We had such a great time on our vacation that my husband and I are thinking of canceling all the planned budgetary items that involve house improvements over the next few years in favor of going on more vacations. But where?

We definitely liked the city thing, that was perfect for us, and there are so many cities that I assumed we would have no trouble choosing destinations for however much time we have left, but this might not be the case. Today I happened to speak to a friend who visited Australia this summer, and she said it was impossible to get dinner or groceries there after about 8 PM, mostly because they don’t have enough people to work menial jobs and they very much do not want non-white people to enter their country. Even worse, the legal code treats Aboriginal people differently, as in they have different rights and are allowed to do different things compared to white people, by which I mean fewer things.

Countries that regulate residents by race are usually not on my must-visit list.

The same friend also felt that Germany was similar, at least in terms of closing early; I believe Germany is currently an enthusiastic recruiter of immigrants. I think Berlin might be a good fit for us, but not if it doesn’t have any nightlife. On the other hand, one of our sons went a few years ago and had no trouble finding nightlife so it may be specific to where one stays or what one seeks.

This leads one to think about what is it about a city that one really likes. Starting with myself as the first one, I would say diversity, energy, street life, fabulous public transportation, and a wide variety of interesting things to do and see. I like to take my time at home in the morning and then stay out late. I like for the city to be clean and well run, and for the neighborhood where I’m staying to be safe until at least midnight.

I guess we will be investigating the possibilities over the next few months or years.

Meanwhile, there’s always Paris and London, those work. Or we could even go back to Barcelona. Or maybe the Barcelona we experienced has already disappeared, like Brigadoon, and one can only savor the memories.

I’m stateside now, but hoping to finish blogging some more of our trip before I forget it. We got home Monday evening and I slept 12 hours Monday and then 11 hours Tuesday, which is the day it is now. So I’m almost back to normal from the time zone perspective, and also in the sense that the memories are already slipping. I’m trying to sort through it by the dates on the pictures, but there is a definite possibility that the group of items I cover on this post didn’t actually happen on the same day.

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a bag of sand was a hole in it. There still does to be some stuff in there though, so maybe it’s a very, very small hole, or a poor metaphor.

Our Barcelona trip was entirely spent in four neighborhoods. Eixample, our home base, includes many small businesses, several Modernist buildings, and Sagrada Familia. West of it is Gràcia, which we only visited once, when we went to Park Guell. East of it is the Cuidad Vella, or Old City, which includes La Rambla, Gotic Barri, El Born, and Barceloneta and abuts the Mediterranean. South of both Eixample and Cuidad Vella is the huge neightborhood of Sants-Montjuic, which includes Montjuic, a bluff overlooking the water with both cultural and natural attractions, and the commercial port of Barcelona.

On March 3rd we started with our chef-led tapas-making class, which took place in the chef’s apartment in Barceloneta. It did not seem appropriate to take pictures inside someone else’s house, but we did get one from the balcony, which shows some of the many extra yachts in town to see the America’s cup races.

After the class we decided to take the tram from Barceloneta to Montjuic, a very good cardiac workout for a acrophobe such as myself. The tram ride is about six minutes long, extending between a tower on the beach and a land station about halfway up the bluff. I was clutching a pole in the middle, but my husband got pictures looking north toward the modern city, south at the commercial port, down from the midway point, and coming in for a landing.

Olympic venues from the 1992 games are scattered about the city, and we stopped at a concession near the Natatorium, which has a beautiful view. Sagrada Familia is shown by an arrow in the long shot and then again in a closeup. As you may remember, its highest tower when finished will be a few feet shorter than Montjuic, but the cranes seem to be a little taller than that.

We ended the afternoon at the Fundació Joan Miró, a fun museum at which I took zero pictures of the paintings though they were lovely. I did pose with a friend at the entrance, and took one picture of the Solar Bird, which appeared in many guises and sizes, often alongside the Lunar Bird. The last shot shows the accessible model of the facility, which was designed to be touched. There was another model for the sighted.

In contrast to pretty much all of our friends, my husband and I are visual art challenged, but we both really enjoyed the Miro. Amusingly, Miro also has a large mosaic installation on the street in La Rambla near the Liceu opera venue which we must have walked over at least three times yet never noticed. We looked at pictures later. It is huge, and brightly colored. Feel free to draw any conclusions that seem correct.

