There Are No Good Puns for “Batllo House”: Days 3 & 4

Our next day in Barcelona was Epiphany itself. While it is fair to say that this day is roughly equivalent to Christmas in the U.S., it is not exactly the same. Many businesses close, but not all. Not just grocery stores or restaurants; here and then you’d see an appliance store open, or a furniture store. Still, by and large the city slows down and takes a breath. When we went out that day, we noticed that most of the people we saw on the streets were a) snuggly couple, or b) family units bearing food and/or gifts, on their way to a gathering, or c) someone walking their dog. Seriously, Barcelona seems pretty dog-friendly on a normal day, but it’s like everybody with a pooch decided to use their day off to take Fido for an extra-long stroll. As you might imagine, with passers-by like these, and a general thinning of traffic to boot, it was a lovely day for a walk. Plus the sun was out and the air was crisp – what’s not to like?

We were going to another tour that day, to another Antoni Gaudi creation. (We are not kidding, this guy has left an incredible impression on the city.) We went to Batllo House, a home in downtown Barcelona that Gaudi did not build but extensively remodeled. In fact, when the new owners of the building contacted Gaudi their proposal was to demolish the building to give him a blank slate to work with. Instead, he persuaded them to leave the bones in place and let him refashion the home, inside and out. It’s a truly fascinating place. With guiding themes of nature in general and (apparently) the Mediterranean in particular, Gaudi skirted the edge of functional and artistic; indeed, there are several spaces in which it is odd to imagine daily life going on, but we are told that that is exactly what happened. Even more fascinating is that in hewing to the traditions of the time, the home contains numerous apartments suitable for renting to the bourgeoisie (their word, not mine). We couldn’t see inside any of them, but as far as we can tell the same architectural touches flow into their flats as well. At a minimum, residents would enter the house and climbs flights of stairs encases in mosaic tile work that gradually shifts from white to aquamarine to marine. The apartments even have balconies that look in, to the central open column that contains the stairs and otherwise serves as a conduit for light and air to the entire house. Living in such a place… I mean, you’re a tailor or something, and you need a home, so you ask around and sign on to one of a half-dozen homes with vacant apartments… and this is what you get? Wild.

The Gaudi tour finished somewhat confusingly, but awesomely, with an art installation that… er… does some high-concept thing or other, but mostly it puts you in a room, the door closes, and it turns out every single surface is a video screen and you are in a 2-minute light show – data visualizations, photo mosaics, craziness in general… It was really, really neat and we were sorry when it ended.

On the other hand, we were getting really hungry, so we beat feet for a reservation Lisa had made at La Pluma. In retrospect it is not that surprising that there was a mix-up in the reservation, as La Pluma has multiple locations and everything is conducted in Spanish, but the end result is that we beat a lot more feet than we were expecting. When we got there we were definitely ready to eat! Lisa tells you more about La Pluma here. Sated and tired, we had one last journey to hunt down a taxi. Even our Fitbits were mildly surprised that we kept walking as much as we did, but walk we did. Eventually we caught a cab and tromped up to our flat for some quiet time.

Now, one of the conversations Lisa and I have been chewing on for awhile is the nature of time on our travels. Not like, does time exist, more along the lines of “when you’re retired and you take a trip, is it even a vacation?” In all the years past when we’ve traveled we’ve been diligent in making the most of our time. Some day we will fill the down time with descriptions of the guidebooks that Lisa would put together for our trips; like, printed guidebooks, customized to our plans. (“They are frickin’ amazing” is the short version.) However, we’re starting to realize that our time in, for example, Barcelona is not as precious as it might once have been. Heck, we almost always have to make a connection when traveling from Portugal to anywhere else, so the odds are we’ll see Barcelona many times in the years to come. Point being, running ourselves ragged in the name of seeing everything isn’t really the name of the game any more; it’s not even particularly wise. Why? What part of “retired” do we not understand? (A lot of it actually, but that’s grist for later as well.)

As an old boss of ours used to say, “I told you all that to tell you this.” We did basically nothing the next day except go to a great lunch. Lisa found reviews of a Chinese restaurant in town and her curiosity was piqued. So, we head out for our noon-ish reservation at China Crown. You guessed it, you can read more about it here, but the short version is it was a very upscale, cozy spot with a really lovely dining room. And after that, we mosied right back to our flat. Our only adventure that day was mailing some post cards we’d accumulated, and that wasn’t much of a story. Get stamps, apply stamps, drop off. Correos is good at their work and it was an efficient trip. The funny bit about finding the post office is that we’d seen “Correos” on buildings before and hadn’t put together what they were… even though we’ve received numerous packages via Correos already(!). We’re now Prime members on Amazon.es (as in “espanol”) so not a few things we’ve ordered have originated with the Spanish mail system. Deeeerp. Anyway, after that? We did some laundry and watched a movie, then read for a bit and went to bed. It was a very much needed rest and recharge, and you’ll be reading the occasionally story like this on a regular basis moving forward. Maybe even next time.

cue “to be continued” music