Short week in Paris, long weekend in Barcelona

So much to write! I am so tired right now though since I have gotten a total of 8 hours sleep over the past two nights. I will suck it up a little while longer to write before I forget everything.

My short week in Paris was good. I met up with a Kappa friend who finished her master this past fall and is now living in Paris at Odéon and caught up with her a bit, which was fun and a good Monday night activity. I will hopefully get to see her again before the quarter ends. Tuesday was full of annoying class with papers due and a midterm. I happily spent the afternoon at Musée Rodin, though, which was great. The museum is an indoor/outdoor affair, with a huge collection of his works and interesting write-ups. I found his iron cast sculptures to be most powerful, although his marble work isn’t half bad. My favorite work was actually not a Rodin sculpture but one made by his mistress, Camille Claudel. It is of two people waltzing and is stunning. I’ve included a picture below, not my own since I forgot my camera, which is probably better anyway.

Wednesday was a busy day, spent running around Paris getting ready to leave for our trip. I had Estelle’s class at Musée d’Orsay, ran home to pack, raced over to the Center for the wine and cheese tasting tutorial, and then over to Jen’s to cook dinner and have a sleepover. The wine and cheese event was very informative and I even took notes since it was so interesting. It was amazing how important pairing the correct wine with a cheese is and how much doing so enhances the flavors of both. The sleepover at Jen’s was great. We made a vat of pasta with meat sauce and green beans and I was very glad to have some good ol’ American dinner portions. Heimunn, Jen, Michael and I swapped stories at her kitchen table over wine and lots of laughing. It was really nice, as corny as that seems.

Our feast, chez les Gateliers

Thursday was consumed by traveling. I have decided I hate Ryanair. Beauvais airport is a pain to get to, and the bus costs 13 euro each way from Porte Maillot. The line to check in was horribly long, and when I finally was able to check in my bag was too heavy and fat and had to be checked. Had I not been so flustered, I would have strategically repacked things and all would have been fine but I was not in the mood to open my bag and repack in front of hundreds of agitated travelers. Thus, I had to pay 20 freaking euros to check my bag. When we get on the plane, I see in the overhead space there are at least 6 inches of extra space as compared to the stupid wire bag maximum dimensions box. I understand the weight limit, but having a false volume limit is senseless and incredibly inconvenient and plain messed up. I fumed all the way to Girona, but felt better as we finally made it to Barcelona (after an hour bus ride worth 12 euro). Moral of the story: I freaking hate Ryanair. Ça vaut pas la peine de garder 20 euro.

Barcelona was great immediately. We checked into our sweet apartment right in the heart of L’Eixample. Heimunn and I staked out the sweet master bedroom and Michael was banished to a cave room. Farah and Fadlo were coming a little later, and Jen and JW much later. Michael and I went running to explore a bit and had a good time doing agilities around the hordes of people on the street. We saw a lot of the city just running around, including La Rambla, the Barrio Gothique, Port Olimpico, and all around L’Eixample. When we got back, the three of us went grocery shopping to stock our apartment for breakfast and get some essentials.

Michael and I ran by this

Farah and Fadlo arrived in time for us to get dinner. We went for tapas ,which weren’t very good, but had great sangria with it that made it better. We had time to kill before Jen and JW arrived so we headed to a bar that had a neat ambiance and cool décor, kind of medieval meets modern chic.

The next day we woke up to bright sunshine and warmth. We did a lot of exploring, checking out La Rambla and going to La Boqueria, pretty much a farmer’s market on steroids. I got the best gelato there and fresh sliced mango. We wandered down to the ocean front and had lunch at a noodle place on the pier, which turned out to be disappointing since the servers were incompetent and the food mediocre, but we sat outside and enjoyed the weather nonetheless. In the afternoon, Heimunn, Michael and I went to the Picasso museum and learned quite a bit about Picasso’s early work. It was a good museum and enriched by our visit to the Picasso exhibit at the Grand Palais at the beginning of February. My favorite part was a multimedia display of Picasso’s interpretations of Velazquez’s Las Meninas, which was incredibly well done and insightful. Jen and I went running to Parc de la Ciutadella, which was so beautiful! Very different from the rigid structure of French parks. I’m really glad we got to see it.

Plaça de Catalunya (sp?)

La Boqueria

Lunch by the water

Dinner that night was cooked at the apartment. Farah made mushroom risotto, veal with a lemon and caper sauce, green salad with yummy vegetables, and fruit salad. We all helped out in the kitchen and it was a fun little dinner party and I made the observation that you know you’re no longer a teenager when having a dinner party is your idea of a great night. We weren’t completely old farts, though, and we headed out to Port Olimpico to check out the epic nightlife, as we had heard. We went to Opium, one of the bigger clubs, and had a fabulous time. The music was good and there was an outdoor terrace right on the beach where you could go and get some air and take a break from dancing. I had a great time. I don’t think I can ever dance to rap again, it just doesn’t have the same punch as the techno/electronica beats, which are harder to do well. When we left we went out onto the beach and Jen (in typical and wonderful Jen fashion) took off her clothes to jump into the Mediterranean. I wanted to join but it was too cold for my feeble body to handle.

