I was supposed to be flying. Paragliding in the foothills of the Pyrenees. But the weather isn’t cooperating, and so it is that I find myself in Barcelona, capital of Catalonia, with four days on my hands and no plans whatsoever. I’ve been here once before, but only to run the marathon, and I didn’t see much of the city – I must be one of the few people to have passed the Sagrada Família on foot without even noticing it was there! So now I will make up for my previous lack of attention. And there are worse places to be grounded…!

Like Rome, Barcelona is a city spanning millennia, but with the exception of the bullfighting ring (which is a direct descendant of the gladiatorial games of yore) Barna (not Barca – that’s the football club) doesn’t wear this fact on its sleeve. Instead there are hints everywhere; a colonnade incorporated in a building, supporting arches laid bare in basements, a stretch of aqueduct suddenly appearing like a ribcage of a long dead animal revealed by the ebb and flow of the desert sands. Some can be seen in archeological digs, others are felt rather than perceived by the naked eye – the rambling roads of the old town still snaking their way to the sea along buried waterways, place-names lingering where the features themselves are long gone.

And these are just the things you can perceive above ground level – there is a whole sub urban cityscape, too. I’m reading Underland at the moment, and I’m dying to find someone that can give me a more comprehensive tour of the hidden layers of the city’s past, but alas, I don’t find any such cicerone. Instead I wander the streets aimlessly, getting creatively lost and finding a seemingly endless array of interesting stores and quaint bars and restaurants. There’s the café that serves nothing but cereals, the street vendor that specializes in what must be diplomatically circumscribed as anatomically-looking plants, the store filled with nothing but huge sacks filled with all kinds of flour, nuts and seeds, one establishment that sells only glass jellyfish, another that’s full of leather masks (for carnival, or other special occasions), the list goes on and on.

It is a city ripe with contradictions: the second largest in the country, and a centre for the independence movement; a city thriving on tourism, with a strong opposition to that very phenomenon; a city that is clearly very well to do, yet possesses a large population of dispossessed people. These aren’t your ordinary homeless people, either; much like the independence movement, these poor people are organized; they live in tribe-like groups that squat in empty buildings and form an entire shadow economy, siphoning electricity from the grid illegally, much like their ancestors would have done to get water from the aqueducts without paying.

Due to all this and more, Barcelona has a unique quality to it. An American I meet that has previously lived in New York City and San Fransisco says it combines the best qualities of the two – and I see no reason to contradict her. The famous grid-shaped city planning of the newer parts of town combined with the labyrinth of the old town, the proximity of both sea and mountain, and of course the marvelous architecture (so much more than the Gaudi showcases – but yes, this time I do get to see his little church project!) all make for a wonderful cityscape. Add to that the many authentic restaurants and food markets, the international blend of people from all over and the likable nature of every inhabitant I encounter, and you have a pretty ideal mixture. If I had to live in a city, this would be high on my list.