Gotico Sunday

There are a million things to do in the Gotico district, here is one Sunday's worth



I've seen this street art in a couple places. I don't know whats going on here cuz im not spanish or i'm not knowledgeable enough



Barcelona Cathedral





insert coins to light your electric candle



Another church with geese in the courtyard.



why scissors?



i've seen people driving around in these ultra small "cars" that talk at them. The motto is "Go Car, the talking tour car".



randomly out of nowhere you enter a building somewhere in Gotico and there are three 2000 yr old Roman columns



they used to be unappreciated in peoples living rooms/spaces over the centuries.



people live literally right next to them still with this quasi museum shell on one side of their apartment. must be weird looking out this window or your apartment or taking your laundry in and seeing the touristas starring at these 2000 yr old relics.



dude playing a Tibetan instrument which sounds like they took the island fun out of steel drums and turned it into mysterious, beautifully eerie buddist instrument.



why is there a unicorn up there? isn't that like sacrilegious? i don't know, i'm not good at these things.



another Edward Chillada sculpture. 10 min from now i would be underneath this standing on a 2000 yr old Roman street. A week later i would be dancing next to this in some kind of every friday night traditional dance party.



this used to be part of Barcino, which is what the romans called barcelona when it used to be theirs. Amazing that all of this lies under the Barcelona you walk on. This preserved area is pretty big.



Out of all the stuff i saw this day, this courtyard is the most amazing to me. Its Plaza De San Felipe Neri. I've walked through here before and saw those marks on the wall of the church before but didn't think too much about it. There aren't many tourists here so it feels kind of hidden and I like that. Selena told me that those are bullet holes from where Franco's people would execute people against the wall of this church during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939).



you can touch the walls, stand against them, and imagine what it might feel like just before you're executed (at this wall children got got too).





what



didn't go here but looked like a cool place.



stairs leading up to Cosamanuel's apartment. grungy, old, and authentic feeling.





Think this is the first floor? no! its actually the 4th floor. you have floor 0, principal, some other floor, and then you get to the first floor.



weird tiled quarter of a sphere at the bottom of the stairs.



the best part is his rooftop, as with any apartment with a rooftop. I love rooftops and miss the BBQ parties we used to have on 52nd st. and in Harlem.



Some people hooked up their rooftops.







I love this floor. I think Jill and Derek had this floor in their NY apartment, or is it in their DC house? I doubt its just me but its kind of cool to see a sliver of other peoples' abodes from a rooftop.





the Camper hotel has an awesome lobby, camper like the shoe company.



part of the cool and uncool thing about moving to a new country is the time you spend getting all the things you need to even function properly. Desk, chair, drawing lamp, soap/shampoo, art supplies, power adapters, cell phone, and tons of other stuff. If you're lucky the place you move into will be furnished. Spain is a 240 volt country so I had to ride around for half a day to find a electric converter (not just an adapter) for my scanner (i learned the hard way in China that 240 volts really will instantaneously blow up your electronics transformers and that you should never try just to see it maybe it will work out). at least this one is 5 times smaller than the one i used in china (and korea back in the day), and 5 times less heavy. it is still pretty heavy though. is probably like 8 pounds. So continuing the previous though, at the same time you learn, or try to accept that the time it takes to find and buy all this stuff, and the legwork, and miles travelled IS the journey and IS part of the fun and that you really ARE doing it. Besides, wandering around aimlessly is cool for a while but then its nice to have goal and sense of accomplishment, even if just buying an extention cord is considered a full days work worthy of a reward of beers at a bar.