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Listen to Your Heart

On January 23, 2013 · Add Comment · In GOT MY ATTENTION, Movies & Theater

A movie about a financially struggling but spritually blooming waiter/singer/songwriter falling in love with a girl who can’t hear the music she inspires him to write.

First of all I am going to go ahead and change the title to “Listen to Your Cry”. This movie is a tragedy bomb equipped with all the necessary elements to force teardrops out of the viewer:

The star, the poor talented orphaned teenager with a heart as big as the eye can see
The rich, overly-protected disabled beautiful girlfriend
The funny playful but supportive buddy/co-worker
The mean rich mother trying to force a “better” life for her daughter

I mean the huge blow is so expected that it forces the viewer to take the pain in order to see the ending. Who would have thought! I got in bed las night to watch the Mummy and I ended up getting stuck on this well-made Chinese torture.

Yes it does give you a slap in the face, reminding you to cherish every second of this precious life. Watch it if you dare…

Barcelona, Spain – Where to eat?

On January 17, 2013 · Add Comment · In Barcelona, TAKE ME TO, THIRSTY & HUNGRY

Where to eat? If I go into details this part could take paragraphs so I will try to summarize as much as possible. Before I carry on, it is crucial to note the restaurant dynamics in Barcelona: Every season or so the ever so successful chefs decide to move and/or rename their establishments in order to stay fashionable and challenge their skills. Most of them regularly (almost everyday) change the dishes on their menu. So keep in mind that places/faces/flavors might have already changed shape (only for the better) by the time you read the details below. I reccomend you make reservastions in advance. If you choose not to (like us) then make sure you make it to dinner around 7-8 pm (places will not be busy even at that time. Barcelonians prefer to eat late and party until the early morning.)

Tapas 24: Go for lunch, tea time, dinner. Do whatever it takes to eat at this small basement shack! Every dish here has been simply mind blowing. The most favorite is the grilled cheese with truffle oil.

Lolita: Go for dinner. Sit at the bar and order everything. The salmon bruschetta glazed with honey truffle oil is impeccable.

El Quimm: Go for lunch and wait patiently to grab one of the emptying stools at the bar. Hidden inside the famous histocial food hall, the Boqueria, this place simply serves the best seafood in town. Start with the artichoke and the muscles. Order the squid with sunny side up eggs and finish with the house special Mama’s cake.

Commerc 24: The owner of Tapas 24 has so much buzz in this city that he couldn’t help but open a fancier tapas place in another part of the town. Go to Commerc 24 for dinner. Go crazy on the menu and start by tasting all the different kinds of olive oil they serve with the delicious in-house-baked bread.

Cal Pep: Always unbelievably crowded. We couldn’t make it for dinner, but the food looked delicious.

Tickets: Another impossible-to-make-a-reservation spot rumored to have one of the best tapas in town. They only take online reservations months in advance. Plan accordingly.

7 Portes: This facy much touristic paella place has been around since forever. So it is customary to pay a visit for dinner. Though keep in mind that compared to all the other tapas places, 7 Portes failed to impress us a much. The paella was a bit salty for our taste.

Barcelona, Spain

On January 15, 2013 · Add Comment · In Barcelona, TAKE ME TO

What to expect? Well I expected lots of sightseeing and nothing too phenomenal food-wise. I relied my expectations on the few Gaudi photos I skimmed through online and the few tapas places I used to frequent in New York. Now that I have been to Barcelona, I can say that I was completely misguided. This city is a one-of-a-kind food heaven. It starts with the traditional chunky, but delicious Mediterranean dishes and artistically minimizes them. The end result are tiny playful plates of wonders with addictive flavors served to be shared between two people.

Barcelona is a true testament to how good food comes in small packages. I have never been this much in love with the Spanish tapas. It is as if all the best chefs with the coolest innovative skills decided to move here and received some kind of a government subsidy for cooking this much awesome food and serving even better wine. I simply can not find any other reason to how good and cheap the food is here.

When the meals turn out to be much better than imagined, you expect the world-renowned architecture to be equally mind blowing. Well it wasn’t for me. My visits to all the well-known sights confirm the dynamics behind Barcelona’s urban expansion and they fail to impress me.

