In Barcelona: day 1

November 14, 2024

I’m sitting around the apartment savoring my first coffee of the morning when the phone rings. It’s Rachael, of course. She went out on a pastry hunt this morning looking for my favorite raisin rolls because the bakery shelves were pretty barren when she went grocery shopping yesterday afternoon, but forgot to take the keys to the building with her. She’s down on the street, calling partly to let me know she needs help but also to know if she’s even standing at the right door because the interior looks different and unfamiliar this morning.

I remind her of the building’s street number and she confirms she’s at the right place. While we’re talking I’m putting on my shoes and looking for the keys when she says “Oh, thank you!” And then lets me know someone just let her in, thinking she looked trustworthy enough.

All of which is background for explaining this photograph that she took of the hallway when she was trying to decide if it was ours or not.

Rachael has really gotten into selfies lately. She’s in training to be an entry-level Influencer is my understanding.

So here’s a problem. It’s pretty chilly this morning and neither one of us wants to go out this early (except for those pastries of course). We decide to flip our day and have lunch first and go out in the afternoon, but that means we’re pretty time constrained because sundown is around 5:30 now so neither of us ends up completing what we had planned.

And we’re time-challenged in a second way here because it’s the next day and after a morning activity, a late lunch and a walk to see the Sagrada Familia before sundown I haven’t got much posting time or energy left. So we’ll just blast through this quickly and strive to do better tomorrow.

Rachael’s plan was about an eleven mile loop walk up into the hills north of town. The twelve miles didn’t happen, and neither did the loop. Instead she came back with a seven mile irregular out and back. The main issue besides the time limitation was that she got slowed down by the fact that I’d routed her through Park Gruell, one of the big attractions in town but one that requires a significant admission fee. This late in the day it didn’t make sense to pay the fee and visit the park (again, since we’ve been there before) so she just randomly wandered around streets looking for views. She found some.

I don’t do any better. My plan was a 25 mile ride west of town to a river delta that looks like a promising birding area, but that gets scrapped almost immediately. First, I bike past a striking building just a few blocks from the apartment and stop to check it out from various angles. So that slows me down right off the bat.

Then, by chance I find myself biking through the Gràcia District in front of the famous row of Gaudi-designed mansions that are one of the most famous sights in Barcelona. We’ve seen these before, but they’re so amazing that I can’t just bike by without having another look. And, because of thousands of other people find their way here it’s slow going making my way through the crowds.

Next to Casa Batlló is the just as remarkable Casa Amatiler.

The figure on the right reminds me of Virginia Wolff. I wonder how old this building is.

And then there’s one more sight I need to stop for, a massive, ornate marketplace that occupies an entire large city block and reminds me a bit of a Japanese pagoda.

All of this completely blows my time budget so I shelve the birding idea for another day and head to nearby Montjuic, the hill lining the waterfront and separating the harbor from the city. I’m thinking I’ll get some views, and that definitely happens. Also I get a workout, especially on the initial slop that registers at 14% and feels like it.

But there’s much more. Montjuic is a premier destination that justifiably draws large crowds - to see the remarkable views, to visit the fort, to take the tram to the top, to admire the gardens, or just to bike to the top and then turn around and coast back as I saw many doing today. I’m pretty sure that if we lived in Barcelona I’d find my way up there over and over again.

There’s a lot to be said about Montjuic and a lot more to be seen than from my ride along just one edge. A couple of things though. Motjuic means Jewish Mountain, and the mountain is the site of what was the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe of its time. And there’s an Olympic Stadium on the hill, from when it was the venue for several events in the Summer Olympics of 1992. The stadium was built for the 1929 International Exposition, with the initial intent that it be used in 1936 as the site for an anti-fascist Olympics in opposition to the one in Hitler’s Berlin. The event was canceled though when the Spanish Civil War broke out.

The fact that delights me the most to learn though was that Montjuic played a role in the first definition of the meter as a unit of measurement. From Wikipedia:

In June 1792 a pair of French astronomers set out to measure the meridian arc distance from Dunkirk to Barcelona, two cities lying on approximately the same longitude as each other and also the longitude through Paris. The fortress on Montjuïc was chosen as the reference point in Barcelona. After protracted negotiations (France and Spain were technically at war) Méchain made his measurements from the fortress on 16 March 1794.

Using this measurement and the latitudes of the two cities they could calculate the distance between the North Pole and the Equator in classical French units of length and hence produce the first prototype metre which was defined as being one ten millionth of that distance.

So the meter was conceived as being one ten millionth the distance between the North Pole and the Equator. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. What a neat fact to know

I’m curious what these marvelous trees are in the Plaça de l'Armada.

A hint, in case anyone is up for a challenge.

Montjuic Fort. It looks like it’s time to head home.

On the way down, another biker pulls up and complements me on the Bike Friday. He’s got quite a fine ride himself - a Tern with a Rohloff hub; and he’s fully loaded. From the Netherlands, he’s just killing time now waiting for boarding for his midnight sailing to Sardinia. Beyond that he plans to move on to mainland Italy and then maybe catch the ferry to Greece.

He’s found the right plan for himself - six months working, six months biking. And he has an appealing and simpatico point of view on life itself as well as politics (and has no plans to visit America for at least the next four years).

Jan, I think he said his name was. You’d think I could remember an easy three letter name for 24 hours, but no. Sorry guy, if you read this.

We chat for a fair spell but then I excuse myself because I’m running out of daylight. And I really have cut it too close again, because it’s very slow going biking home because I don’t have a route and am just winging it and because the tourist crowd is so dense as I bike past first the Rambla, and then the cathedral, and then through the Plaza Espana. I don’t allow myself time to stop for much of anything though because I don’t want to be caught out after dark and not really knowing where I’m going in a huge, strange city.

I make it back, but just in time. Cars and bikes have their lights on by the time I enter my neighborhood, but I’m close enough now and know where I’m going for one last stop - for what must be the fullest moon of the tour.

Casa Rocomadora, across Passeig de Gràcia from the Gauldi mansion above.

Looks pretty full to me but it’s still a day shy.

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Today's ride: 12 miles (19 km)
Total: 4,794 miles (7,715 km)

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Susan CarpenterLoved the story on the origin of the meter. I find it much more satisfying than the origin story of the yard, which in the 12th century was fixed by King Henry I to be the distance between his nose and the thumb on his outstretched arm. Thanks
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1 day ago

Scott AndersonTo Susan CarpenterI’m really surprised I’ve never heard this before. It’s such an uplifting story about man’s quest for knowledge. And it makes me rather sad too, living by comparison in an age when we seem to be throwing away the value of science and knowledge. It feels like we’re willfully driving ourselves back into the Dark Ages.
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6 hours ago