Barcelona
Which city is best? Christine, Bob, and I have been compiling some evidence on two candidates: Barcelona and Lisbon.
Barcelona
Barcelona is a handsome city like Paris, with a medieval quarter and stately buildings on wide boulevards outside. I was picturing a city full of cafes overflowing with Spanish wines, ham slices cut straight from the legs, sheep cheeses, roasted vegetables, and those famous small glasses of beer. Instead, the city was just overflowing with tourists, many of them at these cafes. Other tourists have as much right to visit Barcelona as the FD Linges. But at some point the city feels a bit less authentic and designed just to serve the tourist trade. Were the people at the sidewalk cafes drinking those giant beers on La Rambla locals? Does it matter? Tourism morality is not easy to make sense of.
Unfortunately, we probably just picked a poor weekend to go. We visited on Easter; several venues in our list were closed, including restaurants and museums; and Barcelona had been invaded by holiday-makers while the locals receded. We still managed to eat some fine food and drink some fine wine. Feeling especially confident in our toddler-managing abilities, we had two different tasting menus. Bob can't sit through too many courses; after a while, we put him on the ground and he mills around the table. Since he's so cute, the staff and other patrons never mind. Christine and I were impressed with the wines from nearby Barcelona. In the past, mostly we had only had Riojas, Spain's most popular export wine from further north, outside Catalonia, but wine is produced all over Spain. Spain's famous sparking white, Cava, is also from nearby.
To me, in my quixotic travel adventures, I want to learn about the life in different places. As cliched as it sounds, and as embarrassed as I am to say, I want to experience the place as the locals do; we are also on a mission to determine what cities we'd like to move to. City centers, with their well-established bars, restaurants, museums, and beautiful old churches, are now too full of tourists to really do that. In Rome in the 60s, you could jump in the Trevi Fountain, and not many people were around to much care; now, such sites aren't part of daily life but are just places to go so tourists can take selfies. European city centers are museums, preserved in wax for tourists to observe.
So now, we try to find neighborhoods outside of the main tourist zones, though we still also visit the busy sites because we also need selfies. In Barcelona we stayed in Fort Pienc, where apparently a lot of Chinese are living and nearby a highly regarded university, Pompeu Fabra, and the 1992 Olympic Village. The neighborhood was sleepy over the holiday weekend, and not many restaurants were open or accepting reservations. In our strolls around town, we try to find parks for Bob to run wild, and we found a fun park in Barcelona where wild he did indeed run.
Additional comment on tourism numbers
While Barcelona is much smaller than London, with many fewer sites, it sees per capita more tourists, and the numbers have increased rapidly. Apparently it was the Olympic Games in 1992 where the tourists started falling in love with Barcelona in droves, but I find it hard to believe that quality of life wouldn't have been in more demand sooner; Barcelona is a great place, and that's why people want to go. Nevertheless, the statistics (from Mastercard's Destination Cities Index), below. How can these cities possibly hold any more tourists? They felt full when I visited in 2000 and 2004. Here we are 14 years later.
Locals in some places, including Barcelona, are getting fed up with the tourist hordes: see article. We didn't see it while there, but apparently people in Barcelona are even protesting tourists and passing laws to limit the amount of accommodations available to tourists.
Now that we know Barcelona better, we'd go back again and probably spend less time around the hordes thrusting down La Rambla and through the Gothic Quarter.
Barcelona
Barcelona is a handsome city like Paris, with a medieval quarter and stately buildings on wide boulevards outside. I was picturing a city full of cafes overflowing with Spanish wines, ham slices cut straight from the legs, sheep cheeses, roasted vegetables, and those famous small glasses of beer. Instead, the city was just overflowing with tourists, many of them at these cafes. Other tourists have as much right to visit Barcelona as the FD Linges. But at some point the city feels a bit less authentic and designed just to serve the tourist trade. Were the people at the sidewalk cafes drinking those giant beers on La Rambla locals? Does it matter? Tourism morality is not easy to make sense of.
Unfortunately, we probably just picked a poor weekend to go. We visited on Easter; several venues in our list were closed, including restaurants and museums; and Barcelona had been invaded by holiday-makers while the locals receded. We still managed to eat some fine food and drink some fine wine. Feeling especially confident in our toddler-managing abilities, we had two different tasting menus. Bob can't sit through too many courses; after a while, we put him on the ground and he mills around the table. Since he's so cute, the staff and other patrons never mind. Christine and I were impressed with the wines from nearby Barcelona. In the past, mostly we had only had Riojas, Spain's most popular export wine from further north, outside Catalonia, but wine is produced all over Spain. Spain's famous sparking white, Cava, is also from nearby.
