22 de Julio - Sagrada Familia y Mucho Vino a Almuerzo

After courting the idea several times and even walking up to and around La Catedral de la Sagrada Familia , Gaudi’s landmark thumbprint on Barcelona’s streets, we actually got in line, waited an hour, and paid to enter. It was worth it. And that, my friend, is an understatement.

The Passion Side of La Sagrada Familia

The giant redwood-sized columns on the Passion side of the church gripped the ground at nearly a 45 degree angle. Their massivity (my new word for giant columns that boggle little minds like mine) and detail in the midst of their massivity made me feel the way I feel when I look at stars on an open Kansas night - small.

We stood briefly and tried to point out each station of the stations of the cross but missed a few, mostly due to our lacking memory of three or four events along Jesus’ way to crucifixion.

Once inside, the cathedral opens up with even more massivity than the columns that support it on the exterior. For the most part, the roof is finished, and this makes it possible to have Mass in the church now. The lofty ceilings are nearly painted in their entirety and much of the stain glass windows have been placed, but the estimation as to when the Cathedral will be finished looms between 2020 and 2040, and this depends on funding.

Just one of those things I can do my best to describe, but the pictures do the best justice.

Maybe it was being in a huge church and thinking about the unconsecrated wine that made me order the pitcher of vino at Alfonso’s Restaurante in the heart of the Eixample Barri. In the most direct translation, Mary and I shared the meat plate: cured meat, ribs, pork loin, steak, and peppers. Fue perfecto. I may not need to tell you this, but we napped that afternoon and were very unproductive that evening. But man, you can’t beat some great meat.

Can't beat that meat (and yes, we finished the wine).

Inside La Sagrada Familia - That lady loves her hat.

21 de Julio (A Mary Post)

Sometimes in life, on the day after you had a weird, utterly-displaced and nearly penniless experience in a foreign country, you gotta get back in the saddle. Embrace your inner Pau Gasol and rebound like a Spanish maniac. That’s what we did on Wednesday, July 21st. It had to be done.


Back-in-saddle Task 1: Run. We started the morning hoping to get in a 6.2 mile tempo run, and ended up with a dehydration-inspired 4 miler. Could this relative failure stop Mary and Kase Johnstun? Nope.

Back-in-saddle Task 2: Eat a Spanish-lunch standard. A quick jog across the street for a hearty boccadillo, croquette, and café-con-leche lunch added a little bounce to our step.

Back-in-saddle Task 3: Off-road tourism. We hit the streets again to do one of our LP Guide’s walking tours – a three-mile Modernista archeticture tour of L’Eixample, our neighborhood in Barcelona (see 2nd post for more info on this…such loveliness shouldn’t be tainted by any sort of post-displacement negativity). It felt amazing to be a tourist again…to stick nose in weathered guidebook again and get lost in the amazing and surprising of Barcelona.

Back-in-saddle Task 4: Good ol’ fashioned white-collar labor. Work for both Kase and I called our names for quite a few hours after that, and it lulled us into a nice, regular rhythm like only work can. Sometimes, it’s really comforting to answer email, solve problems, and write boring documents.

Back-in-saddle Task 5: On-road tourism. I left Kase (who’s seen enough European churches to last a lifetime) behind to check out the ancient century Born District Eglesia de Santa Maria del Mar and the equally old La Catedral. There’s something about 14th century structures, being built before the Americas were even discovered, that made me and my 21 hours of displacement seem small in comparison. And they were quiet and beautiful, and the lovely hush, low lighting, and little details were like churchy comfort food.

Back-in-saddle Task 6: Shopping. After visiting churches, I hit the shops in the Barri Gotic and Born to load up on gifts. The hunt to find the perfect item for each of our completely unique family members was putting me one step closer to complete contentment.

Back-in-saddle Task 7: Starbucks. Yes…I visited a Starbucks in Spain, where lovely coffee is even more accessible than in the Pacific Northwest. But nothing says “home” to a tourist from Tacoma like a latte and a slice of bread.

Back-in-saddle Task 8: Tapas and Gelato. This mode of eating (in San Sebastian, mobile; in Barcelona, not as mobile, but pretty fabulous) is the comforting Spanish standby – anything outside this has almost come to feel as if you’re cheating on Spain with another food genre. We feasted at the Bar del Pla in Borne on our favorites – roasted peppers, pan con tomate, blue cheese croquettes, patatas bravas, cava for me, and vino tinto for Kase.

All in all, it was more than a full day…it was a day full of our favorite Spanish things, favorite US things, favorite life things. Most of them probably seem pretty mundane and mind-numbing, but that’s exactly what we were looking for – a regular, run of the mill day for two Spanish tourists pretty comfortable with their city.

