ARCHITECTURE "All of Antoni Gaudí's architecture is amazing.
It's all over
Barcelona, and any guidebook will tell you the
various places. You have to visit the Gaudí buildings, especially
La Sagrada Família, the Sacred Family. He didn't finish it, but it
was his idea of how to make a church, and it's pretty awesome.
You'll never see anything like it anywhere else in the world. You
have to climb up into the towers and look down from inside. It's
really whimsical. You have to see his other buildings, too. Like
the Casa Milà, which sort of looks like a mermaid. Everything about
it is fishlike with scales."
SHOPPING "There's an antiques street, Carrer de Banys Nous,
which basically means 'new bath.' There must have been baths on
this street a long time ago. Now, it's the antiques street right
near the Cathedral. Barcelona also has El Corte Inglés, their sort
of
Neiman Marcus or Macy's, a big department store where you can
get everything. You should also just
head for Passeig de Gràcia,
the main street that has a lot of great shops."
BRUNCH "For brunch, a great place to go is El Gran Café in
the Barrio Gothico. It has wonderful turn-of-the-century décor. You
know, kind of art nouveau with wood and brass. They have terrific
egg dishes and smoked salmon with blinis. I always had terrific
food there in the daytime."
WALKS "You have to walk up and down La Rambla, a famous
street leading all the way down to the port area. The Gipsy Kings
even mention it in one of their songs. They say, 'I'm walking down
the Ramblas of Barcelona,' in Spanish. It's a place where there's a
lot of street activity: mimes and portrait painters, kiosks,
newsstands, places where you can buy all kinds of guidebooks and
foreign magazines. Everybody is walking past each other, looking at
each other. It's also nice to take a walk along the beach toward
the
Olympic Stadium area. There is this strange bronzy-gold,
high-in-the-sky sculpture, which I always thought of as either a
fish or a tri-cornered hat. If you get close to that sculpture,
you'll soon arrive at Moll de la Fusta, a promenade with good
open-air restaurants."