Day 54: Barcelona

Sunday, October 6

I got up at 7 to make sure i could get that shower before i had to check out of the hostel at 10. I did not want to be a smelly human anymore.
    At least, as much as possible. The vest could probably use another go at the wash.
    After showering, i tried to pack my bag as quietly as possible, as everyone else in the room was still asleep. The room had been empty when i went to bed last night. Clubbers. I wasn't 100% successful, though, and some people stirred a bit. One got up and went out to the bathroom. Sorry, my dudes. This thin metal locker underneath the bed is not the easiest thing to pull stuff out of silently.
    I ate my cornflakes and white bread for the last time, and checked out.
    I didn't know where i was going or what i was doing. I'd made no plans for the day. Mostly, i was panicking because i hadn't heard back about the AirBNB.
    Outside the door that leads into the hostel, there's a bit of a vestibule, which includes a staircase and an elevator. I presume that these go up to apartments; i get the impression that's what's in the rest of the building. There's two steps that go down from the floor between all of those, which are like eight feet wide, and the floor below that leads to the door. I've noticed that lots and lots and loooots of buildings across Europe have these strange little elevation changes within floors. Sometimes it's a couple of steps, like here; other times, literally the floor just raises by an inch or two for absolutely no reason. This hostel has some of those, too, but they've helpfully installed ramps. Most places don't.
    I sat down on those steps, up against a wall on one side, so there was plenty of room for other people to walk past me. I had my backpack, because i wasn't intending to come back this way again. I sat there, first examining options for what to do, then getting distracted by social media, back and forth for a bit, before finally having the moment where i said to myself, out loud, "Okay. I cannot sit here all day, freaking out, waiting to hear back from that AirBNB. I have to live my life as if i'm not waiting around for other people."
    I really didn't want to carry my bag around, though, so i went back into the hostel and asked if i could stash it. The woman at the desk, the same one i'd just checked out with, and actually the same one that had kicked me out of the rooftop garden last night, i wonder if she ever sleeps, led me past the defunct ground floor bathroom and into the luggage room that i didn't know was there. I was happy to be able to leave my bag for free again, the last several have required payment for a locker. Definitely worth it to not have to haul it around all day.
    Okay. So what do i want to do today, then? I've still got things on Huan-Hua's list, i've got a fresh new list from Dawn, still got Atlas Obscura stuff, still got the usual tourist lists. Honestly? This is getting to be an overwhelming amount of recommendations.
    It's actually kind of nice to have the Atlas Obscura app now? I swear this must be a new thing, i feel like i've checked to see if they had one before. But this whole trip, i've been wishing i could get the Atlas Obscura map overlaid on Google Maps, because the maps on their web site are difficult to use, and it would be nice to be able to easily see where i actually am on them, instead of having to line the two up manually and switch back and forth. Plus then i could see other major landmarks alongside the Atlas stuff, and plot a course that includes both types of things. The app basically does that.
    So, to start with, i picked the closest Atlas Obscura item to my present location, at the Mediterranean Youth Hostel: Tió de Nadal. This is some kind of...pooping Christmas log? I'm not really sure. But, i clicked on it in the Atlas Obscura, and it automatically bounced directions straight into Maps for me. Nice! That's the kind of cross-platform connectivity i like to see.
    It took me to an intersection near a park. There was no indication of anything Christmasy anywhere nearby.
    I crossed the street and entered the park. This is cool, though, lots of statues all around. I'll check those out in a minute, first, what the hell happened here?
    I read through the article, as if seeing it for the first time. Perhaps i was; i've read so many of these things that i haven't been able to keep them straight for a while now. But this article...seems to just be about a Catalonian tradition, involving a hollowed-out log that gets a face and a little sweater and maybe some legs attached, and then on Christmas eve the family take turns beating it with sticks until it poops out candy, wafers, and herring.
    Why the hell is this on Atlas Obscura? This isn't a place, it's a regional tradition. Like. I would've understood if it was something that went on here, at this park, only at Christmastime, and that's why i wasn't finding anything, but literally nothing in the article indicates any attachment to any geographical location other than "the entirety of Catalonia," which is the entire northeast tip of Spain.
    Alright, let's check out this park.
    This is Plaça de Catalunya, and it is considered to be the center of the city, i think geographically, if not socially. I entered the park on a large rectangular concrete slab with six statues, one at each corner, and two in the middle of one of the long sides. The rectangle was completely encircled by a stone fence, though, so it didn't lead back to the rest of the park. I thought it was interesting that this is where they put those six statues, and when you're standing here, in this rectangle, they all have their backs to you.
    Two huge fountains occupied the space just beyond the short sides of the rectangle. Neither of them were running while i was there.
    In order to get to the main part of the park, i needed to walk back to the street, and go around a bit of construction fencing. Beyond the fencing, a man was playing a piano, while a small crowd of onlookers had gathered to watch and film him with their phones. As i circled around him, i noticed a sign on the piano that said something or another about it being part of a 1000 piano thing. I have seen several pianists out performing in public, many on pianos that seemed to be permanent fixtures of the locales - am i to understand that some organization has literally set out a thousand pianos in public across Europe? I wonder if i've seen any other pieces of this project. I wish i'd gotten a clear shot of that sign, so i could investigate. Maybe there's something on the R6m2. I actually still haven't reviewed any of the footage from that camera, from this entire trip, other than a little bit from the first couple days before i left Denmark.
    Many of the comments on Google Maps mentioned the pigeons in this park. There really are a shitload of them. One commenter wrote, "Full of people and pigeons, and only the pigeons are local." Another said, "This bustling square is filled with statues, tourists, and a million hungry pigeons." And they're right!
    In the center of the park, there's an artistic representation of compass points made from different-colored bricks. I walked to the center of it, to get a selfie. Dozens of other tourists had the same idea. The whole compass was covered in pigeons, milling about, waiting for someone to drop something they could scoop up. Children would run through the masses of birds, riling them up, causing them to flee, but they would fill right back in the second the child was through. I always wonder if this stresses the birds out, or if the birds think they're playing too.
    Probably the former. Birds are not dogs.
    From down here, the statues are up a small hill, and there's a fence on this side of it, too. So you can't even go up and see those statues from the front up close at all. I tried to get a selfie, framing myself in the middle of the four that faced the center of the park, but the sun was in my eyes and i could not keep them open even long enough to snap the shot, much less to accurately frame it up. Each attempt looked sillier than the last.

