Day 31 ~ Howdy Gaudi!

Today was our first day in Barcelona, and it promised to be action-packed. Barcelona’s favorite son, the architect Antoni Gaudi, created many spectacular works in the city, and today we would see the most famous: Park Guell, and the Sagrada Familia cathedral. These are must-see attractions for literally every tourist in Barcelona, and trust us, every tourist in the city was there. You have to buy timed tickets for each one, and we had scheduled both for today. Our tickets included guided tours.

First up was Park Guell. This originated as a planned community for the super-rich, outside of the pollution and human misery of the city. The plan fell through, as it turned out that the super-rich still don’t want to be very far out of town (joke’s on them – not only is this park now squarely in the center of town as it’s grown, now the super-rich now have zero opportunity to live in this city-owned park, not for any price). In the end, only 3 houses were ever built and lived in. Now it’s just for us.

The park is way up on a hill. After an uphill bus ride, we hiked up the steep streets and were pleasantly surprised that there are by escalators for an especially steep section. Near the top, we were greeted by this grand view.

It’s hard to say what part of the park is the best – they’re kind of all the best in their way. We loved the plaza with its hundreds of feet of mosaic benches and breathtaking views of the city.

It’s built over the top of a colonnaded Roman-style marketplace – this soars like a cathedral. The Roman marketplace is also covered in mosaics, up, down, everywhere you look, and it’s fascinating to think about the untold hours of labor that went into them. From the subtle white tiles on the base of every pillar…

…to the raised ceilings

The reflections on the mosaic tiles flickered as we walked through the halls. That effect was unfortunately impossible to capture on our lame cameras, but you can see it a little in the reflections here. It was a dazzling thing to experience.

It was hard to get a pic of the famous dragon, because everyone wants one just like me, but we got it in the end.

These buildings were administrative buildings for something that never needed to be administered in the end. The wait to get inside was prohibitive, which is a shame, because it would have been very neat to see the inside.

We wanted to find a spot to eat our packed lunch, and were dubious of finding anything – there were thousands of people milling around. To our astonishment, only a few yards away from the built environments with their mosaics and structures, the park emptied out completely – it transformed into an ordinary, comfortable, well-appointed park, with plenty of space for people to enjoy. We found a quiet playground, and had a tranquil picnic.

Overall, we would have liked much, much more time here, to see the less explored parts of the park and peek around some of the buildings that weren’t on the tour. Next time.

Serenity abruptly stopped because we had to jet off to our next timed entry, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral. Famously, this building is unfinished, 100 years after the great man’s death. We were tired, and had had enough of crowds for the day, but Sagrada Familia put an arm around our shoulders and promised us it would be worth it.

The towers are this lovely organic style, that look like wax has dripped from the heavens, stalactites of pure exultation.

The outside is lavish with details, with hundreds of chimera carved into the stone. It seems like every square inch is sculpted.

But inside is where this unbelievable structure really takes flight. It’s a fascinating blend of naturalistic curves and almost cubist style.

But best of all is the light. The stained glass is marvelous, and Gaudi attended to the colors and natural variations of the sun with the eye of an impressionist painter. We were there in the afternoon, the yellow/orange side, but mornings in the cathedral, with light coming from the other side, would be blue/green. Masterful.

It was a wonderful place, and we were so glad we powered through. We gamely set off to see another sight, the Sant Pau hospital. This was one Stef had been super-excited to see, with its Moorish tiles and smaller crowds. We stopped off to take care of some cell phone business, and realized that between Stef’s still-exhausting cold and our already packed day, we just didn’t have another major sight in us. With heavy hearts, we turned back. Hopefully we will still get there this week.

We were ready for some rest and relaxation – with cats! We headed to the Gracia neighborhood for a rendezvous at another cat cafe. This one is earnest and mission-driven, if a little more uptight than some of our favorite cat cafes have been. Still, the cats were super-fun, particularly this one who loves a really yummy sleeping pose:

To back up a little, this was our first look at the Gracia neighborhood, which was like a cool pool on a hot day after all the chaos of the Gaudi sights. It was a total break from the crowds, in the kind of narrow, charming, vertical neighborhood we’ve loved all over Europe, but with its own very Spanish character. We were so happy to be here.

Balconies make absolutely everything better…

We found this sweet and understated monument to Anne Frank. I loved thinking about how this girl has moved people from the Netherlands to the U.S. to Spain and all over the world. What a testament to the power of writing.

We had dinner at a nice sidewalk cafe on a small plaza. The food was excellent, and we watched lots of kids practicing on their scooters and rollerblades and all manner of wheeled things. We would have loved to spend more time in this neighborhood, but it was already getting late, so we headed back to the Gotico neighborhood of our hotel.

After a quick breath in our room, we ventured out to see if we could catch more Merce festival action – from right outside our hotel! We were skeptical – could we really just turn up at a random hour of the night and see a party going on? The crowds suggested we could. And we sure did see some neat stuff! There was a whole parade being put on with dozens of these “giants” – big mannequin/puppet things. The costumes were incredibly lavish, with all the detail of historic human garb, and they would twirl the puppets so the clothes flared out with so much flourish. It was really fun to see. Daniel thought that the narration was a mixture of Spanish and Catalan at this very Catalan festival.

The giants were surprisingly believable even though they were so primitive. Truly magical.

There are about 2 gelato spots on every block in Barcelona, so of course we hit up one of those, and wandered the streets a few more minutes with our cones. We saw some incredibly Gothic buildings that we will be excited to check out during the daytime. And some scenes that are a special kind of enchanting at night.

And that, friends, was all the day we had in us. Ultimately this was a pretty tough day – keeping appointments miles apart from each other is hard, and we didn’t get to do the things we would have preferred with our time. Also being in the most tourist-dense parts of the city for most of the day made for long hours. We are relieved that the rest of our time in Barcelona is unscheduled and in at least somewhat less touristic locations. Let’s see what happens!