Zaragoza to Barcelona - España Continued
Photo by David Vives
That afternoon in Zaragoza, we were happy to get seated in a restaurant that was recommended to us, as it had begun to rain more seriously from the cold drizzle we’d walked through.
The eatery was warm and inviting. Besides having tables at the front windows and in the middle of the room, it was also its own grocery supplier. There were shelves that lined the unwindowed walls ladened with every delicacy imaginable for preparing a lovely meal, snack, or party, which included dried pork legs hanging from hooks. Everything was for sale. I would have purchased a few items, except for the dried pork leg, if I could have understood the language better to tell what each package contained. But I didn’t, and the waitress was too busy to answer questions.
Looking around at the room’s exposed massive rock walls above the shelves and displays, and at the deep browns of the aged, polished wood of the shelves and the large ‘L’ shaped counter, it made me think of taverns we’d seen in movies that were set in some European country. It was that sense of reverse time travel that gave me a thrill, sitting in this setting of older times, albeit with newer advantages of electric lighting and other modern conveniences.
The food we’d ordered came to us in manageable portions to eat in one sitting, instead of having to take leftovers para llevar in a box.
I savored the flavorful cheese sauce over the small mound of chicken and potatoes topped with a long sliver of carrot acting as a flagpole for a parsley sprig.
After some ‘ooohs’, I stated, “It has seemed, so far, that the Spanish servings are so much more sensible than what we get in the States, which is certainly a good thing. I’d hate to waste anything this delicious from being unable to eat it all and not being able to take the rest with us.”
Marty nodded while he stared at the hamburger he’d ordered, “Just to compare differences from my favorite Wendy’s burger in the states,” he’d stated as his excuse for ordering something so mundane. But this burger was certainly not ordinary, nor anything remotely like a Wendy’s burger. It didn’t even have a bun. No pickles, no tomato, and no french fries. It was its own creation: a patty sitting atop a coleslaw-type concoction with a sauce dripping from the top of the burger down its side.
He looked disappointed and aghast at the same time when it was set before him. But recognizing the fact that we weren’t in North America anymore, he decided that the Spanish interpretation of a well-known dish still deserved to be appreciated on its own. So, he proceeded to devour the whole meal without complaint and even threw in a few reluctant, positive “Mmmm’s’.
After eating and perusing the shelves of good-looking boxes and packages of various pastas, crackers, flours, dried meats, and things we didn’t recognize, it stopped raining and we left the building. We began wandering the streets that branched out from the square like crooked fingers and were eager to see what was around the next corner we’d come to.
I was fascinated by the haphazard way the streets came together and then veered off to what first looked like a cul-de-sac-like end, but, instead, continued around a sharp or curvy corner to yet another alleyway at a different angle. It was like a maze of stucco, or whatever material the buildings were faced with, and each alley had its own personality.
Photo by Eugen Kucheruk
Some buildings had graffiti on the garage-style doors while others were storefronts selling wares of various items from hats to hardware, making each section a new adventure. I loved what seemed to be a lack of planning and placement of the streets and wondered what the city planner was thinking at the time when the city was constructed. Those narrow alleys were good for motorcycles and bicycles, but very treacherous for vehicles that had to maneuver the corners while dodging pedestrians. But then, I realized, during the days of building those walls and making the streets, the builders only had to worry about making the streets wide enough for horses and carriages to pass. Pedestrians could manage any width they could sidle through.
Before we arrived in Zaragoza, I had looked up the history of the city. I learned that it was built somewhere between 23 and 11 B.C. by Augustus and then taken over by the Goths in the fifth century AD.
Thinking about the age of the city, being close to the structures, and walking the cobblestone streets, made me tingle with a sense of smallness as I realized it was older than anything I had ever been near, including the Mayan ruins of Mexico. And, I’d discovered, Zaragoza wasn’t even close in age to that of other much older cities in Spain and the rest of the world. That fact was staggering and made me feel as significant as a grain of sand in the middle of the Saharan Desert. A daunting thought.
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The next morning, after a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, we took a taxi back to the train station for our last leg to Barcelona. It was interesting at this time of year when the growing season was in its dormancy, as we watched the terrain whizz by, we saw that it didn’t look much different than passing through the southwestern part of the U.S., except we saw olive groves, vineyards, and lemon trees, instead of mesquite trees, sagebrush, and the invasive Russian olives the States were trying to eradicate. I noticed a cleanliness about the fields and the groves that I hadn’t seen in the States. There was no dropped fruit, leaves, or debris of any kind beneath the trees, and each row of planted crops — still small at this time of year — were immaculate in their straightness and structure. No errant leaflets branching out and absolutely no weeds to be seen. Even the sides of the rail tracks seemed groomed. I was astounded by the tremendous care given to the crops, fields, and roadsides. Back home, our countrysides and fields were not nearly as neat.
