Barcelona (straight down c./Provenca to the towers of Sagrada Familia).

Off to dinner now, in the hotel restaurant tonight, because I'm bushed. The tapas last night were good, though the calamari was not as tender as it was at the greasy spoon earlier in the day. The bacon and date was really yummy, the steak was perfect, the fish was fantastic, the prawns, well, you get the idea. I may go back and try some other stuff, too. The trick is to go a bit early, before the natives descend on it.

Comments

[Kristin]

Ah, so they *do* have the bacon-wrapped date there, too. See, I'd thought that maybe that was just a Chicago tapas bar thing, as I haven't seen the bacony date on menus at tapas bars in San Francisco (though it's been a while since I've been to one). And when my husband and I went to Andalusia a dozen years ago, I remember getting really excited about how great the tapas scene was going to be, because I'd been turned onto Spanish food by a few great tapas restaurants in Chicago--but it turned out that tapas in those small towns in the Costa del Sol consisted only of short breadsticks, slices of dry Spanish chorizo, and olives. Bar snacks. There was no pisto manchego. No patatas con alioli. No smoked salmon and egg plate with toast points. And most definitely no bacon-wrapped dates. I guess that perhaps Chicago tapas had embellished upon the original just a little too much. (Instead they had probably taken their culinary cues from Spanish restaurants, which were excellent--I still haven't forgotten a perfectly garlicky, creamy, white gazpacho that I've never encountered since--especially since we ate only at fine dining establishments after I got sick early in the trip.)

Those tapas/pintxos/bocadillos bars in Barcelona sure are great, aren't they? Just yesterday I was wishing we had those here in SF, where I could just grab what I wanted from one of those gorgeous platters and pay only for what I eat. Eating quanta only to the point at which I am full, as it were, rather than ordering a whole plate and not finishing half of it, thanks to American portions. There are sushi boat restaurants, why can't we have tapas boats? (Or maybe there could be little tapas-bearing bulls going around a track, to stick with a more Spanish idiom.)

[Kristin]

Oh yeah, and the architecture, too! Casa Batllo is just a gem, isn't it? We did that one first and poked our heads into the lobby of Casa Amatller since it's on that same block, La Manzana de Discordia I think it is? And then we did Casa Mila a couple of days later. The apartment in Casa Mila seemed less impressive after seeing the cohesive vision of Casa Batllo, but it had the cooler rooftop by far.

As for Las Ramblas, have you been to that amazing market there yet, where you can see all kinds of Mediterranean fish and foods for sale? I think they have a couple of counters where you can get coffee and some incredibly fresh cooked seafood while you're there. It's the complete antithesis of the American supermarket way of completely sealing in plastic wrap anything that might possibly give off an aroma...even in the revamped ferry building here in San Francisco, shops are too separate and orderly to give the sense of abundance that the market just off of Las Ramblas has.

And, I don't know why I'm obsessing about food, since I just ate two hours ago and am not hungry--but don't forget to indulge in unpasteurized cheese while you're on that side of the pond. (Not that I know of any unpasteurized Spanish cheeses--if you were in Paris, though, I'd say fill up on epoisses while you can!) The two things I miss the most from having lived in the EU are unpasteurized cheese and European wines that don't have import duties doubling their price. (And I miss that in London I could buy bread-and-butter pudding from the refrigerated ready meal part of the store. All you had to do was heat it up and it was instant gooey dessert comfort food, which the British do better than anyone else. Yum! But that doesn't do you much good in Barcelona.)

[Roger]

What is the price for entry into the Casa Batllo now? I remember is as being pricey. And, darn, I cannot remember the title of the movie I watched a year or two ago, which had a setting in one of those apartments.

[Lee Kottner]

I'd guess Kristin's obsessing on food because it's so good here and because I'm obsessing on it too, and yes, Casa Batllo really is a gem. It would be kinda of unreal living in a place like that, in the sense that it seems so much like a fantasy house. Lord it's lovely though. It's almost 16.75 euros (at about $1.30 to the euro) to get in now, Roger, and Casa Mila was just a few euros cheaper, so it was a pricey sightseeing day, though definitely worth it. Where else would you see this? Wow.