Days 4 & 5 | Settling In .... Almost

Spending a month somewhere new has its own cadence of reveals. For me it's in a series of concentric circles, if you will. I get to know my apartment (where things are located, how long the hot water for the shower really lasts (not long!), does 50 degree in Spain feel like 50 degrees in Vermont, and of the total of 8 pieces of clothing I brought what's the right combo to wear, etc.

The next circle is the neighborhood and the location of the fruit market, bakery, farmacia, and how many blocks do I go and turn right or left to get to any one of them. Which restaurants do I like, and so on.

The next circle includes destinations well beyond the hood. On Saturday I walked down to the Gothic section with the famous street La Rambla and the Mercado shops. Today I walked down to a specific section within that area called El Born. It was part of Catalonia's mercantile hey day from the 13th century. It's down by the waterfront and was where the craftsmen and guilds were mostly located; silversmiths and the like, along with a collection of gothic mansions that have now turned into museums and galleries.

I figured out that I can plug my earphones in to my Spanish iPhone and listen to the google map directions while I am walking without looking down at the map every 5 minutes. I now look like everyone else walking somewhere rather than standing out as a tourist. It is rather disturbing though how many people walk around looking down. Even all the people sitting in cafes are looking at their phones. Rarely are people looking around them. Even if they live here, I am struck by what they must be missing - the light reflecting off a building, the sight of a small child playing, the smiles and laughter, the general people watching ...

All that being said, I made my way down to El Born easily enough and wandered into a grand park area of which I am still trying to locate the name. It looked like an Arch de Triumph of some kind (pictures below), and it may have been. I did not get to the Santa Maria del Mar Basilica (http://www.santamariadelmarbarcelona.org/home/) but may try to see what their Christmas schedule is. It looks amazing. I was able to wander through the back streets of this section and stopped for a tapas lunch at another mercado (pictures below). I had tried to save the battery on my phone and shut it off but when I did it locked the Spanish SIM card so I wasn't able to reconnect to maps to walk my way back home. I had a video conference call at 3 and while I think I would have been comfortable enough to find my way wandering back now, I didn't want to risk missing the call. I took a taxi back instead. It felt like cheating ;-)

The other rather interesting thing for me personally, is that when I am this far a way and there is no real schedule, I lose sense of time. I found I slept 11 hours last night, which is absolutely unheard of for me. I think I woke once, but just rolled back over. Perhaps it is my body simply recovering from a long year or two. This month will be good for me. I have my fresh fruit and Moroccan mint tea for breakfast, a small homemade tapas plate for lunch and a different one for dinner. I walk every day and look forward to doing a lot more of that, and I spend my evenings out in the neighborhoods or reading. Sometimes I need to remind myself it's good not to have a plan.

Sunday, yesterday, was a rather lazy day. I slept in, did my yoga, found a good walking route up the hill behind my home to Park Guell, a private housing estate designed by Gaudi to build a mini garden city. I have yet to go in and wander around, but it's a terrific short, steep, walk that may become part of my morning routines to get my heart racing a bit. Those 6'2" dark spaniards are already doing that too, but the language so far has been a barrier (it's only day 5..there could still be hope!) Until then, the San Fran-like walk is fun and right there.

I did my daily food shopping and had a tapas lunch at a nearby Moroccan restaurant. Such amazing food and I have no idea what they use for spices but yum! What was fantastic to watch was a family of 8 occupying a good portion of an 8-table-total restaurant and the laughter and the talking over, and all the generations vying to be heard over the other, and the kisses on both cheeks, and I have absolutely no idea of most of what they were saying, but it felt like the weekly Sunday meal where everyone was catching up.

I had talked about finishing my book while I am here, but that creative urge hasn't made itself known yet. I'll give it time.

Perhaps tomorrow I will venture to Montjuic. This area is filled with museums, galleries and theatres, and lots of walking to and fro.

Pictures below include: Family of eight at the Moroccan restaurant, the plaza at El Born, the palm trees (we are equal to Puerto Rico in latitude), the very modern building in the background amongst the relics of the plaza, the decorative dome of nearby housing, the mercado where I stopped for lunch and some of the normal vegetation seen from an apartment balcony.

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