In between our 8 week assignment in Rabat, Morocco and before adventuring to Kwa Tuli, Botswana for our one week assignment, we spent 7 days between Paris, France (for the 2nd time) and Barcelona, Spain. We had a bit of travel pain getting to Paris as Air France was on strike (again) and had notified us that our flight was to be cancelled and to please proceed and make other arrangements, so we scrambled to get another flight out of Rabat in order to arrive in Paris before Monday morning, as Taylor was scheduled to take the GRE. Happy to say all was accomplished, the GRE was taken and then we enjoyed a leisurely afternoon at the Louvre. The crowds were minimal and we were able to really enjoy a nice comfortable pace of art gazing. It was also fashion week in Paris, which gave us a great opportunity to people watch.
We decided to get out of the city on Tuesday to have some fun and adventure at Disneyland Paris. The park was also not crowded and we were able to ride all the rides at least once and our favorites, like the Tower of Terror and the Rockin Roller Coaster multiple times. It was a fun child-like carefree day!
We decided to get out of the city on Tuesday to have some fun and adventure at Disneyland Paris. The park was also not crowded and we were able to ride all the rides at least once and our favorites, like the Tower of Terror and the Rockin Roller Coaster multiple times. It was a fun child-like carefree day!
We arrived in Barcelona in the afternoon on Wednesday and were pleased by our very unresearched hotel choice - we were staying right in central Barcelona on Placa de Catalunya where both the old city and the 19th century buildings meet. We enjoyed a nice long walk down La Rambla, or the Gothic Quarter to the Christopher Columbus Monument at the old port of Barcelona. The tree lined pedestrian street was energetic and quite festive and the port was full of beautiful sailboats, cargo boats and even an ocean cruise ship.
We started off our next morning with a tour of Codorniu, the oldest family run winery in Spain. They made the first bottle of cava, the Spanish champagne, in 1872, but the family has been making wine since 1551. It was a great tour as all the buildings were personally designed to incorporate the history of this family wine making business and you could sense the family pride. The wine producing and storing is done in underground caves and tunnels and it’s amazing how large the winery actually is as all you see from the ground level is a nice farm, a few outposts buildings and fields of grapes. The tunnels seems just as big as the grape vineyards. We first descended by elevator down into the ground and then needed a trolley to see just how us how the wine is fermented, aged and stored. It really was quite impressive. This wine country is 80 percent white wine and they use primarily 3 Cataluna grapes. There are 262 wineries in this region today and most of their wines are exported from the region. We learned that the Vatican is responsible for drinking 2 1/2 bottles of wine per week, the average per household in France and Italy is 1 bottle per week and although the preferred drink in Spain is actually beer, it is normal for each household to have a bottle of cava in their fridge. The wine tour concluded with a nice wine and cava tasting before we started up the Sadurini Mountain (stands at about 4000 feet), which is roughly translated as the serrated mountain due to its irregular shape and the many fossils of water animals from when the mountain range was under the sea. The town on the mountain is one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in Spain: the Shrine of our Lady of Montserrat.
The history around the Lady of Montserrat has a few varying stories, but according to the Catholic tradition, the statue of the Black Virgin of Montserrat was carved by St. Luke in 50 AD and brought to Spain and then was later hidden from the Moors in a cave, called the Holy Grotto where it was rediscovered in 880 AD. By the 9th century there were four chapels on Monserrat. Many miracles were reported through the intercession of the Virgin Mary at Montserrat and so although the legend indicated the original black virgin was too magical and heavy, the historians state it was in the 12th century that the Madonna and Child was made and very quickly the statue earned widespread fame as numerous miracles was associated with the new Black Virgin of Montserrat. Today there is one basilica which in 1881 was crowned in accordance with Canon Law and proclaimed patron saint of Catalonia by Pope Leo XIII. The Benedictine Abbey on Montserrat today houses the black madonna and child statue in the basilica along with one monastery, home to about 85 Benedictine monks, 37 nuns and has the oldest boy choir in Europe.
Back into the city of Barcelona for dinner, we decided to enjoy a traditional Cantalunya dinner and authentic dancing entertainment with the Tablao Flamenco Cordobes, which is the artistic flamenco dancing on the small tablao platform creating an intimate and genuine experience. The musicians and the dancers were quite dynamic and vivacious. The whole experience really drew you in and made you feel every part of the emotions they were feeling as they performed. This dinner experience as well as our wine tour and the visit to Montserrat really gave us some of the heritage and flavor of Barcelona.
One thing that we were looking forward to when we decided to visit Barcelona was the artistic influence of Gaudi. So our next day was dedicated to exploring and learning more about Antoni Gaudi. We spent our day walking and visiting the Sagrada Familia and Gaudi's Park Guell.
Antoni Gaudí is a significant and outstanding figure of Catalan culture, international architecture, and Barcelona. He was first and foremost an architect, but he also designed furniture and objects and worked in town planning and landscaping. Gaudi’s work is highly expressive and unique many say he has created a body of work that speaks directly to the senses.
Gaudi received the commission to build La Sagrada Familia in 1883 and he spent most of his professional career working on this structure and continued working on the design and model until his death in 1926. Those who have been working on La Sagrada Familia since Gaudi’s death have used all the geometric forms and the established laws of the relation between them from his original design and model work with the current architects carrying out the ideas into construction. This entire church has been built by donations, so it has claimed to be the universal sign of identity of the city and the country and is planned to be finished. In 2005, La Sagrada Familia was added to the UNESCO world heritage site list and the plans to finish the church between in 2026-28.
We left Barcelona for our travels to Johannesburg ready and excited for the next adventure in the bush of Botswana.