Exploring Barcelona: Shopping in Catalan Spain with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring Barcelona:  Shopping in Catalan Spain with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Walking along the Ramblas in Barcelona, I passed the Gran Teatre de Licieu where the Catalan opera called Zarzuela is performed. 

Attending the opera was expensive for us even the kiddy matinées, but fortunately they did have children’s cultural programming on television in Europe, so Florence could see musical programs like Peter and the Wolf, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and the Nutrcracker on television.

A little further down from Rambla Sant Josep, I heard meows, cackling birds, cooings, and gurgles of aquariums along the Rambla del Estudios as vendors to buy a pet.

Along this Rambla, I found a neat bookstore and a cheap one at that; it was the Catalan regional government’s bookstore.  I bought a book about Catalan wine and food in Castellano, which everyone outside of Spain refers to as Spanish.

Opposite the bookstore is the Catalan Cathedral of good food, the Boquería Market.  The place was so crowded that I could hardly squeeze Florence through in her stroller.

I knew I was a nuisance from all the vendors calling me, “mamasita.”  That innuendo is called a “piropo” in Spain.

I wanted to rent an apartment near the Boquería, so I could try my hand with the local ingredients.  After awhile, it became impossible to maneuver Florence through the crowd, so I reluctantly left the market.

The place I visited next was the Plaça Catalunya.  The stores there were nicer in this area.  Supposedly, there were Roman tombs there, but all I could see was traffic.

It started raining, so I decided to do some shopping at El Corte Ingles, the big department store in town.

There were no doors leading into the store.  There was just a large opening with sawdust on the floor and security guards posted on either side of the opening. 

When the Spanish people congregate in public they tend to speak loudly and the department store is no exception

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Exploring Barcelona: Walking up the Ramblas Marketplace in Barcelona, Spain by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Barcelona: Walking up the Ramblas Marketplace Through the Center of Town by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Before stepping out onto the foot of the Ramblas for a walk with baby Florence, I looked at the Hôtel Güell that Antoni Gaudi built for his wealthy and loyal patron.  The doors reminded me of those at the Sagrada Familia’s entryway.

The doors sweep your gaze upward to the view of some of Gaudi’s trademark gumdrop chimneys.  The doors are the only things an ordinary tourist can see.  (The Hôtel Güell was a theatre history museum at the time.)  You can see what the interior of this museum looks like in an art book, since you cannot visit it.

The Ramblas is like the Champs-Elysées in that it the Ramblas has been turned into a tourist haven with souvenir shops and a McDonalds.

The Ramblas at the time was not as nice as the Champs-Elysées.  The boulevard is made up of individual sections called a rambla in the singular.  The Rambla Santa Monica with its sex shops reminded me of Place Pigalle, the red light district in Paris. 

I walked down to the port and looked at the Columbus Statue.  Queen Isabella of Spain financed Columbus’s voyages to the United States.

It is quite interesting that her State of Castilla took precedence over King Ferdinand’s Aragon and Catalonia.  I hoped that I would have the chance to visit Castilla one day, but was quite happy that I was given the chance to visit the Spanish Catalan region.

I continued walking along the Rambla Santa Monica, which was rather tame in the morning.  This Rambla is filled with newsstands with newspapers from all over the world, flower stands in some areas, and improvisational con artists looking for customers to play card tricks or find balls under shells.

One man was even jumping through a spinning wheel made of fire.  Andean musicians played their panpipes everywhere.

It was a cacophony of sound and yelling, but rather fun and nice to leave when I wanted to eventually.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Sampling Catalan Seafood in Barcelona, Spain with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring Barcelona (Spain):  Eating a Typical Catalan Seafood Lunch with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When Laurent began working for the European Union after working for French investment banks, I contented myself with taking Florence on long walks to the Bagatelle Gardens, so I could get back into physical shape after childbirth, reading, cooking, and trying to write roman à clefs like Simone de Beauvoir.

He had to go to Barcelona for work, so I was able to go with him and baby Florence.  The taxi ride into Barcelona took us through a very industrialized part of town.  Barcelona shares with big cities everywhere the schizophrenia of extreme wealth coexisting with extreme poverty.

The hotel where we would be staying was a recent construction built to house guests for the 1992 Olympic Games.  The hotel is in the Eixample Neighborhood, one of Barcelona’s most posh areas.

The Eixample, with its neat city blocks, was built during the turn of the century.  This fact explains the wealth of Spanish art nouveau architecture in the neighborhood with its sloping apartment roofs and undulating façades.

After unpacking, I went out to buy baby food and water.  The search for these items led me around the block.  What a block it was!!!