Dinner at our apartment

Dancing at Opium

The next day we woke up late to cloudy skies. Nonetheless, after an elaborate brunch of veggie omelet and plenty of bread and nutella, we went out to look at come Gaudi architecture. We walked by Casa Batló (right across fom our apartment pretty much) on our way to La Pedrera, a huge and marvelous apartment a bit farther north. We went inside and learned a ton about Gaudi’s life and work through the well-done museum. It was very engaging, with video, models, all inside the beautiful apartment building itself. The pictures can speak for themselves. We saw La Sagrada after, Gaudi’s still unfinished cathedral, but arrived too late and couldn’t go inside. It was still beautiful from the outside, though. Anyway, it was almost time for us to get ready for dinner.

La Pedrera (model)

Dinner was unreal. Comerç 24 is a molecular food restaurant, which basically means they use the chemistry of the ingredients to do crazy (and delicious) things with textures and taste combinations. We ordered the Grand Festival tasting menu, and it was the fanciest meal I have ever had. I took pictures in true tourist form of every dish, except I forgot the saffron rice course! Just imagine it somewhere in there. The menu came with 12 dishes served over about 8 courses. The food blew me away. My favorite was a beef consommé with quail eggs, black truffles, and parmesan cheese. It was incredible. The tastes were subtle yet explosive, and the presentation of everything was beautiful. I also really enjoyed the cold soup with cucumber, carrot, sea urchin, and flower petals. The steak was perfectly cooked and the cherries and strawberries it came with went perfectly. Overall it was truly a gourmet experience, decadent and delicious. After sitting and eating in the restaurant from 8:45 until 12:30, though, I was ready to leave.

Oysters; lobster and avocado roll



Cold soup with sea urchin and flower petals



Consommé with quail eggs, black truffles, and parmesan



Steak with cherries and strawberries, cheese

Passion fruit smoothie; yogurt/cream and fresh fruit; caramel filled chocolates; chocolate mousse; black cookies with cream; meringue

Farah, Heimunn, Fadlo and I went to Port Olimpico again but this time went to the smaller bars and clubs right on the water. Most were a bit too sketchy for our tastes, but we went to a bar called the Irish Sailing Club where there was live music and not too many creepy men. We enjoyed listening to Irish pub music sung with a Spanish accent and then decided to go to Shoko, another big club. This place wasn’t as fun as Opium, and we decided it’s because the people there were older, fatter, and generally less appealing. This didn’t matter too much, though, since we were pretty much keeping to ourselves and had a fun time dancing anyway. Except when someone was reading a MLK Jr. speech over techno beats; that was weird.

Sunday was spent at Park Guell, designed by Gaudi. After trekking up a massive hill to reach it, we were awed by how whimsical everything was, and the intense attention to detail that must have been paid to every last unique mosaic and spiraling, asymmetric tower. We took lots of pictures and walked around a bit. We were all dying for paella after and found a place close to La Sagrada with the intention of going inside that day. Needless to say, paella ended up taking a long time and we missed the hours of La Sagrada again! Our bad. At least we found an open market to get ingredients for that night’s dinner.

The hill we climbed to get to...

Park Guëll!

Music in the park

Michael, Heimunn and I cooked a meal with limited resources that turned out well. We made a potato gratin with cheese and ham, sautéed peppers, onions, and mushrooms, and a green salad. Dessert was French toast made with our leftover eggs and spread with jam and nutella. Not bad!

Jen and JW had to leave at an ungodly hour to walk to the bus station to catch the bus to Girona to catch their flight to Beauvais (I hate Ryanair), and left around 3:00am. Michael, Heimunn and I went to sleep since we didn’t have to leave until 8:15am. By 3:30am, JW was back in our room and I was extremely disoriented. Two men driving by on a motorcycle had stolen Jen’s purse! They literally snatched it off her shoulder, breaking the strap and racing off with everything: her passport, her wallet, her iPod, JW’s iPhone, her camera. I mean, what the hell. Those guys are horrible human beings. And there was nothing Jen could have done! The whole thing took place in about two seconds. Everyone was frazzled, shocked, especially Jen, although she was incredibly composed given the circumstances. We spent the next hour and a half trying to get in touch with her parents, the Stanford program, the police, and figuring out what to do next.

We all slept for a bit before Heimunn, Michael and I had to leave for a flight, sadly leaving Jen and JW. It’s at times like these that I realize how thankful I am to be with the Stanford program and not some random, hands-off thing. Estelle and Fabienne took over right away and Jen is now in Madrid, in a hotel next to the Canadian consulate, and is in contact with Stanford in Madrid program. Hopefully she will be back tomorrow, we miss her already!

I’m so sad those idiots on the motorcycle tarnished our trip at the last moment. Apart from that, it really was a fabulous trip. I’d love to go back! I must admit, however, I am very glad to be back in Paris where I speak the language and I am not a complete newb with the public transit and overall mode de vie. It feels more and more like home.