    The next closest thing is the foundations of the Roman Aqueduct of Barcino, the city that Barcelona is built on the ruins of. This is another of those drive by, grab a few pics, and move about your day type sights.
    There are three little stubs of stone supports left of the Aqueduct, which dates to the first century. They're actually inside of a hotel lobby; they were discovered in 2016 when the hotel was built. Two of them are beneath the floor of the lobby, which the hotel has installed thick glass panels so you can see them and walk over them; the third, in the center, sticks up above the floor, and has a railing around it, so you can't actually touch it.
    I walked past the hotel at first, not recognizing that it was my destination. I walked back, noticed the name of the building, and stood near the door, double checking the article so that i knew what i was getting into. I felt a little uncomfortable about just walking into a hotel lobby, shooting some video and photos, and leaving, but the article says that they're cool with it, so hopefully that's still true and/or nobody is lying on the internet here.
    I'd only been standing there a few seconds when a well-dressed man with a tie and a vest came out of the hotel. "Are you doing okay? What do you need?"
    "Oh, uh. Actually, i'm looking for this," i said, showing him my phone. "Can i see it?"
    "Oh, sure. Follow me," he said, leading me into the lobby. "There's the three of them right here. This big one in the middle, and the two under the floor right there and there." He proceeded to give me the abbreviated history, the same things i'd already learned from the Atlas Obscura.
    I thanked him, and went about shooting my pics and videos. It was still a little awkward, since he stood back and watched me as i did. Like, the easiest way to become self-conscious about a camera move is to perform it while somebody who doesn't know anything about your project, or presumably about shooting video at all, watches.
    But also. I felt pressured to spend a little more time doing this, now that i'd involved another person. It felt somehow wrong or ungrateful to have been led in and given that tour, even if it was only like a 30 second tour, and then just snap one or two pics and be gone in even less time. So i'm sure i ended up with like five times more footage than i could possibly ever need of these things.

