Barcelona Four Ways

Barcelona! Barça to her intimates, and pronounced more like “Bartheelooonnnaaa” by her homegrown lovers. Call her what you will, she’s lovely and elusive, becoming a totally different city each time you blink. Here are four ways to catch her, if you can.

ONE: WORSHIPPING
From the front, la Sagrada Família looks merely awkward; the back view is another matter entirely. We tend to side with George Orwell, who quipped that “the anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.” Feast your eyes, then head to MariscCo to feast your belly on freshly caught fish. As you wait for it to be cooked, you’ll have time to stake out a position on Barcelona’s most divisive landmark: maligned beauty or weepy monstrosity.

For our money the Santa Maria del Mar and the Barcelona Cathedral (La Seu) are both prettier by far. Go to the former anytime it’s sunny to watch the Gothic stained glass light up. Go to the latter on Sunday morning, to see the sardana danced out front. You have a hard heart if you can remain unmoved at the sight of elderly Catalans gently hopping up and down while holding hands.

Located a few train stops from the Plaça Catalunya, the Monestir de Pedralbes might as well be in another town, in another time. Built in the fourteenth century and used continuously into the twentieth, this convent features a beatific courtyard. Check out the indentations left by Napoleon’s cannons near the entrance gates, and make sure to visit what’s thought to be the city’s oldest graffiti — “Joan no m’oblides” (John, do not forget me) — proof that not every nun’s heart burned solely with religious fervor.

Stay at Hotel 1898, an easy walk to the Barri Gòtic, full of narrow alleys and places that show the city’s religious history, such as Plaça de Sant Just, where the first Christians were allegedly martyred and buried, along with a street named for Hercules, the city’s mythical founder. The fountain, constructed in 1367, still works.

TWO: EATING
There’s a lot of good eating in this town. Perhaps the best way to taste recent food trends is to order pa amb tomàquet (literally, “bread and tomatoes”) wherever you go. At Paco Meralgo, an excellent example of an eatery specializing in “nouveau tapas,” the starter arrives exactly as the person who first rubbed some bread against a tomato must have intended: salty, drippy, doused in olive oil and served on bread that’s been slightly charred but somehow stays fluffy on the inside.

At Alkimia, tradition gets updated by the avant-garde techniques of molecular gastronomy: here, the bread and tomatoes are transformed into a shot glass of olive oil-infused water in which bread crumbs are floating, capped with a two-bite slab of cured pork. El Bulli, on the Costa Brava, casts a long shadow over the city: c.f. Espai Sucre, which focuses on desserts, and Cinc Sentits, whose elaborate tasting menu relies on ultra-seasonal product.

Alternatively, you could try this experiment with paella. At Comerç 24, it comes deconstructed: flavorful rice served with cornmeal shavings (meant to evoke the scrapings at the bottom of the pan) and a perfectly smooth wedge of duck foie gras ice cream. If it’s down-home authenticity you’re after, you need to go to El Vell Sarria. Like now. Its arroces (rice dishes) are cooked in cast-iron pans that require tremendous arm strength to lift onto the table, which contrast with the frilly curtains and dollies decorating the place. To drink? Cava, cava, and more cava.

Stay at Hotel Omm, and try Restaurant Moo, known for its reinterpretations of Mediterranean specialities like pig’s trotter carpaccio with prawns. Awesome bar scene too.

THREE: SHOPPING
You probably know all about Boqueria, Europe’s largest market. Less visited by tourists, Mercat de Santa Caterina lets you shop like a resident, or at least ogle the plentiful bounty of flowers, breads, candy, and produce. Save time for calamarets a la plancha (grilled squid) and anything that comes covered in romesco (a sauce made with nuts, garlic, olive oil, and dried peppers) at La Torna, a tapas bar in the market. Mercat de la Llibertat and Mercat de la Concepció are two of the many markets with female butchers.

Traditionally, on April 23, La Diada de Sant Jordi, citizens memorialize Shakespeare and Cervantes by exchanging books bought at stands on La Rambla and stores like Altaïr, which specializes in travel books, and La Central del Raval, a branch of the local chain bookstore in a former church. Close by is funky Ras, a bookstore and art gallery. Perhaps no store is as light-hearted as El Ingenio, which sells handcrafted toys and tricks, and has since 1838. It’s particularly fun to visit before one of the city’s parades, when people pop in for costumes and masks. Hungry? Stock up on “nuns’ farts” (chocolate biscuits called pets de monja made by real live clergy) at Caelum.

A different vibe is to be had at Herboristeria del Rei, featuring ointments and emollients designed to beautify and enhance. Of course, you’ll need some new clothes to match your spiffy new self. Passeig de Gràcia, a long street in Eixample, has big-name brands mixed with well-known locals; look for pieces by Juan Antonio Ávalos, an up-and-comer, and Custo Barcelona, a relative oldie but a definite, hyper-colorful goodie. To ensure your toes don’t feel left out, visit La Manual Alpargatera, helping keep everyone shod in espadrilles since the 1940s.

Stay at Barcelo Raval and wander the streets of Raval, where women in headscarves shop alongside women in miniskirts. Check out the Richard Meier–designed Museu d’Art Contemporani, whose plaza is beloved by skateboarders.

FOUR: LOOKING
Barcelona owes its whimsical, playful atmosphere to Modernisme, an artistic movement that flourished from the late 1880s to the early 1910s. Its practitioners made the imagination manifest in organic swoops and swirls, in a complex interplay of colors and textures, in a total unwillingness to adhere to previously held “shoulds” and “musts.” Buildings like Torre Agbar, completed in 2005 and as lustrous as a new lipstick, show that the irreverence continues. Look up wherever you are, and you’ll see.

One of the most acclaimed blocks in the city, the Illa de la Discòrdia (“block of discord”) has three houses designed by three different architects: Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Antoni Gaudí, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Up the street is La Pedrera. Bring some whimsy home by stopping at Vinçon for housewares and objets d’art, and be sure to check out its great Art Nouveau fireplace. Nearby are Casa Asia (the view from the roof is worth the climb) and Casa de les Punxes, a spiky castle built for several spinster sisters. If you’re feeling spry, you can walk through residential Gràcia to Parc Güell, to see the multihued reptiles standing guard, as well as the brown house that resembles a mushroom suffering from gigantism.

Over in Montjuïc, you can gaze at contemporary art at CaixaForum, a former textile factory that tried to introduce humane conditions into mass production, or climb the many steps to the Palau Nacional, and be rewarded with a panoramic vista on the outside and artistic treasures on the inside. Staying for the light show at the Font Màgica is totally optional.

Conclude the architectural portion of your trip by wandering the grounds of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Parts of it remain open, parts of it are being renovated, and parts of it appear to have been abandoned to pigeons and time. Gaudí died here in 1926, so say a short thanks to the man who most shaped the skyline.

Stay at the W Barcelona, whose floor-to-ceiling windows open onto other types of of contour and edifice, shaped by the Mediterranean. Can you say “beach access”?

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