… Is certainly Sagrada Familia, which is also his most famous, as well as the largest structure by volume and height. Larger in site area, however, and much more popular as measured by visitor density, is Park Guell. These are the only two Gaudi sites one must pre-book in order to be assured of a visit.

Surely many more people visit S. Familia, but it’s such a large building that you can find a space for yourself even while surrounded by others. Park Guell is another story. The park itself covers 45 acres, but the Gaudi portions comprise only a fraction of that.

We started with a bus ride, on a city bus that was crowded when we got on and jammed by the time we reached our stop, at which two-thirds of the passengers dismounted. I greatly amused a companion by exclaiming, Surely all these people aren’t going to Park Guell!

They were.

Pathways and promenades, vistas and plazas, pavilions and viaducts, all were crawling with humanity. There were long lines for entry into buildings, stairs were packed railing-to-railing, and even to take a picture you had to wait for others to finish. It reminded me of the Mona Lisa, a small painting protected by thick glass, live guards, and velvet ropes, with a long line of hopefuls waiting for a brief glimpse.

Some–I mean all–of our photos contain people as well as things. This is the exit, originally designed as the main entrance to what was intended to be a gated community, but it was too far from Barcelona to attract tenants, so Gaudi sold it to the city as a park. It’s flanked by two lovely little houses but we didn’t get a picture of the entire expanse. It’s known as the Stairway to Heaven. I think this predates Led Zeppelin.

The Guardian of the Stairway, followed by a close-up of his hide.

Here’s one of many adorable edifices that most people of the time didn’t want to move this far to live in. There are several, mostly repurposed as museums with additional entry fees, but all the structures are of this ilk. This could be a restroom for all I remember.

Here’s a closer look at the top of the colonnade that crowns the Stairway entrance. It is a plaza outlined by a very long Dragon Bench. You can some heads poking up, representing a few of the hundreds of people on the plaza.

My husband took that picture from our favorite spot, a relatively unvisited promenade perhaps 200 meters long, near a small forest. It was quiet enough to hear cries of the ubiquitous monk parakeets, and included the statue of the water-bearing woman below.

The original entrance is the tourist exit, as I mentioned. The tourist entrance is near the top of the park, where one can find a colonnade that is sort of a precursor of the forest nave of S. Familia in the way the columns form a canopy at the top. Note some are tilted, as real trees would be.

From the top, or close to the top is a view of far-away Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea, with which I will end this post.

Our first eleven days in Barcelona were slow with respect to visitors. After that, we scheduled three consecutive couples staying six, five, and four days. We’re in the midst of that now, and I have not any time to blog. Too busy having fun! After today, I may not get another chance until I’m home in California.

I do have a little time this afternoon though, so I’m going to write about the Gaudi edifice mentioned in the title. This one I found truly impressive, the most fanciful and creative of all the ones I plan to see on this trip. It’s a single-family home with a theme of marine life and an interior composed of wood, tile, and stucco arranged in a series of nature-mimicking curves. In addition to being beautiful, it is well-engineered and ergonomic.

All the words in the world can’t do it justice, and I was so stunned I didn’t take a lot of pictures, so I’m hoping these few will help you imagine the rest. Let’s start in the dining room, looking at the ceiling.

Next is the door entering the dining room from from the study. Notice the texture of the walls. The tri-fold wooden door makes a perfect seal with the complex shape above the opening.

This is the front window of the dining room looking out onto the main street. Keep that marine environment theme in your mind. Also notice the crowds; this is a popular site, though hardly Gaudi’s most popular. There are latches between the lowest windows and those above them, shown in the second shot below.

This window can become a balcony! First open all the latches roughly at waist level across the entire opening, then find a hinged, vertical panel at your left which conceals a lever. That moves the upper windows in some manner–we did not see this done–leaving the lower portion with the latches now serving as the railing to an open balcony.

Your many notice the street Passeig de Gracia, is particularly crowded. This was October 6, and there was another large free Palestine demonstration, the second we’ve seen.

Finally I will reveal the facade. The configurable balcony would open the upper part of the middle of the second story, which is the lowest level shown in this shot. Also notice the serrated wall at the top which forms a dragon’s back. You’ll see the other side of that later.

Now for a few random glimpses. There are two ground to roof openings to circulate light and air, which fill the entire structure wonderfully. Those shafts look like this from the inside.