Like it is in most of the other metropolitan cities around the world, the “I am so rich I do not know where to spend the money” nouveau riche grabbed Gaudi by the leg and dragged him through a period of unrealistic splurging. Disney World-like residential buildings…Exotic, but Gothic man-made parks with ceramic collages of salamanders and birds…Gaudi’s world is a world of extravagant temporary contemporary, provoked by religion and flourished in only certain parts of the city. Too edgy to flow into the future and too bold to blend in, the Gaudi monuments appear to be nothing more than portals to a nonchalant period in time. Not all are distasteful, there is still some practicality hidden inside all the delusion. It would be unfair not to mention the small elements of beauty in Gaudi’s designs: the tiny but practical door knobs, the airy high ceilings and foyers and the open terraces.

It is unfortunate to say that anything beyond the splurges of the nouveau riche reminds the visitor nothing more than a gloomy and abandoned low-income Barcelona, blessed with a few surprising diamonds in the rough – such as the amazing National Museum building. The earthy, yellowish and somewhat dirty paint covering the historic residential buildings and the occasional wall graffitti abusing their ground floors could have certainly promoted my negative judgement.

This Spaniard city is not the place for you if “treasure” shopping is your thing while travelling. The city’s architectural aesthetics failed to impress me but they were not in the least unique. Shopping on the other hand is definitely not. The city is overpopulated with shallow souvenir shops, old patisseries and unappealing green grocers run by any nationality but the Spanish. It has been the most difficult adventure to find a single piece of genuine made-in-Spain item. Expect to see a sketchy, non-oriented and unbalanced mix of people around the Barcelona streets. One can definitely point out the tourists from the crowd and the rest is a mystery. You will end up asking yourself, “where are all the classy residents hiding?”

Where to stay? It is difficult to decide where is central in Barcelona because the attractions are dispersed all around the city. You have the beach in the south that is topped with amazing yachts, good traditional restaurants, fancy mega-hotels and funky beach crowd. You have the high-income residential and shopping areas in the north and you have the amazing restaurants and museums spread in between.

Choose Hotel Marimar if you do not mind a 20 min. walk to the luxury shopping avenue of Passaig de Gracia. This hotel is recommended by GOOP. You will have an amazing view of the city from the hilltop and enjoy a romantic pause from the city crowd once you are back at this modern luxury boutique hotel hidden inside a generously green public park. You will also be very close to the most impressive Miro museum. Keep in mind that the rooms at the back of the hotel are facing a shooting range. Request rooms that face the seaside.

Choose Hotel Alma if you would like to be close to the luxury shopping avenue and the best tapas place in town. Alma was actually my first choice when I booked the hotel for our trip, but all the standard rooms were sold out at the time.

One More Reason to Review the Istanbul Art Market

On January 11, 2013 · Add Comment · In Art, Istanbul

Few people got back with negative and positive criticism after I posted my views on the Turkish art market a few months ago (refer to Framing Turkish Contemporary Art). I guess it is alright to say that things are progressing towards a better future, but there is still so much to cook, taste and digest. Istanbul is nowhere near a comprehensive local and international art hub (but it might get there) and it will not be until the nouveau riche also reviews the market intelligently and patiently.

My dear fiancee brought up this article, Can Istanbul Save Damien Hirst? (Can Damien Hirst Save Istanbul?) yesterday and I really enjoyed reading it. It is based on the first somewhat controversial Damien Hirst exhibition on Turkish soil, opened yesterday by a private auction house in Istanbul. Have a look if you have time.

Ai Weiwei & Mona Hatoum

On January 11, 2013 · Add Comment · In Art

I am skeptically appreciative of these two artists’ cynical and satirical works. They are daring, experimental, rough and definitely not easy to handle. Theirs are not the type of works one can comfortably display at a private residence. They are meant to be observed in public spaces by the masses, transferring their defiant message not just to a handful of critiques. Weiwei and Hatoum’s art openly scratches the impervious “bad” and “alienation” of our contemporary society. Such type of monumental pieces should not solely be evaluated in artistic tones but taken as harmless warnings to how destructive we have and can become.

Weiwei is known for massive installations that generally target the debatable governance in his homeland, People’s Rebuplic of China. I reccomend you to have a look at this comperehensive NY Times article based on the artist’s “According to what?” exhibition in the U.S.

Although born in Lebanon, Hatoum considers herself Palestenian. Her main objective lies in her life-sized and beyond installations that focus on the damages and handicaps of the modern world. Here is an article that focuses on Hatoum’s daring installations.