19 y 20 de Julio - Homeless and Broke

The story of these two days will be written and revised and rewritten. It will not be finished until multiple drafts have been edited, and it will find its meaning far from today. It  has already begun to stew, to take shape as a narrative, and its layers have already started to form in words, but it will take much longer to flesh it out.


But I will give you the long and short of it and promise to show you the narrative at full length, once I figure out how to shape it, and if you ask to see it.

We lost the keys to our apartment at the beach after our property management company had closed. Since Mary’s hackers stripped her email account of the manager’s cell phone number, we could not contact anyone to let us in to our apartment. We had been at the beach, so we did not have three necessities: ID, money, debit or credit cards. We did have: Sunscreen, towels (which proved extremely useful), metro passes (even more useful), and a bottle of wine with no opener (probably for the best).

“There is not much you can do,” said the late-night Embassy man said from Madrid.
“Do you know of anywhere we can go? Is sleeping on the street really our only option?” We asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Know of any place that would be best?” We asked.
“I’m in Madrid, not Barcelona. I don’t really know,” He said.

I said before that we had no money. That’s not completely true. We had seven Euros, which we spent on water and wafers. We slept (tried to sleep) on the train-station benches, then on the concrete outside the train station when security closed the building up, and then on the beach until the rental office opened. We got into our apartment the next day at two - exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry, but we got in.

There is more. So much more. There are lessons learned and good decisions made. But the flesh of these will not completely bud, grow, and flourish until it has had time to be seasoned. The story’s shape, right now, has no edges, no beginning, no end, and no defined colors. But it will.

16 a 18 de Julio - Laughter, Picasso, and Estrella

Sam and his Estrella

Our friends Sam and Misty and thier daughter, Maire, came to see us this last weekend, and looking at how this entry is titled, it is a bit underdeveloped. Estrella is the yellow beer of the Barcelona locals. It is best served cold, and it is best downed quickly. Knowing that, the title would be better illustrated if I could have written it as such: Estrella, Laughter, Estrella, Picasso, Laughter, Estrella, Repeat. I want to describe the weekend in one of the simplest sentence structures because it was perfectly simple in nature, as it nearly always is with great friends: We had fun!


Many of the things we did with our friends we had done before. But our eyes had changed. Some necessary touristy sights looked different the second time through, even richer than the first, the smaller details unmasked behind the façade.

We sandwiched Picasso. And it rocked.

Jamon Iberico is the special bocadillo of Barcelona. The meat, Jamon Iberico, is extremely simple but salty and soft, cured and sliced to sit between two pieces of French bread.

The Picasso Museum was our Jamon Iberico that sat between laughter and Estrella. The museum shows an intimate picture of Picasso’s time in Barcelona and his connection to the city through paint strokes. His most famous pieces are not here. They sit in the Louvre or the MOMA, but the work that lines the museum walls directly reveals Picasso’s triumphs, struggles, and growth as an artist in Barcelona. If you ever come to Barcelona and you need meat, the Picasso Museum has been delicately cur(ate)ed to give visitors a salty experience of Picasso they may not have tasted before.

The weekend: we had fun. Simple and true, and I love the simplicity of laughter between friends. It should always serve at the beginning and the end.

15 de Julio - Ode to Jamon ‘Chips’ (Ooh Bacon Chips!)

On July15th, we got some beach time and traveled six hours on the train back to Barcelona.

On the train, however, we ate a few bags of our favorite Sabor de Jamon ‘chips.’ The chips, either made by Ruffles or Lays or a local brand, are truly amazing. They taste like bacon. Really good bacon. Not overcooked bacon or turkey bacon or lean bacon, but good, thick bacon with lots of greasy fat. All in a chip.

The question is why hasn’t this flavor made it to the U.S? We love our bacon. We put bacon on burgers; we wrap steak in bacon; we love BLTs; we even wrap fruit and vegetables in bacon. Why doesn’t the U.S. have bacon chips? Ruffles and Lays make and distribute them in Spain, and they are the most common flavor of chips on the market; a scan of the grocery aisle proves this.

Those beef ads on the sides of the U.S. interstates have been highly successful: ‘Beef, it’s what for dinner.’ Chick-fil-a has done extremely well with the ironic ‘Eat More Beef’ slogan. It is time the U.S. adopts bacon chips. It’s for the country’s own good. We will be a happier people because of this explosion of flavor. I am currently a happier person because of my daily consumption of bacon chips.

