Disappointment and Discovery in Barcelona: Part 1

So this past week I had the opportunity to attend the European Landscape Biennial in Barcelona to represent Landscape Architecture Magazine. I was in the conference most of the trip but had a free day to finally see the design mecca of Barcelona. My first experience on the way to my hotel was a walk from Cataluyna Plaza along the famed Las Ramblas. And I'm sure this happens with many things that are long awaited and held up on a pedestal, I was disappointed. There I was finally standing in the perfect public space of my undergraduate dreams and this is what I saw.

Sorry for the fuzzy photo but it was nighttime and raining. It was a sea of tourists and tacky souvenir shops. During the day it was lined with human statues and the men selling those annoying squeaky mouthpieces and glowing slingshot helicopter toys just like in Madrid. In the daytime there were some traces of the flower shops that used to line it (the exotic animal sellers have disappeared). And I was told that locals still go there on Sundays and to the Boqueria market. 

It had all been built up too much in my mind. The scale of pedestrian space and canopy of London Planes was still nice but not so different compared to what I have seen in some other European cities. In the US this is more rare and may have been more impressive if I had come to Barcelona ten years ago. Now it is lined with casinos, sex shops, hostels, and overpriced restaurants. Just a few blocks west into Raval and you are out of the fray and everything costs half as much. But like New York, locals don't go to Times Square, the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty unless visitors are in town.

All that to say that most often I am disappointed by the things I have planned to see and totally blown away by the things that I didn't know existed. But this is the way of life isn't it? So here are the things I didn't expect but made my trip amazing.

I was headed to the Vallcarca metro stop near Park Guell and saw this amazing graffiti in a random residential neighborhood (same name as metro stop).

There was a community garden in an empty lot

 as well as a homemade bocce ball court.

A great little place painted lime green! The neighborhood was only a few blocks in total but I met some nice girls and they told me that many of the buildings were very old and they had been torn down to accommodate new development. But the crisis hit and the lots remained empty so they were used for other interesting things by the creative neighborhood residents. The girls also pointed me to another interesting neighborhood but I'll save that for Part 2!