To me, in my quixotic travel adventures, I want to learn about the life in different places. As cliched as it sounds, and as embarrassed as I am to say, I want to experience the place as the locals do; we are also on a mission to determine what cities we'd like to move to. City centers, with their well-established bars, restaurants, museums, and beautiful old churches, are now too full of tourists to really do that. In Rome in the 60s, you could jump in the Trevi Fountain, and not many people were around to much care; now, such sites aren't part of daily life but are just places to go so tourists can take selfies. European city centers are museums, preserved in wax for tourists to observe.
So now, we try to find neighborhoods outside of the main tourist zones, though we still also visit the busy sites because we also need selfies. In Barcelona we stayed in Fort Pienc, where apparently a lot of Chinese are living and nearby a highly regarded university, Pompeu Fabra, and the 1992 Olympic Village. The neighborhood was sleepy over the holiday weekend, and not many restaurants were open or accepting reservations. In our strolls around town, we try to find parks for Bob to run wild, and we found a fun park in Barcelona where wild he did indeed run.
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| We stayed in an Airbnb with a little balcony from which Bobby could spot birds. The entire apartment building is rented out to individual Airbnb tenants. It's unsurprising that eventually Airbnb will be less and less about individuals renting their rooms out and the hotel companies will take it over. |
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| From our balcony we could see the wild Sagrada Familia, a church designed by Barcelona's most famous architect, Gaudi, that is taking over 100 years to build. |
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| Up and down the slide, dozens of times. It was a lot of fun. |
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| Happy family in front of the Cathedral of Barcelona. |
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| Strolling in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, we ran into the Plaça Reial, on which was a flea market. Bob will always take a nap in his Ergo Baby -- when it's nap time -- but very rarely for more than an hour, even though at home he would often sleep in his crib for more than an hour. Still, it's nice that he can nap while on the go; it facilitates the tourism of his parents. |
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| Signs of the Catalan independence movement are all over in Barcelona. Doing our part to aid the revolution, Christine and I bought several Catalan mementos from a street vendor. |
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| Bob was really getting into the independence movement. He just wishes he was old enough to vote, and Catalan. |
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| Bob confidently munching some tapas. The bartender recommended several different plates to go with our beers: tomato on toast, roasted peppers, anchovies. I love anchovies. |
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| The espresso in Barcelona on average was very good. I am always on the hunt for a good espresso; I am often disappointed with what my adventures bring me. I wish it weren't the case, but good espresso is hard to do; I certainly can't do it myself. |
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| Working our way to the dessert course at La Fonda Espanya, inside the Hotel Espanya. We went for lunch on a Saturday. Lunch time is a good time to eat at fancy restaurants with a toddler -- fewer people around for him to annoy. His short attention span makes a lot of work for his parents: he wants water, then he wants bread, then he wants onto the floor, then he wants water, then he wants to walk around, and so on. All the while his parents are just trying to keep him from testing his vocal chords for fun or from running in front of a waiter with trays of food. |
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| After lunch, we headed to the rooftop bar at the Hotel Espanya. Hotel Espanya has cool old world style. I would stay there next time I visit Barcelona. |
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| A local -- and pretty mediocre in taste but cool and old-school in decor -- restaurant we visited in our neighborhood. |
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| Waiting in the Barcelona airport for our plane home. Bob is a fan of things that fly, but once inside often becomes bored and squirmy. In fact, Bob in an airplane is a lot like a salmon on the deck of a fishing boat. |
Additional comment on tourism numbers
While Barcelona is much smaller than London, with many fewer sites, it sees per capita more tourists, and the numbers have increased rapidly. Apparently it was the Olympic Games in 1992 where the tourists started falling in love with Barcelona in droves, but I find it hard to believe that quality of life wouldn't have been in more demand sooner; Barcelona is a great place, and that's why people want to go. Nevertheless, the statistics (from Mastercard's Destination Cities Index), below. How can these cities possibly hold any more tourists? They felt full when I visited in 2000 and 2004. Here we are 14 years later.
Locals in some places, including Barcelona, are getting fed up with the tourist hordes: see article. We didn't see it while there, but apparently people in Barcelona are even protesting tourists and passing laws to limit the amount of accommodations available to tourists.
Now that we know Barcelona better, we'd go back again and probably spend less time around the hordes thrusting down La Rambla and through the Gothic Quarter.
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