    After a few minutes, the man approached again. "So you're a photographer?"
    "Yes. Well, more video, actually."
    "Oh really? Do you ever work with drones?"
    "Yeah, i have two. Not with me, unfortunately, i'm traveling very light and they didn't fit in my pack."
    "Oh nice, what have you got?"
    "A matched pair of DJI Mavic Pros," i said.
    "Oh yeah, that's a good one!" he exclaimed. "I love drones! I have eight of them!" He proceeded to tell me about his collection of drones. I don't know enough about drones to understand most of what he just said. I just know what works for me.
    He ended up following me outside, because he wanted to talk about drones more. Interesting guy. He just likes to do drone photography when he travels. "I would never shoot anything here in Barcelona, because i live here, you know. But when i travel, i'll photograph anything!"
    I get it. I haven't filmed much around Madison, either. This last year, i've been trying to do a little more of that, though; act like a tourist in my own city. That's a very different project, though.
    He asked what i did with the drones, so i mentioned that i used to live in Los Angeles and work in Hollywood. I told him i had done drone work for some low-budget movies, like The Asylum. He had never heard of Sharknado. Might be the first person i've ever mentioned it to that had no idea what i was talking about.
    Outside of the hotel, there was a cool building i was trying to get a photo of, but just before i took it, a bus pulled up in front of me and stopped. I backed up a bit, to give it space as people started flowing out of the doors, and somehow kept having to back up as a family of four just kept coming at me, almost encircling me like they'd caught me in a snare. None of them seemed to be paying attention. HEY PEOPLE WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!? I AM NOT A PREY ANIMAL.
    Anyway that was weird.

    Atlas Obscura then led me to the Inquisition's Blazon. In a medieval walkway over by the busy Plaça del Rei ("King's Square"), there remains a stone coat of arms in the wall of a building which served as a prison during the Spanish Inquisition. This building used to be known as Carrer dels Comtes, and was part of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. There used to be several prisons around here, and as a result, the square was the site of many executions.

    Carrer dels Comtes is now the Frederic Marès Museum. Just below and to the left of the blazon is a window with crossbars; you can see down into the courtyard of the museum from there. An entrance to the courtyard is just around the corner, so i thought i'd go check that out quick, to see what it was like.
    The courtyard is nice! Seems like a good place to sit down and relax for a bit.
    There was a banner up near the entrance to the museum. "Free entrance on the first Sunday of the month."
    Oh shit. That's today.
    Don't mind if i do. I don't have any solid plans. I often don't want to go into museums because they can turn into a pretty big time commitment, but i've reasoned before that if the museum is free, i don't have anything to lose if i decide it's too long and i'd rather just leave.
    The ground floor of the museum is all sculptures. The vast majority of it is religious in nature, and it really felt like half of that was just life-size sculptures of Jesus on the cross.
    The artistic representation of everything was really captivating, though. Despite the inherent Catholicism of it all, i found myself really enjoying everything. I've said before about how i tend to overshoot museums, generating tons of footage which i'll never do anything with. Here, i really could not stop myself. I found i was shooting almost every piece throughout that first floor, it was absurd. Why was i doing this. Stop. Stop, Trevor. Trevor, stop!! You've shot an hour of footage in the last fifteen minutes, what are you doing?!
    The second floor also contained a lot of sculpture, including more crucified Jesuses. Jesi? Jesuses? Unclear. There were also exhibits on ancient textiles, some paintings, and a lot of decorative medieval boxes or small chests.
    The third floor is when things got really interesting.
    This museum has amassed an incredible amount of collectible cards from the 19th century.
    I recorded a little video clip as i entered this part, saying, "A younger me would have been absolutely obsessed with this." But the longer i was in there, the more transfixed i became. The urge to collect cards has never really left me, even if i have logic'd myself out of the physical act of actually doing it.
    When i was a child, i thought i was into baseball; then Magic: The Gathering came along, and i realized it was just because i liked collecting cards. I never gave a shit about baseball, i just liked cataloguing colorful pieces of cardboard.

