Felice is fascinated by pickpockets.<\/p>\n
I took it with a grain of salt when word passed to us in Madrid, but today our guide confirmed Felice’s suspicions, thieves are only hit with a 50 Euro fine and it often makes sense to steal, if the item is expensive enough, the profit is there.\u00c2\u00a0 Andrea, the aforementioned guide, says he knows all of them, sees them in the finest restaurants, nods and winks and said he’d been ripped off once too.<\/p>\n
Having frequented NYC pre-Giuliani, it takes a lot to make me paranoid.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, after lunch Felice slipped her hand in my pocket to show how easy it would be.<\/p>\n
Lunch.\u00c2\u00a0 Was at this Tapas Bar, Tapac 24.\u00c2\u00a0 You can look at the daily menu here: Tapa\u00c3\u00a7 24<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0 And if you read Spanish, you can get the full flavor.\u00c2\u00a0 Andrea tipped us to the McBurger with foie gras, sensational!\u00c2\u00a0 And I say this having totally fucked up ordering at a Tapas place in Madrid, where we got thin strips of meat on bread, but Andrea said tapas cuisine is different in Barcelona.<\/p>\n Barcelona.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s see, they had the Olympics and Woody Allen did that movie.\u00c2\u00a0 Was never at the top of my list of places to visit, but it was a perfect itinerary fit, a great place to fly back to the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 But once we told people we were coming, they waxed rhapsodic!\u00c2\u00a0 About the food, the atmosphere…<\/p>\n But not the heat.<\/p>\n Today it was 104.\u00c2\u00a0 Yesterday, 106.\u00c2\u00a0 And unlike L.A., there’s plenty of humidity.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought I was gonna have heat stroke yesterday, I was finally revived by a Coke.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, I thought I was going to fade into oblivion.\u00c2\u00a0 Thank god we found some shade along the way.<\/p>\n The way…<\/p>\n I’d like to say we planned prodigiously for this trip.\u00c2\u00a0 Alas, we did not.\u00c2\u00a0 Which left us scrambling once we arrived.\u00c2\u00a0 An e-mail from my mother told us to hire a Gaudi guide in Barcelona, which blessedly we did, it made all the difference.<\/p>\n Utterly fascinating.<\/p>\n We’re staying on the Passeig de Gracia, up from the old city.<\/p>\n Everyone lived inside the walls until the defeat of Napoleon.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, this street shooting out of the old metropolis was developed.\u00c2\u00a0 By the rich.\u00c2\u00a0 They built houses and wanted to show off.<\/p>\n They all lived on the first floor, which is the second in the U.S.\u00c2\u00a0 There are bay windows, marble columns, the wives situated themselves where they could be seen all day, so everybody would know how rich they were!\u00c2\u00a0 And they hired Gaudi and his compatriots to design edifices that made others ooh and ahh.<\/p>\n The most famous is the Casa Battlo, with the colorful facade and the dragon’s back atop.\u00c2\u00a0 Turns out this was not the initial front of the building.\u00c2\u00a0 But Battlo was one-upped by his next door neighbor, the chocolate maker, who had a Modernista facade, so Battlo hired Gaudi to deliver a masterpiece, which he did: Casa Batll\u00c3\u00b3<\/a><\/p>\n But I was more impressed with La Pedrera, up the street.\u00c2\u00a0 The building with the exterior that looks like melting ice cream.<\/p>\n We studied it in art class.\u00c2\u00a0 And today not only did we get to see the exterior, we went inside, to find a car park, Gaudi could foresee the necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 And there was an interior courtyard, all structures had them, for light.\u00c2\u00a0 Although there was electricity in La Pedrera.\u00c2\u00a0 And custom Gaudi furniture: <\/p>\n And from there a cab up to Parque Guell.<\/p>\n The cab.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a Suzuki.\u00c2\u00a0 The Japanese company has yet to gain its footing in the U.S., but I see more Suzukis here than Toyotas.\u00c2\u00a0 The one we were in was small on the outside, yet large on the inside, bowing out at hip level to add extra room.\u00c2\u00a0 I sat there saying, I’d buy one of these!<\/p>\n Buying…\u00c2\u00a0 So fascinating, you learn about distribution and marketing here.\u00c2\u00a0 iPhones are rampant.\u00c2\u00a0 The valet had one in Madrid, that’s how he checked the intermittent wi-fi connection.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, the people here were made aware of the product, and they found a place to buy it.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’ve got a great product in one location, that doesn’t mean it will bust out big somewhere else.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to advertise, distribute, provide customer service…\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, that’s why direct sales of the Google Nexus One died, there was no customer service infrastructure.\u00c2\u00a0 Reminds me of the settling of the west, when those who were richest were the distributors, getting food and hardware to the hinterlands.<\/p>\n Parque G\u00c3\u00bcell was mesmerizing: <\/p>\n A failed housing development, it’s loaded with Gaudi-isms.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only broken tile decoration, but coffee cups too, embedded in the spires.\u00c2\u00a0 Gaudi was all about testing limits, he did it his way, and therefore his name and his creations live on.\u00c2\u00a0 Want to last?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t copy everybody else, don’t be a Me Too Mickey.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, you need incredible strength of character and perseverance to go your own way.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re doing something different, you can’t dun people into paying attention, pressuring them to buy your creation.\u00c2\u00a0 You can only succeed by doing something so special that other people demand it.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what happened with Gaudi.\u00c2\u00a0 Like I said, Ballot wanted to keep up with the Joneses!<\/p>\n And from there to the legendary Sagrada Familia, which looks like a real-life Monet, almost out of focus: <\/p>\n\n
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