Photo by Anastasiia Tarasova
We arrived at our destination in a little over two hours. Barcelona, or Barthelona, as the locals say, looked to be a magnificent city as we were driven by taxi to our prearranged apartment. The cabbie was amiable and informative when Marty chatted in his Mexican Spanish with him about where to go and what to see. The man would kindly correct some of his words with the Spain Spanish version and Marty was grateful for the tutorial. He just hoped he’d remember the differences.
Our Airbnb was in the ‘attic’, we were told in a text by the woman we were to meet for keys and information. The text explained that we needed to push the letter ‘A’ on the intercom at the street door for her to buzz us in and then at the elevator, which we were grateful for since our luggage would have been a chore to drag up five flights of stairs.
When we walked into our new home for four days, we were amazed by the brightness the huge sliding-glass-doors brought in and the view of a large veranda that over-looked many church domes standing taller than any building across the way, and we could watch the street traffic below when leaning over the wall. It was too bad the weather was too cold to enjoy the lovely outdoor space.
The small living room was open to a bright red kitchen with black countertops. The cabinets were filled with every imaginable accoutrement for a huge party: glassware of every size and use, enough plates and bowls to feed a city block, and such a variety of pots, pans, and utensils for cooking as I’d never seen outside a kitchen store. Whoever owned the apartment obviously loved to cook and loved to party.
There was a bathroom off the kitchen, which became our personal one since we had the larger bedroom without a private bath. Vivienne and George, our daughter and son-in-law, who were to arrive the next day, got the smaller bedroom but with its own private bathroom. Trade-offs. It worked.
After getting settled, we were eager to explore the neighborhood to see what it had to offer in the way of eateries and bars.
We were on a busy street, rather than the quiet alleyway we’d been staying near in Madrid, but in our apartment, the noise wasn’t a big problem. Walking the busy sidewalks was not as tranquil, but the sidewalks were wider and easier to maneuver when dodging rushing locals.
We found a tapas and beer bar around the corner on the next block’s side street and thought we’d found a key place to hang out. But it was not as cozy as the tapas bar we had enjoyed in Madrid. Its interior was too bright and nondescript, and the food was mediocre. The beer was tasty, though, and the waitstaff was friendly.
We went there twice more for breakfast to eat a delicious Spanish tortilla and then again for supper, but we didn’t return. The dish I had ordered for dinner, which sounded yummy with cheese sauce over crispy fried papas, was so tasteless that even salt couldn’t liven it up. The cheese was a dull unidentifiable, unappetizing, brownish gray, and was my first meal in this country that I didn’t want to devour. It was also my first disappointing experience. An omen? I wondered, as the next day we were dismayed to find out that the kids, Vivienne and George, had missed their flight. Their first flight was delayed an hour, which made them miss their crucial connecting flight to Spain.
We were extremely disappointed and wondered what we could do to kill time since we didn’t want to see sights they likely want to see, so we just wandered around, window shopping and finding places to eat.
Thank goodness, the tickets Vivienne had ordered in advance to tour the Sagrada Familia were for two days after their original arrival date and wouldn’t be missed.
Photo by Diego Allen
The Sagrada Familia is the famous temple that gifted architect Antoni Gaudi had taken over construction in 1883. After Gaudi’s untimely death, while the erection of the structure was still in its youth, the construction continued and is now still being worked on more than 140 years later. It is the second-largest Basilica in the world, and Vivienne didn’t want to miss the opportunity to tour this place because of its unique architecture and history.
When the kids finally arrived, we toured the massive and uniquely created church and found it mind-boggling. The place was beyond anything we had ever seen. The creativity alone was astounding and the workmanship beyond comprehension. We read that construction was, hopefully, to be finished by the anniversary of Gaudi’s death in 2026, but due to the pandemic and its delays, it was likely to take much longer. Well, no kidding, I thought, when I saw all that still needed to be done and couldn’t imagine the work still to do. The place was far more than walls and a ceiling with spires; it was a light show with strategically placed colored windows allowing light to illuminate the creations inside.
I don’t seek out churches to visit, generally — if you’ve seen one cathedral, you’ve seen them all, in my opinion — because I can’t fathom the reason behind putting so much money into a building where people worship when much of the congregation remains poor. But the Sagrada Familia was a gift, like a work of art to gaze upon. I was happy to have done so.
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Read the next story in this series here: Nuestro Dia de San Valentín en España — Our Valentine’s Day in Spain.
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Read Part 1 or Part 2 of this story series by clicking one of the links below:
Part 1 - España — My First Trip Away from North American Soil