    This museum has rooms upon rooms of these pieces of cardboard, with all sorts of sets of things on them. Lots of art, lots of old photographs, just...anything. One set seems to be a deck of playing cards, drawn out as characters holding the cards, on the cards...so meta. And it's 150 years old.
    Collectors' cards actually started as advertisements, i learned today. It doesn't come as a huge surprise, really; i just didn't know.
    They also had one of the duplication machines set up that actually printed these cards in the 19th century. What a cool artifact. A stack of cards was loaded up in its magazine; i ran my finger down them, to feel the cardstock. I don't know if i was supposed to do that, but i did.

    There were more exhibits on this floor, but the cards really dwarfed them all. I remember there were dishes. I don't really remember what else. I drifted through the other exhibits, still thinking about the cards.
    I guess i do remember going into Frederic Marès's office, which he maintained while he was the curator of this museum from the 1930s through 90s, and also a working sculptor. The room contained many of his works, as well as walls of bookshelves that he used for research.
    Fourth and final floor.
    More cards!
    Also, miniatures! Like, literally, these look exactly like the miniatures we use for tabletop wargaming today, and they're centuries old. I don't think they're from, like, an actual military strategist's table, like you see in Game of Thrones or other TV shows or movies, i think these were meant as toys. I think that because this floor was labeled, "Entertainment Hall."
    Beyond the miniatures was an impressive display of papercraft.
    I was just as fascinated by this as i was the trading cards. These three-dimensional environmental setups made of two-dimensional paper standees, just boxes upon boxes of them, out on display. My favorite was a kitschy one of some anthropomorphic dogs playing pool. It really made me want to do some papercraft. Perhaps build a paper doll house.

    This floor also contained a whole exhibit of automatons. Unfortunately, none of them were actually animated; probably so their parts don't get worn out. There were some videos available on the monitors, though.
    I really enjoyed that museum!
    My track record with museums is hit or miss, so i probably would have skipped this one if it hadn't been free, and that would have been sad. I might never have known how cool it was. I might never have walked through those rooms of collectible cards from the 1800s.
    If i ever make it back to Barcelona, i will actually probably go to that museum again. If only to spend more time browsing the cards.
    That might be silly. But it also might happen.
    Alright, i was back in the courtyard. It was nearly 1:30, and my anxiety over the AirBNB situation was really starting to get to me. I was considering sending the host another message, but also, i didn't want to, like, harass her or anything. I didn't want to come off as too desperate. Nerve-wrackingly, for me, the AirBNB rules give her 24 hours to respond to my message. But i cannot wait until midnight, i would need to be in Vilanova well before then to check in, and-
    Oh, she just emailed me. Literally while i was staring at my phone and sweating.
    Request denied.
    ...
    fuck
    Oooooooookaaaaayyyyyyyy
    now what
    ...
    ......
    food
    now food
    I can't think straight on cornflakes and white toast alone. I hope this is the last time i type the words "cornflakes and white toast" until the epilogue, if even then.
    I pulled up Maps, to see what was nearby on Huan-Hua's recommendation list. Oh hey, there's something right next to me-
    It's the Frederic Marès Museum. I didn't even realize that this was already on my radar.
    None of her food suggestions were very close, but there were a lot of restaurants in the immediate vicinity. I started walking, hoping something would jump out at me.

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    I walked past a lot of restaurants, none of them were grabbing me. I checked Google Maps and like a thousand options came up. I finally ended up at a burger place over near the hotel with the aqueduct ruins, called La Central. I got their signature burger, the La Central, which came with caramelized onion, bacon, fried brie, gherkins, potato chips on the burger, and sun-dried tomato mayonnaise. It was the greasy pub burger of my drooliest dreams in my 20s. Nowadays, yeah it was still really good, but i knew my guts were gonna be real angry with me, real soon.