I thought of ten ad campaigns for the introduction of bacon chips:

1. Bacon chips - perfect with themselves.

2. We put bacon on fruit; let’s put it in a chip.

3. Ruffles have bacon ridges.

4. Bacon chips: they’re what’s for breakfast.

5. Want more romance in your relationship? Lost that fire? Can’t remember your husband’s name? Add bacon chips to your love life and at least you’ll have some good chips.

Ruffles/Lays: You can contact me directly at 555-JAM-CHIPS.

14 de Julio (A Mary Post): Triumph over Tapas and Nigerian Hackers

Sometimes in life, on the day after you finally reclaim your email and favorite social networking site from Nigerian hackers who want nothing other than to take your friends and family for all they are worth, you just need to chill out, shop, and eat a lot of amazing food. This is what we did Wednesday, our last full day in San Sebastian. We slept in, got a bit of work in, drank too much coffee, and got a late start to the day, all of which means that we’re really becoming Spaniards.

From the point we stepped out of the hotel and onto the street, we were primed to enjoy the day. We ate lunch and had a glass of wine at a cute little spot by the 16th Century Gothic San Vicente church. We shopped a bit in Zona Romantica (an old area dominated by loads of clothing and other stores near Parte Vieja), and I convinced Kase to purchase cool Euro-clothes (which he may or may not wear when we return to the States). We stopped often to take photos of all the details I’m so fond of – the small fountain in Parte Vieja that reminded me of Slytherin House, well-behaved dogs wandering about, the sprawling Basilica de Santa Maria that casually hides its grandeous self away in Parte Vieje, and the cute kids kicking soccer balls down the small streets.

At about 6 p.m., as we walked around, we started to notice tapas bars changing out their plates and adding to their selections from their late lunch service. Most restaurants don’t even open for dinner until 8, or even 9 p.m. at night. But because tapas are often meant to be a snack before dinner (think…happy hour), or enjoyed slowly throughout the night (see references to “mobile dining experience” from July 12th entry), tapas bars were already open for business for the night.

The night of the 14th, we were determined to have an even better tapas experience than we had a few nights prior. By this point on our trip to San Sebastian, we knew the drill – walk in confidently, scan the array, try to identify the place’s super-specialty, request a plate, load up (but not too much) on cold tapas, request that hot tapas be prepared, order wine, and return to the server who gave us our plate and ask to pay.

We learned on our first night what NOT to do. Do NOT just grab a plate from the counter and go…request one from someone behind the bar. Do NOT approach any server to close out your check…go directly to the person who gave you your plate. Do NOT serve yourself for hot items…if the tapa looks like something that would be better warm, point to it and they’ll plate it and warm it for you.

In addition to this new savvy from two days’ serious tapas study, we were also armed with some recommendations from a local at our hotel and were ready to actually pica-pica like pros.

And pica-pica, we did. Sip, sample, declare the best thing in the world, move on. Eating like real Spaniards – knowing the pica-pica rules and digging into some of each bar’s more exotic-looking tapas – felt pretty amazing to a set of mind-weary travelers. We triumphed over the experience and with each heavenly bite, we said “Suck it, Nigerian hackers. You can’t bring us down.”

13 de Julio - Corriendo Larga, HACKERS, Que Romantica (Po-try)

Ten miles on a loop on the San Sebastian coastline feels more like six. Runners get this. With the temp at 75 degrees and surrounded by sun bathers and volleyball players and the rocky hillsides that form La Playa de la Concha, I looped back and forth to complete my ten mile run, and the hour and a half got swept out to sea with the pull of the tide. The sight of a tiny island just of the crescent-moon coast kept my eyes focused on the waves and my mind off my legs. There is no other way to write about that morning run. I try to avoid excessive use of adjectives in my writing, but as a good friend of mine, and a writer of a much higher caliber, would say: “That’s po-try.”

Two more long runs to go and I will have completed my training in Barcelona without a hitch. Besides carrying a little bit of extra weight around the mid-section and on my jowls. But those aren’t hitches, they’re symbols of my unending dedication to taste everything that is put in front of my face (thank God Spaniards rarely cook with onions and when they do, they tell you).

Mary finished her eight-miler on a run through old parts of the city. Her training has been very good. But when she opened up her computer that day slightly after noon, she saw that she was having an IM conversation with a relative and asking him to send her money because she got held at gunpoint in the London airport and needed a way to get home. Bastards - that’s all I have to say. We spent the next four hours making sure all of our financial passwords, emails, and all were secure, and Mary spent the day telling people she was just fine. Bastards - she had a great run that morning and they ruined it.

Five hours later, we ate cheeseburgers and drank wine and tried to forget what happened that day. Then we rolled up our pants and held hands and walked on the beach and watched the sun drop down over the green and brown mounds of earth that created the bay. Yes, Mag: Po-try.