It was pretty amazing-- jammed with people (both tourists / gawkers and determined-looking food shoppers). You had to step carefully in order to avoid the grim-looking ladies trundling their wheeled baskets around. Food: heavy emphasis on fruit, vegetables, ham/sausage/charcuterie, nuts, beans, and flowers.
Here is a shot of the opera house in central Barcelona. According to the guide, the spot that they picked to build it on had an old convent there, and when they went to tear it down, one of the nuns made a pronouncement that the new opera house would suffer three disasters-- it would be destroyed by fire, that there would be a bomb blast in it, and that the roof would fall in. Sure enough, all three predictions have come to pass (it burned down twice, in fact, in addition to being bombed during he civil war and having its roof fall in during a renovation).
Here we are inspecting one of the many chocolate and sweet shops that our guide led us to (this one specialized in nougat, if my memory serves).
After the market we wound our way back into the center of the old quarter, past a bunch of the old Roman areas and the central (gothic) cathedral. On the way, we bumped into this guy:
You can't see it from the photo, but the side car actually contains his dog (heh).
The guide was full of interesting anecdotes about the buildings. At one point we stopped near the cathedral so that she could point out an extremely dull and boxy-looking high rise; she announced that it housed offices of the Barcelona Architectural Society (heh). Off to the side she showed us the side of a building that had been painted with drawings by Picasso (reproductions, "blown up" from the originals). Picasso apparently did not get along well with Franco (Franco referred to him as "The Devil"); as a result, Picasso stayed totally away from Spain from 1936 until the point when Franco was deposed, which when you think about it is a huge stretch of time. The tour finished in the Mercat de Santa Caterina, another big market in the eastern section of the Barri Gotic.
We were presented with a ticket that we could exchange in one of the bars for a plate of tapas and a drink. The kids chose "Xocolat", the local chocolate milk drink. The stuff looked like it would be lousy (very "1950s" label), but in fact it was absolutely delicious when we tried it (not too sweet/cloying).
After the tour wrapped up, Amy and I got down to shopping in earnest, mainly trying to buy enough food to sustain us for the next few days. We suspected that visiting on Easter weekend we would run the risk of having things closed for the holiday, and this in fact was the case: we were told that all of the markets and grocery stores would be closed Sunday and Monday. As a result, we did our best to cram all of our food buying in during the afternoon; we bought fresh peppers, bread, croquettes, onions, tomatoes, strawberries, fish, and a whole collection of other items. For lunch we stopped at a crepe place (yum) and also grabbed a chocolate cake from a bakery on the way home, for a certain important person's birthday. Amy and the kids rested back at the apartment and I took off back to Carrefour to buy more supplies, also went back to the Bocqueria to buy a roast chicken and other things. Amazingly, Carrefour actually had a cheap pair of pliers, so I bought it so as to have a way to turn on the three other burners on the stove; this made cooking a bit easier.
Dinner was green beans, salad, fish with pesto sauce, rice, and croquettes. The fish turned out to be a bit of a dud, unfortunately (the Spanish fish names are all different, of course, so we were not entirely sure what we were buying). The chocolate cake put everyone back in a good mood, however.
After dinner we headed off to the soccer stadium to see Barcelona play Reactivo (not an especially strong team-- they had a sort of "sacrificial lamb" quality to them). Transportation logistic were tricky-- the local subway at Drassaines was so mobbed we couldn't get anywhere near it. We decided to walk up Avenida de Parallel to see if we could do any better farther up. This turned out to be a good move-- the Parallel station (5 minutes walk) was nowhere near as crowded. We jammed ourselves onto the next train for a sardine-like ride up to Le Cortes, where we got out and joined the rest of the throngs on the march to the stadium. We soon found out that getting off at Le Cortes was a strategic mistake, however, since we had to walk all the way around the outside of the stadium to get to the correct ticket office ("Camp Nou" is enormous, so this took a while). Then more waiting in the lengthy queue-- we finally grabbed our tickets and headed in, only to be stopped again: the guards didn't want me to bring in my pocket knife. Grumble. By the time we finally got our our seats, it was 15 minutes into the game, and we had missed the first goal.
In spite of all the struggles to get there, the game was actually a lot of fun. The seats were right down close to the field, near the goal line. It was cool but not terribly cold, and it didn't rain, thank goodness. I brought hats and mittens for everyone, but in fact we didn't really need them. Here is a shot of Lionel Messi, one of the top players in the world:
The crowd was very noisy and rowdy, with songs and chants of one sort or another ("Barca", "Barca", ...). The stadium there is truly immense-- even bigger than where the Patriots play (Gillette), and most of the seats were filled. A bit smoky (blech).
Barcelona dominated the match; it was pretty clear they were the better team. It was interesting to see both Thierry Henri and Lionel Messi play; Henry is much taller in real life than he looks on the tube. Messi is short but very fast; he was fun to watch. Reactivo didn't do themselves any favors; one of their defensemen scored an "own goal", and they also had a foul in the box that resulted in a penalty (taken by Messi, who fired it into the goalkeeper unfortunately). Subway home was uneventful; we chatted briefly with another American family who had been there watching the game. They had been up in the stratospheric seats, and had been rather cold as a result.
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