While I was looking for a drugstore, I passed by Gaudi’s Casa Mila, which looks like an underwater life form; Domenech I Mantenar’s Casa Lleo Morera; Gaudi’s Casa Battlò with bubbles that seem to float up its façade; and the fanciful tangle of wines atop the Tapies Foundation.

Back in the hotel room, I prepared Florence’s lunch while she gnawed away on her crib.  Florence did not eat any of her Spanish baby food.  The ham and vegetable mélange that I bought for her was saltier than her French baby food.  Spain is much hotter than Paris, which explains the saltier food.

I thought Florence might like some bread and went out again on Avenida Diagonal to find a baker.  I found something better than the baker when I was crossing the street.  I ran into Laurent and his Catalan colleagues.  His colleagues insisted that Florence and I join them for lunch.

I forgot the name of the restaurant, but the meal was memorable.  We had two seafood platters.  The first seafood platter had oysters and clams on it along with cooked shrimp and langoustines.  The second platter had grilled razor clams on it.

The grilled seafood was a perfect example of Mediterranean cooking that uses simple ingredients requiring fresh ingredients and proper cooking methods for the dish to succeed.

The grilled shrimp and clams were seasoned with garlic.  Other yummy things on our platter included fried and grilled squid.  We drank a white wine from the Pénédés Wine region south of Barcelona.  We drank espresso for dessert.

I was quite satisfied with this meal considering that I had planned to buy a sandwich for myself.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Touring Auvers-sur-Oise: Visiting Vincent van Gogh's Grave outside Paris by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Auvers-sur-Oise: Visiting Vincent Van Gogh’s Grave outside Paris by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Baby Florence’s first outing when we lived in Paris was to visit Auvers-sur-Oise outside Paris where Vincent Van Gogh had his tomb.

We loaded Florence into her car seat and set out with several pit stops to give Florence bottles of water.  It was about 90 degrees out.  I hoped we would not melt in our car.

Auvers-sur-Oise is a French “Main Street USA” type of village with a butcher, baker, and candlestick maker.  The brochure from the local tourism office proclaims Auvers to be the birthplace of Impressionism.

Artists such as Corot (1796 – 1875) and Daubigny (1817 – 1879) lived here and began to research what primary colors blended together to give the impression of a secondary color when seen at a distance.  (For example, red and blue blending to make purple.)

Other luminaries who painted at Auvers-sur-Oise include: Gauguin (1848 – 1903), Cézanne (1835 – 1906), and Pisarro (1830 – 1903).

When Van Gogh came to Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890, no one knew he had seventy days to live or that he would complete seventy paintings in those last days.  These paintings are among his most famous: Portrait of Doctor Gachet, Wheat Field with Crows, and the Church at Auvers.

The Tourism Office Guidebook gave a walking tour all throughout town and the countryside that passed by the vistas of all the famous paintings that had been painted of them.

We gave Florence more water and sprayed some vaporized Evian on us to beat the heat.  We walked from one end of town to the other.  When you look at the silhouette of the church at Auvers, you expect it to quiver like the one in the Van Gogh painting.

Vincent Van Gogh’s grave is next to his brother Theo’s in the Auvers graveyard.  I liked a collection of letters that Vincent sent to his brother Theo called Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh edited by Irving Stone that I read prior to visiting Auvers.

In one of the letters that Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, he said that he was happy with his work even if he had no commercial success.  I was happy Theo supported Vincent, but still resent that he sometimes had to pay for meals with his paintings.

I liked how Van Gogh was able to find beauty in the ordinary objects and people around him. 

Van Gogh’s landscapes are what moved me the most, because I know hard it is to just organize, clean a house, and write let alone plowing, weeding, and harvesting fields to look so neat and tidy.

I was tired after our walk, but happy that I put in the effort to see these places that Van Gogh painted.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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The Chateau at Reuil-Malmaison - 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Château at Reuil-Malmaison: Visiting Empress Josephine’s Château outside Paris (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Empress Josephine’s home at the Château Rueil-Malmaison was twenty minutes away from my apartment in the Hauts-de-Seine outside Paris (France).

My husband Laurent and I put baby Florence in her car seat and set out for Rueil-Malmaison.

We took the guided tour at Rueil-Malmaison.  I was occupied with Florence, but was able to catch the following bit of information:

-Napoleon was one of the first people in France to use art as propaganda.  He opened the Louvre to the public.  It was only open to the aristocrats and royals before.

-The Empress Josephine wore 6 to 7 dresses in one day and would sometimes buy the same dress twice.

The French would say that she was “rolled in flour” for buying the same dress twice.

After the visit to the Château, we spent three hours relaxing in the Château’s park.  I went from rose bush to rose bush, inhaling the delightful perfumes of each bush without knowing that we were in one of the world’s most famous rose gardens.

I held Florence up to the taller rose bushes and let her smell the roses, too, making sure she did not grab the thorny stems.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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