¡Sitges!

It has been horrible weather for the past week or so. It’s been rainy and cold, closer to what I imagined winter would be like in Barcelona, but not the first week in April. Easter Sunday, however, was a beautiful sunny day, and Carolina, our onsite coordinator for this trip, called me up and said, “Let’s go to Sitges.”

Sitges is a beach city about 20-30 minutes south of Barcelona. It’s also a huge gay vacation spot. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but Sitges was great. Once again, I love the smaller Spanish towns more than the big cities. When you arrive in Sitges by train, you’re essentially in the middle of everything, and it takes about 5 minutes to get to the beach. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a temperature of about 21º C, which is about 72, I think, in Fahrenheit.

There were a ton of people. This whole idea that things are closed down on Easter in Spain does not hold true for the parts of Catalunya that I saw, especially Sitges. There were lots of families with their supposedly non-existent Spanish children playing in playgrounds right on the beach. There were a lot of tourists, of course, mostly it seems from Germany and England. You can tell the English because they have some genetic abhorrence of sunscreen, so they’re all bright red from sitting in the sun too long.

The beach itself reminded me of Cadaqués. There’s a beach, and then a paseo, and then a street, and then hotels and restaurants. Carolina and I strolled down the paseo, looking at the people and soaking in the sun. The people watching was great, of course, and it was amazingly diverse, for Spain. There were lots of gay couples, as one would expect, walking hand-in-hand, and no one batted an eye. It was lovely.

[A quick aside about diversity. The day before, I had been in Aroma café in my barrio, which is a pretty hip little café. Two couples came in with babies. One was clearly an adopted child, I’m guessing from Ethiopia. S/he was adorable, of course, but the Spanish customers could not stop staring at the child and his/her parents. I felt a little embarrassed for white people everywhere, but it reinforced, for me, my basic impression that Spain is just beginning to become really diversified. In California, the sight of a white couple with a black baby wouldn’t have made much of an impression since interracial adoptions are so ordinary at this point, but in Barcelona, I think it was quite shocking to them.]

Meanwhile, back in Sitges, we were trying to find a restaurant, but everything was packed. There was a line outside the Hotel Santa Maria for a block. The food couldn’t have been thatgood. Anyway, we found a place called Restaurante Pic-nic right on the beach, but they were booked until 4, so we went into the town a bit, and found a bar called Parrots, which I could tell by the waiters was a gay bar at night, and we sat and drank some cava and watched the people. Then, back to the restaurant for some yummy duck paella.

After, we continued to walk to a church right on the water (I have a picture of it to the right). We walked up the stairs, and sat down to soak in more sun and watch people. Seriously, there were a ton, and they kept on walking up to the church, but never came down. At this point, I thought that Sitges was only the part of the beach we saw, and the church, but the people walking up and not coming down made me think that there must be something more, so we walked up to the church, and into a whole other part of the beach, and then – boom – there we were in yet another medieval part of a Spanish town. There are medieval parts of every town! (Except Madrid which ends up being one of the youngest towns in Spain). So we were back to windy roads and stone walls, which I love, and then we turn a corner, and – boom – we’re in the Calle Mayor, and there are tons, and I mean tons, of people shopping in the supposedly closed stores. Of course, Sitges being a tourist town, there’s no way they’re shutting down for Easter holidays, so every store was open, with tons of sales, and people were having fun strolling, shopping and eating.

Sitges was a winner for me, as are, it seems, every small town. I can’t imagine what it must be like in the height of the season, but since it’s only 20 minutes away, I’m sure I’ll find out.

The next day, back to rain, but some of the students had planned a picnic, so I went to make an appearance. It was actually pretty fun, and I could have easily stayed longer. But I had made plans with Carolina to have lunch in El Raval. We went to this café, called Café Kasparo; it had been recommended in a tour guide. The setting was great, in a little square, but I made the mistake of ordered French Onion Soup, which in retrospect is a stupid thing to order in Spain. It was, by far, the spiciest thing I’ve had in Spain. It had so much ungrinded pepper in it, that I spent most of the time just taking the little pellets out of the soup. The tiramisu, however, was incredible. It was made with ricotta instead of mascarpone, so it wasn’t as sweet, and it was loaded with so much liquor that you could essentially get drunk on it.

It was a nice day, but I’m getting really sick of cloudy, rainy weather, which it’s supposed to be all week. I guess I’ve become a real Californian.