Barcelona

Two Perspectives 

He plans their trip around acclaimed art and architecture sights; She thrives on serendipity and craves the undiscovered. Will Barcelona make them both happy?

By: Hugh Delehanty* and Barbara Graham**

 

It was our first morning in Barcelona, and things weren’t off to a great start. As soon as we landed I realized my faux Castilian wasn’t going to get me far in this fiercely proud, Catalan-speaking city.

(HUGH) “Please, no more Catalan,” my wife, Barbara, protested, “you’re giving me a migraine.”
It’s a family sickness. When I was a kid, my schoolteacher mom turned vacations into history lessons. Barbara is not that kind of traveler. She is a creative wanderer who frowns on guidebooks, preferring to stroll along waiting for wonder to happen.

(BARBARA) For months before our trip Hugh devoured books on Spain, even waking me one night with the news that King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella had been on hand to greet Columbus when he sailed into Barcelona in 1493. I was not amused. I didn’t harbor great expectations, though. My pre-trip research was limited to finding the best hotel we could afford: the Neri, a renovated 18th-century palace in the Barri Gotic (the old city’s Gothic quarter), that was as perfect in reality as it seemed online.
Unlike Hugh, I arrived in Barcelona with no list of must-see sights. My modus operandi is to set off on foot, in the direction of a neighborhood where people actually live, or a restaurant. In Barcelona, this couldn’t be easier: With its many pedestrian rambles – including the famous promenade Las Ramblas – the city is a walker’s dream.

(HUGH) Barcelona is not an easy city to decipher. Clearly we were going to need help. The man for the job, Barbara decided, would be a young American habitue of Barcelona named Jordan Susselman, who fell so hard for the city when he visited in 2000 that he decided to stay and unlock its secrets. In 2006, he started a tour company called “Hi. This is Barcelona.”

(BARBARA) Like Jordan, I wanted to discover the secret of this city slung like a hammock between mountains and sea. And what could be more meaningful than the Boqueria market, with its riot of vegetables, fruits and fresh, glistening fish? Yet there is something even more compelling about Barcelona than its markets and traditions that seems to captivate all who enter its energy field.
Jordan led us through the jumble of narrow streets that compose El Raval, once Barcelona’s seedy underbelly; the barrio was a source of inspiration for Picasso, as well as the setting for “The Thief’s Journal,” by Jean Genet. You can catch an exhibit at the opened-in-1995 Museum of Contemporary Art or do as we did, and have tapas with a nouvelle twist at El Jardi, a cafe tucked among orange trees in the courtyard of a former Hospital

(HUGH) After saying goodbye to Jordan, Barbara and I negotiated a truce. She agreed to devote more time to formal sightseeing. Our first stop was Pinotxo, at the Boqueria market, known for its classic truita amb pataca (omelette with potatoes), which we finished off. We then headed for the Eixample, the city’s open-air museum of modernista architecture. I was more interested in Gaudi's less ambitious works, especially Casa Batllo, a newly refurbished house on Passeig de Gracia. The interior is a free-flowing world of rounded windows and doorways and aquamarine tiles that makes you feel as if you’re floating underwater. From there we headed to Gaudi’s Casa Mila, an otherworldly apartment building with cavelike walls and serpentine balconies, capped by a surrealistic roof deck studded with white chimneys and ventilators (which, allegedly, were models for Darth Vader and the Death Star’s guards in “Star Wars” films).
After wandering Casa Mila’s curvilinear passageways -- there are no straight lines in Gaudi’s universe -- I felt as if I had stepped through the looking glass. The next thing I knew, we were lost in the backstreets of Gracia, a mazelike neighborhood near Barcelona’s university. Her face brightened as we came upon Placa de Rius i Taulet, a charming square with a 19th-century clock tower and a gaggle of children chasing a dog around its base.

(BARBARA) We’d just scored a table at a busy cafe in another of Gracia’s delightful squares, Placa de la Virreina. It was that delightful interlude between the workday and dinnertime, when communal life was in full swing, abetted by plates piled high with tapas.
The reason I loved Placa de la Virreina is the same reason Hugh would never have found his way here. It is rarely mentioned in guidebooks and has no extraordinary artworks. In fact, the Gracia area began as a working-class village. With its squares, small shops, and galleries, as well as a melting pot of international cuisines, the neighborhood retains an arty small-town charm. Greenwich Village on the Mediterranean.
After the sun set, we found our way to Mesopotamia, an appealing Iraqi restaurant in the heart of the neighborhood. As the Iraq-born owner, Pius Alibek, fed us dishes he had learned from his mother -- including the house specialty, bulgur with minced beef, vegetables and nine secret spices -- I discovered another secret about Barcelona: Nobody is exactly who they appear to be.
Alibek not only holds a Ph.D. in comparative linguistics; he was awarded a Medal of Honor by the mayor of Barcelona for his promotion of world peace. What’s more, he hosts his own program on Radio Catalunya about cuisines of the world.
We ducked into Senyor Parellada, a restaurant on Carrer de la Argenteria, between the El Born and Barri Gotic districts, little did I expect that we were about to have one of our best meals in Barcelona. Everything was superb. The xai de Montseny – roasted lamb with roasted garlic and creamy potatoes – was so tender that I moved it to the top of my best-dish list, unseating the celebrated leg of lamb at Chez L’Ami Louis, in Paris.

* Hugh Delehanty is a writer and editor.
** Barbara Graham is a contributing writer for O, The Oprah Magazine.