Fain In Spain, Stay Mainly In...Alley

My visit to Barcelona focused mainly on the Southern part of the city that leads up to the Waterfront. Among the attractions is the Barri Gotic district, also known as the Gothic Quarter and is the area in which the old town of Barcelona is situated. In a lot of way this reminds me of the Macau when I was a kid, with a lot of small (irregular) back alleys that you are stunned to found out cars are allowed to drive through









Even some of the most famous and breathtaking landmarks in Barcelona are located in some back alley, such as El Palau de la Música Catalana.



El Palau de la Música Catalana is a Modernista style concert hall built in the beginning of last century. The early twentieth century saw the rise of Modernisme movement in Spain, or in specific among the Catalans in Spain. For those who are unfamiliar with Spanish history like me, Catalonia is one of the seventeen Autonomous Communities of Spain. The Modernisme movement is an expression of the Catalan nationalism where the Catalans strived to establish themselves as a culture and even nation apart from the Spanish. Even to these days there are two separate languages spoken in Barcelona, Catalan and Spanish, and Modernisme the word itself is Catalan for Modernism.



Modernista style architecture often references to the Medieval Age, the time when the Catalan culture started to develop its own identity.



The interior of El Palau de la Música Catalana is equally out of this world in particular the Stained-glass skylight of the stage. Unfortunately there is no photograph allowed in the interior but you can find its photo from the net.



One regret I had for this trip was that I didn't get the ticket to La traviata, which was being performed in El Palau de la Música Catalana that Sunday during my stay. It is particularly unfortunate because being a Catholic country, most shops are closed on Sunday in Barcelona anyway. What better way to spend a Sunday with a night at the opera?

For a spectacular construction, El Palau de la Música Catalana is difficult to frame due to its location. There isn't too much room on these alleys for you to capture the structure in its entire glory.



That actually is a common problem for many of the tourist attractions in Spain, such as La Seu Cathedral



or Museu Picasso de Barcelona





These alleys are so spatially challenged that often I had to crawl on the floor in order to take the picture. In this particular alley the building on the left is so tilted that it even looks like what we used to find in Kowloon Walled City (九龍城寨) in Hong Kong



The picture doesn't quite do the tilt of the building justice but neither does the video


Unlike Macau or Kowloon Walled City, if you made a turn in one of these back alleys, very often it would lead you to a separate court. That kind of looks like the Siheyuan (四合院) in Beijing







One difficulty of traveling by yourself is to take photo of yourself. I was playing with the timer of my digital camera when I took the above picture. The couple in the lower left corner offered to take a picture of me after they saw me keep running around. So the picture below is about the only decent picture of me in this trip