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so right now i’m in paris staying at the amazing apartment of my dear friend cecile. this morning i woke up at 6am in the tiny pueblo que se llama Vejer De La Frontera, where i stayed for two days with my new friend (and big dance theater alum) Ally.
Vejer is one of a handful of towns on the southern coast of spain that has some of the only virgin beaches left in the world. no hotels. no boardwalks or amusement parks. just sand, surf, rocks and a couple of amazing bars and restaurants.
here are some shots of sevilla en route to the estación santa justa - aka big train station. another view than the beautiful catedral…
yesterday i visited the largest gothic cathedral in the world, right here in good ole’ sevilla.
this place is mind-blowingly huge and ornate. i highly recommend stopping by if you are in the area…
during my camino en sevilla yesterday i couldn’t help but notice all of the massive shopping areas and kiosks plopped in the middle of various monuments and plazas. above: a kiosk in the center of plaza de españa.
this is an italian clock store. how creepy are these things?
this is the most amazing thing i’ve ever seen. where are dunkin donut’s copyright lawyers when you need them?
yesterday i strolled around sevilla for hours with my map and camera just snapping photos and exploring. is it me, or are the skies in spain just so much more vibrant than anywhere else? i won’t caption each one, but shots include the largest gothic catherdral in the world (which i will hopefully explore the inside of today or tomorrow), various streets in el bario santa cruz, plaza de españa, la alameda de hércules and el rio guadalquivir (which, as i remember from spanish class, is the most navigable river in spain). if you have any questions about what’s what, email me or write a comment.
i like a city with a river - i live in one that’s got two. but in order for the infrastructure and aesthetics to work, the idea of the waterfront must be taken advantage of. lyon for instance is another city that does this successfully. prague is one that doesn’t. a few shots down you can see a little floating cafe that rents paddleboats on the river. i had the worst cup of coffee in spain there, but it was still nice. yay for accessible water systems.
“there’s something about a city on the beach.”
that was my quote of the day as we walked down this street in barceloneta on monday, my last full day in barcelona. apparently, twenty years ago there was no beach. barcelona was just a massive port of trade, but now the beach is a draw and augments the city’s debaucherous reputation - giving a daytime leisure equivalent to bcn’s world class nightlife. it’s like los angeles but spanish - and with more art. cities are like cake batter. you add various elements to affect sweetness, texture, etc. the addition of hollywood to any beautiful beach town will inevitably lead to a kind of sourdough, bitter, fluffy cake. in other words - barcelona is like the los angeles you can actually live in.
but would i actually live there?
that’s the question i ask whenever i go to a new city. barcelona was kind of my main reason for coming to spain at all. i had heard so much about it and i wanted to see if it lived up to all the hype. as you may have read here, my first impressions of barcelona were not necessarily the best. thankfully i was able to meet some amazing people that showed me an amazing time, and now i have a markedly higher opinion of the city. as for permanent residence, i can’t really say. madrid seems to still be my spanish love, but the art scene in spain definitely lives in barcelona. as a designer, it would absolutely be the most fruitful place for me to be in spain. from the galleries and shops in el born, to the contemporary art museum in el raval to poble nau’s open studios, barcelona is a perfect climate for new and innovative design.
my new friends in barcelona include print-makers, painters, documentary film-makers and dj’s and they all absolutely rock. from lovely dinner parties to tapas to all-nighters at razzmatazz, every social interaction i experienced was genuine, non-pretentious and fascinating. if by any chance any of you are reading this : you’ve got a place to crash in nyc! (that means you, clare, becks, tom, james, dix, ninian, john, hiroshi, steve & all you other awesome folk!)
at long last, here are my pics from our visit to ‘temple expiatori de la sagrada familia,’ the unfinished masterpiece of catalan architect antonin gaudí. they’ve been working on it for over 100 years and it should be finished in about 20.
i’ll be back when it’s done. promise.
so we got to barcelona yesterday, via ryan air from madrid to girona - a small airport about an hour and a half south of barcelona - and then a cheap bus ride. apparently it’s very expensive to fly directly to barcelona (which of course has it’s own airport) so most people fly to girona or reus.
yesterday i was in a pissy mood for some reason. maybe it was our frat-house hostel, homesickness or worries of spending my last dime on tapas and having to sell my body on the street to get back to lyon at the end of the month. in order to ease my pain, jess and i had dinner with the gays in the gay-borhood of barcelona which has a catalan name that means “left of the example” at this fabulous and cheap cafeteria that was packed. an injection of gayness got me through the night and today, after doing some much-needed laundry, i booked it over to casa mila by gaudí.
learning about this building in high school got me pumped, and i gotta say, the slides just don’t do it justice.
i went to toledo almost ten years ago when i came to spain on a high school field trip and just had to go back. this little old (stress OLD) town is by no means a tourist trap, despite the throngs of dutch folk wandering around getting sunburnt, and happened to be the home of cervantes and a whole bunch of kings of spain. here are some stunning photos (if i do say so myself) of the walled city on a hill :
i look like this dude right?
he’s king phillip IV of spain, painted by velazquez. where’s my crown, bitch?
rockin’ pictures of el dos de mayo and toledo to come.
xo c