    While i waited for the burger, i jumped straight into the task of finding accommodation. The other AirBNB i had been looking at in Vilanova was no longer showing up, and the next cheapest Vilanova option cost twice as much. Vilanova had no hostels on Hostelworld, and there was nothing of any kind in Sitges for less than $300 per night, which is well outside my budget. So it looked like i was staying in Barcelona.
    Literally the first result that came up on Hostelworld was cheaper than the Mediterranean Youth Hostel i'd just left, looked much better, and was literally across the street from the train station i needed to get to Sitges. It was rated a full star lower, but i couldn't see how; this place almost certainly had more than one working toilet, and it looked much more modern and fun.
    I looked through other options for a few minutes, but nothing else could compare; in fact, many of them had notes on the listing that "i would need to stay fewer nights" than what i was requesting. I don't really want to have to move hostels again, if i'm not leaving the city.
    I had booked Safestay Barcelona Passeig de Gràcia before my food even arrived. This is it. I'm here for the duration of my stay on mainland Europe, eight more nights. Then i have that brief coda in Iceland, and then i'm home.
    Booking in the Passeig de Gràcia area also means that the new hostel is very close to the old one. As soon as i was done eating, i walked straight back, grabbed my bag, and made the ten-minute trek over to Safestay.
    I gather that Safestay is a big hostel chain across Europe; there's at least two of them in Barcelona, because one in the Gothic Quarter also showed up on Hostelworld, and in the lobby they were advertising their new location in Edinburgh.
    This particular Safestay is huge. It's eight stories tall, including the ground floor, and the top one has an actual, real, honest-to-god rooftop bar, which you can actually get a great view of the city from. Including the Antoni Gaudí building down the block! From the rooftop bar, i could see that building's rooftop bar, which had a ton of people on it also, plus several strange architectural flourishes, as expected.

    It was only 4:30, i could easily have gone out and done more things today, but i really wanted to get caught up on the log, and i absolutely needed to get my plans in order for the film fest tomorrow. I didn't stay at the rooftop bar long, just went up there to check it out while i was exploring the hostel, but the main bar/cafeteria is on the second floor, which just so happens to be the same floor as my room. Extremely convenient! The two guys checking in ahead of me got assigned the fifth floor; i didn't even know the hostel was that tall at the time, i remember thinking, jeez, if i'm on the fifth floor, i guess i'll take the elevator. I had just done the math; the elevator has a sign on it saying, "No more than 150kg at a time!" I think i'm about 100kg on my own and at this point i'm estimating my bag is another 20. So i should be safe as long as i take it alone. I would just be a little paranoid that an elevator that can take less than two full humans' worth of weight might not be that trustworthy even with just one.
    So i grabbed my laptop and went to the second floor bar, ordered a rum and coke, and got writing. I finished up yesterday's log, then i ordered a pizza, and started combing through tomorrow's Sitges lineup, and bought my tickets. Here's my schedule tomorrow:

11:30 Basileia
14:30 Love Me
16:15 Grand Theft Hamlet
18:30 Bodegón con fantasmas
20:45 Kryptic

    I'm most interested in Love Me; it's a romance movie about two satellites falling in love over the course of a billion years, after the apocalypse. From the blurb, i'm getting some 17776 vibes off of it, which, if we've talked at all since 2017, you already know is my favorite thing. I got a tattoo of one of the characters earlier this year.
    Grand Theft Hamlet is a documentary about two guys who staged a full production of Shakespeare's play within the game Grand Theft Auto.
    I think all of these choices look really good, i'm pretty excited about the lineup. Now i just need to make sure i get up and get out of Barcelona by 10-ish, and i should be set!
    I am a bit worried about that last one. Kryptic is 111 minutes long, and the first day at the festival, nothing i saw started on time. If it *DOES* start on time, then it should end at 22:36. The last regular train out of Sitges is scheduled for 22:58, and that's a 15-20 minute walk from the theater. Hence why i ran last time. Although, the British couple did say it's usually late; but on Thursday, they ended up canceling the god damn train.
    I'm planning to have my laptop with me this time, though, so if i do miss that train or it's canceled, there is *SUPPOSEDLY* a special train, just for the festival, that runs at about 1:30am. I'll just sit on the platform and spend that time writing my log and reviews. Although i don't relish getting back to the hostel at 2:30 in the morning.
    Man i really hope the 11pm train works out.