Día dos en Barcelona hermosa

Day Two in Beautiful Barcelona ~ Antoni Gaudi's Creations

One of the best parts of going on vacation is the ability to sleep as late as you'd like. No dogs cuddling up to you demanding you arise at 6:00 and take her for a walk. No alarm clocks screaming at you that you better get out of bed immediately or be late for work. Ah, vacation. The Hotel Curious, our nice little hotel just a block from La Ramblas had a decent little continental breakfast with lots of different breads, toast, cheese, meat, yogurt, cereal, fresh fruit, etc. A good way to start off a day in Barcelona.

Once our bellies were full we were ready to start our day of exploring Gaudi's many creations spread about the city. We convinced ourselves the hop on hop off bus tour would be a good idea - it would take us to the sites, we'd see some of the city AND get some useful information about Barcelona! Bad idea. It was so crowded at the first bus stop we walked to our first destination - La Pedrera, aka Casa Mila. La Pedrera (meaning "The Quarry") was REALLY cool! A 40 minute wait was worth it.

Perhaps I should pause for a moment just give a quick run down of who Antoni Gaudi was. Gaudi was born in 1852 (died 1926) and is Barcelona's most famous Modernista Architects. La Pedrera was Gaudi's last major work before devoting himself to the La Sagrada Familia (coming up next) and was built between 1906-1910 commissioned by Pere Milà to be an apartment complex where Pere Milà and his family would live along with renting apartments out. It is considered by many to be Barcelona's quintessential Modernista building. Gaudi was had an organic style that was inspired by nature combining function and form. OK, architectural lesson over. Let's look at some photos, shall we? I thought the terrace or rooftop was completely awesome. That's where the tour started us off.
There are 3 different types of structures on the roof: the badalots (staircases) like seen at right; the ventilation towers and the chimneys. The undulating balustrades conform to the shape of the facade, as Gaudi sought a harmonic solution between the rhythms of the facade and the roof (thank you Casa Mila audio and paper guide). Wouldn't it just be amazing to have an apartment in this building and sit up on the roof terrace enjoying an evening glass of wine? I think so. Amazingly, people do live in the apartments as well as there being some offices here. I might not like having the tourists around all day long, but after closing hours it must be nice.
I didn't find the apartment terribly interesting so I don't have many pictures of it. It has been recreated as an apartment of a Barcelona bourgeois family during the first decades of the 20th century and decorated with period furnishing and household appliances. It was neat, but nothing overly exciting. We did get to sit in some Gaudi designed ergonomic chairs. They didn't look like they would be but they were surprisingly comfortable.


Now, onto our next stop! We did actually manage to take the Hop On Hop Off bus and sit on top. We hopped off at la Sagrada Família Gaudi's most famous and persistent work. He began work on this famous church in 1883 and continued until his death in 1926. It has been progressing in fits and starts ever since. Even today, the half-finished church is not expected to be finished for another quarter century! (again thanks for the info Rick Steves).

When we first got off the bus there was a line around the block waiting to go into the church! "Holy moly!" I thought, "I'm not so sure I even care about going in...I mean it's just another church, right?" But another woman who was on the bus assured me that it really was worth going in to see. Since I was starving (and BOY do I get cranky when I'm hungry) we decided to hold off making a decision about the church until after we had some food in our bellies. We were going to have lunch on the cheap, so we strolled around looking for a place to grab a sandwich or something. Just across from the church was this little hole in the wall that had these pizza like things so we thought, OK this will do. My pizza thing was still cold in the center, but I was hungry so it tasted good enough for me. Naturally, we didn't actually check the price before we ordered and we ended up paying way more for a crappy lunch than we should have. Oh well, live and learn. In retrospect we were across the street from one of Barcelona's major tourist attractions - we should have known prices would be jacked up. And second when you don't see the price listed on the board...that's another indication you are about to be screwed. Granted, being able to actually read the language helps with this second one. Anyways, after lunch there was hardly any line at all and bought our tickets and went right in.

This is the Passion facade built by Josep Maria Subirachs. There is controversy over this facade as some think that it does not fit with Gaudi's vision. Personally, I think it fits in very well. Gaudi also built a school on site for the children of the workers - you can see the roof of it in the above picture. It's the undulating rooftop in the lower right corner. Even his school houses are interesting to look at!
Inside the church is awe inspiring. I may have become desensitized to Gothic cathedrals but this is like nothing I've ever seen before. Do to the fact many of the windows do not have stained glass in them yet the interior is so bright and airy. I wish they would leave it like this, but there are plans to put in all stained glass. I'm sure that will look beautiful as well. The pillars look like towering trees supporting the roof. If I remember correctly this is what Gaudi intended.

Look how detailed the ceiling is. Wow, imagine being the workman up there completing that work.





After La Sagrda we grabbed that trusty ole' tourist bus and went out to our last Gaudi stop of the day - La Parc Güell. This was totally cool. He designed it for Senor Güell to be a gated community for the hoity-toity outside of the city in a lovely green space. Naturally, all those posh ladies of the early 1900's didn't really want to be away from the city center, despite the promise of fresh, smog free air. So instead of 60 palatial residences being built, there were 2. Gaudi lived in one and Count Güell lived in the other. I would have lived there, hell I'd live there today if I could!

Once you enter the park, this is what you see. It would have been WAY cooler if there weren't all those damned tourists! hee, hee, hee

OK, well...I'm tired so I'm going to stop writing and maybe if I can work up the enthusiasm I'll post some pictures of the parc tomorrow.

Buenos Noches, y'all