There are some gorgeous stairwells of many different designs. Here’s one.

Even the simplest features seem fluid and biological.

Now let’s skip to the roof. Instead of making 27 holes for the 27 chimneys, Gaudi grouped them, making the roof seem spacious and exposing views of Barcelona at many angles. In this shot you can see the central skylight at the left, one group of eight chimneys, and a portion of the features at the front of the building, including the one known as the dragon’s back, which conceals a clever water distribution system. The roof includes a concession where one can enjoy a drink al fresco. After all those stairs, we were happy to indulge.

Gaudi made a model of the exterior. According to an interpretive sign I don’t completely believe, he directed the construction using only this, no other drawings or plans. And yes, the sign was in English.

I have no more words to summarize this creation than I did to introduce it, so I will bid farewell.

After four years of dreaming and six months of planning, we have finally started our first true retirement vacation, in Barcelona. As a routine-oriented homebody I had some trepidation about this trip before it happened, but in the moment I couldn’t be happier.

I managed to manipulate my medical team into getting me into my Velcro cast the day before we left, and I survived the 11 1/2 hour flight with nothing worse than sleep deprivation and swollen ankles. Since we arrived in our Eixample neighborhood apartment, it’s been pure magic. Our neighborhood is lively and safe, the city is beautiful, every person has been very friendly, the language “barrier” is just not a problem, and we are so relaxed we’re pretty much ready to move here, or we might be if we weren’t too old.

Because of the tension between Catalonia and the Castilian government of Spain, Barcelona was not allowed to remove its city walls until late in the 19th century, after most other major cities of Europe had done so. The delay allowed Barcelona to learn from some of their mistakes, so the expansion was careful to incorporate local artisans and architects, to place beauty and equity over efficiency, and to prioritize the needs of pedestrians over vehicle operators-not always, and not always forever, but often, and very much as an ongoing discussion.

Eixample, which means expansion in Catalan, was the first area to extend outside the city walls, so it has regular blocks of one-quarter kilometer per side, with every intersection forming an octagon by cutting off the corner of the four blocks that meet. This creates a bit of a scrum for both vehicles–including bicycles, motor scooters, monowheels, emergency vehicles, buses, and delivery vehicles–and people, with the borders between streets and sidewalks somewhat blurred.

While this may sound dangerous, it provides more visibility for both pedestrians and operators and more open space in front of buildings. Everyone has to be alert, which allows them to make suitable decisions. We’ve noticed crosswalk controls being treated quite practically: Operators with a red light who notice the crosswalk is empty may proceed, whereas pedestrians with a red symbol may notice there are no cars and also proceed, yet no one seems to do so when inappropriate. It’s actually empowering, and also engenders trust.

While planning the trip I read a lot of things about Barcelona that I appreciate. Although the decision is controversial and still under stress, there is a statute that would eliminate apartment rentals to tourists within two years, forcing them to stay in hotels. This is a simple remedy to the problem of the tourist business snapping up all the real estate, which raises housing costs for people who live there.

We could totally use this in Santa Cruz, a poster city for high housing costs, homelessness, and shuttered businesses, all of which have worsened every year since we moved there. Santa Cruzans, we love you, but you have to stop blaming UCSC for these problems. We can do something to fix them!

Back to Barcelona, there are areas that are free to enter if you are a resident and require a small fee if you are not, which is also the case in San Francisco, and I think it makes sense. All residents should get more benefit and less penalty from the tourists flocking to the desirable place in which they live, not just those lucky or wealthy enough to have snapped up property in advance, and those over-propertied owners should be willing to share.

It’s not because of them that people want to come visit, and those visits won’t stop when the city becomes more livable for residents.

My husband and I are trying to be very good tourists. Although we did rent an apartment, a splurge we justified by the fact that we haven’t vacationed in Europe since 2001, we were careful to choose one that is officially approved by the government and to pay the extra visitor fees for ourselves and our guests. So far we’ve been eating in local establishments in which we find ourselves the sole English-speakers, including the employees. We haven’t done much shopping, but we’re planning to seek out the local craft establishments that remain, many of which have been closed in recent years.

This is not entirely due to tourism; Barcelonians are just as likely as anyone to be tempted by the convenience of Amazon and the predictability of chain stores. But we don’t have to pile on. We are delighted to do what we can to keep Barcelona delightful!