English
When the Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar was about nine or ten years old, disjointed and scattered images, disturbing and fascinating, occasionally visited him (strange colored shapes on slabs or tiles), which his conscious was unable to match with anything he saw before. His mother told him that there was the possibility that the images corresponded to the fact that when he was a child, in Barcelona, where his family accidentally had to go through a brief period of time, his parents used to take him, almost every day, to play with other children at the Parc Güell, which later served as a joke Cortázar proudly told about his early and immense admiration for Gaudí, which had unconsciously begun when he was only two years old.
The first time the author of Rayuela returned to Europe as an adult, in 1949, he could not fight the urge to go immediately to Parc Güell, when his ship stopped over in Barcelona, where naturally he found that although the images were envisaged and still amazing beyond words, they didn’t match with those formed in his mind. It wasn’t only a matter of mere optical perspective. One child had a look magical, Cortázar swore that day, that he would not let it get lost, and will continue keeping it inside.
This just one of many free things to do in Barcelona. Another may be, every Sunday from 15:00 and the first Sunday of each month, to pay a visit to the seductive Blau Museum of Natural History (http://w3.bcn.es/V65/Home/V65XMLHomeLinkPl/0, 4555.418159056 _1438713694_2, 00.html) whose amazing prehistoric cave architecture and mix of futuristic levitating magic and semi-hosts a fascinating and educational way to show the pieces that somehow evokes the spirit of the cabinets of wonders of Renaissance and baroque.
From there it is advisable to cross to the esplanade of the Forum and appreciate the sea crashing against the seawall adjacent, just below the giant, and unfortunately unusable solar panel that forms, together with the views from the whole, a landscape of some post-apocalyptic movie Mad Max type.
Or walk any day of the year also the fascinating and incomparable Boqueria market and get seduced by its unique atmosphere both as flavor and color of food and extraordinary modernist design.
Free ride is also leading to the Plaza España to the Grec Theatre, inspired by the floor of the Greek theater of Epidaurus, where not only you will feel transported back in time into a great ineffable mystery which is only expressed through the conjunction of dramatic art and nature, but we have, next to the stairs, another unforgettable view of the city.
If you rent apartments in Barcelona remember doing these routes that Epicurus warned us, echoing a generally accepted precept among philosophers of antiquity, which the only truly wise person, is the one who does not need money for fun.
Translated by: Hans
