Spain | Barcelona: A First Glimpse of Gaudí’s World (Part Two)

After a short rest, we set off to wander around Barcelona. Having learned from our last taxi ride, we went straight for the metro this time. It wasn’t exactly cheap either (a ten-ride ticket cost 12 euros), but compared with taking a taxi, it was a bargain.

Once we’d bought our metro card, we headed into the station, only to find a platform with no safety measures whatsoever. To be honest, being used to the metro back in China, I found it a little unnerving, but after a few more rides, I gradually got used to it.

Barcelona isn’t a very big city—roughly 1/160 the size of Beijing—and the sights aren’t far apart either. Once you take the metro to a nearby attraction, you can pretty much spend the rest of the outing strolling from one place to the next. It’s a really nice way to explore. Along the way, we passed La Pedrera, Casa Batlló, Barcelona Cathedral, the Kiss Wall, and the Bridge of Sighs, among other sights (lots of photos ahead).

At the foot of the cathedral, an elderly man was blowing bubbles while children chased after them nonstop. There was something quite poetic about the scene.

We also came across a Pop Mart store with a long line outside. I never imagined it would be so popular here too. Seriously impressive.

By the time we’d done a fair bit of wandering, it was time to eat. We found a restaurant that was fairly well regarded locally, sat down, and ordered a few Spanish tapas. Well, after trying them, I hardly knew what to say. This “white people food” really was a bit hard to stomach. For the next few days, we pretty much relied entirely on my mom’s cooking.
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Still, credit where it’s due: although the flavors were a little hard to take, their ingredients really did look fresh. Judging by the ingredients alone, the food looked pretty appetizing.

After the meal, we wandered around a little more before heading back to our accommodation. Just as we were getting close, we saw a large crowd gathering, with someone singing onstage. We followed the crowd in to take a look, but the farther we went, the more something felt off. Lots of people had Palestinian flags draped around them, and the largest Palestinian flag had a line of Spanish written on it. We couldn’t quite work out what was going on, but it felt strange, so we hurried away. Only after looking it up later did we realize it was a march in support of Palestine. Thinking back on it, I couldn’t help feeling a little nervous. The flag read: “
Silence is for when children are sleeping, not when they are being killed.”

Finally, after crossing time zones with a 6-hour difference and being on the go for 30 hours straight, we could at last shake off our exhaustion and get some proper rest.

Oh, and you often see sculptures like this holding up stone columns on buildings here. To my untrained eye, they always look as though they’ve been holding them up for too long, are getting a bit tired, and are wiping away sweat with their other hand. Somehow that makes them feel rather alive, haha.