La Rambla On

In the musical, My Fair Lady, a song’s refrain goes, “the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” My recent trip to Spain brings to mind another song refrain, “Blame it on the Rain,” from the duplicitous, dread-locked, dancing duo, Milli Vanilli. (Alliteration anyone? Girl you know it’s true.)

I spent nine days in Barcelona, Spain where the rain fell mainly on me for most of my trip. Incidentally, since Spain is supposed to be sunny and warm, I would like to be reimbursed for those days, so if any Spanish people are reading this, feel free to send me some cash—preferably in euros seeing as the exchange rate while I was in Espana was $1.34 to one euro.

Barcelona is truly meant to be explored on foot and appreciated from one of the many plazas and city parks; but since the rain made such sightseeing a bit discomforting, I spent quite a bit of time perusing the ample and mostly impressive museums the city boasts. Standing in the long line of tourists looking to exit the rain and enter the Picasso museum, I met a guy standing in line behind me who called himself a “Kiwi.” He was quite nice for someone who proudly proclaimed himself to be a small, furry fruit. He was much nicer than the Scandinavian couple and their child who cut in front of us right at the entrance. Apparently, they thought the three-block-long line of people was there in the rain to coincidentally enter a different museum next door? I told them this and they played the “Oh gosh, I no understand,” card. The fruit man behind me just shrugged and I decided that instead of rearranging their faces to resemble a Picasso painting, I would let it go. I was on vacation after all.

I was impressed to see that Pablo Picasso had painted in virtually every style, not just his famous fractured, cock-eyed paintings that he’s most famous for (also known as Cubism if my description of “fractured and cockeyed” is too technical). My understanding of the complex, multi-structured paintings is that it allowed Picasso to show multiple facets of the subject (the side, front, and top of the head) all on one dimension.

The rain in Spain continued to fall on every facet of my body as I left the museum and walked around the city, dodging umbrella points of passers-by like a prizefighter. One of the more popular areas to walk is called “La Rambla,” which translates to “The Walk.” How they got that name, I have no idea.

The rain was so persistent that one of La Rambla’s many street performers, a face-painted statue man, no less, broke his frozen stare, picked up his hat, pointed to the sky and waved his hands in disgust—presumably, to go home and sit like a statue in front of his TV.

As the buildings in the old Barri Gothic part of town just east of La Rambla drained themselves onto the narrow walkways and the balcony tiers shed tears, I perfected my puddle-hopping skills along the uneven brick sidewalk. This Barri Gothic area had the look and feel of a movie studio back lot and was full of trendy clothing stores and narrow cafés that didn’t interest me much, but were quite busy.

Barcelona sits right on the Mediterranean Sea and the (topless) beaches are quite popular—though not during 50º F weather. Trust me, I checked. The only thing topless I saw on the beaches was a Coke bottle lying on the sand, absent of its red cap. Speaking of which, the coke bottles in Spain are smaller and narrower than we have in the states. For the record, this didn’t bother me so much as the non-topless-females-on-the-topless-beach problem.

As the pour-down continued, I decided to drown my shallow sorrows in the old standbys: food and drink.