It's time for a Fireworks Parade!!

Right on schedule the taxi arrives at Placa Sant Jaume and Judy climbs out with a huge smile and no sign of the long journey she has just made from California.  She hasn’t been in Europe since 2000 and she is excited to be here.  We make the usual trip across the plaza to the flat and Judy eyes the two flights of stairs and narrow doorway we must navigate to get in but bravely starts the battle to get her suitcases upstairs.  Over time I have developed a process for managing this task and although we are both pleased when it is over it goes pretty well.

Judy and I are ‘easy’ friends and I am delighted she is here.  We have been friends for over 40 years.   There are no secrets and a million memories between us.  We have never had a fight.  Well one time I left one of her parties early and she wasn’t super happy with me but there has never been a fight.  Judy and I play well together and I am looking forward to our next two weeks.

We talk nonstop for an hour or so while she downs a couple of bottles of water.  Barcelona has the worst tasting tap water possible.  I usually drink tap water but have had to make the exception here as I have declared their tap water undrinkable!  Once Judy has caught her breath we walk over to Milk for a casual first night’s dinner.  Judy meets Jose and Manuel and understands immediately why I like them so much.  I tell her we are going to have to ‘camp’ up our photo taking while she is here as I have way to many serious ones and I think it’s about time we get some ‘girls just wanna have fun’ shots, she tells me this won’t be a problem and later proves it with the first picture above.  I love Judy!

After a good night’s sleep Judy is ready to meet Gaudi and we decide a good first start will be La Pedrera or also called Casa Mila.   This is an apartment building Gaudi built on Passeig Garcia right in the heart of the L’Exiample district.   This building is one of my personal favorites because it has all of the usual Gaudi snazziness but also is an outstanding example of his genius in architecture and engineering.  Judy is impressed and just as I suspected she would be an immediate fan.  I thought I might get tired of Gaudi over the summer but just the opposite has happened.  The more exposure I have the more admiration I feel.

We want tapas for lunch and so far in Barcelona tapas have been a hit or miss experience.  In general I haven’t become a fan.  But it’s Judy’s first day and it’s tapas we’re looking for.  There are lots of nice outdoor cafes along Gracia and we brose the menus until we select Café Txapela for no other reason than we are hungry and tired of looking.  The tapas are excellent and Judy has a good first experience, I’m glad.

Judy has read in a Rick Steves guide book that at 6pm every Saturday night the Catalonian people dance in front of the Gotic Church as a way of preserving the Catalonian lifestyle and would like to see it.  I am quite proud of myself as I change our route home to accommodate this without looking at the map and think to myself ‘you’ve come a long way since you arrived in Barcelona’.  A bonus of our new route was that we passed right by the Palac de Musica one of the most beautiful buildings in Barcelona and were able to stop by for a quick look.  If we’re going to watch a dance we might as well sit down and have sangria.  We enjoyed the sangria but I’m sorry to say there was never any dancing.  We both hope this doesn’t mean that the Catalan culture will stop being preserved but only that somehow Rick Steves got it wrong. 

We’ve had a full day of touring and decide that dinner in our neighborhood is the right answer so we head back into the maze of pathways that I’ve also gotten to know pretty well to a small tucked away place called Xaloc.  They use a lot of ‘Xs’ over here and I still have a difficult time pronouncing the ‘X’ words but like this restaurant very much.

Our young waiter is a flirt, the two couples on either side of us, a mixed race couple from France, he with a twinkle in his eye and she very attractive and the other couple, we never developed where they were from but he had a charming accent and a voice you could listen to forever, along with an excellent dinner made the evening perfect.  But just as we were finishing our wine the evening became even more perfect.

We are very much in a ‘back neighborhood’ of the Gotic district a place where you would never expect any action but at around 11pm here comes a ‘fireworks parade’.  I have never seen anything quite like this before.  People walked under these big animals such as a dragon, a wolf, a donkey, a dog and a beetle that had a brace across their face and the brace held 6 to 10 firecrackers.  They would pause and replenish the firecrackers then light them all at one time and march down the narrow pathways with the firecrackers a blaze and the popping sounds deafening.  After every two or three animals there was a marching band, heavy with drums and beats you simply had to dance to.  OMG, this was so much fun Judy and I left our wine on the table told our flirty waiter we’d be back to pay the bill and rushed outside, there was no way we were going to miss this!

As Judy and I were saying good night to each other she said, ‘wow, this Barcelona is really fun’!