Barcelona Trip, 16-20 May - Part I

Yolanda was getting married in the vicinity of Barcelona, and so I had decided to take a couple of days extra to check out Gaudí's creations as I'd never been to Spain before. As a really great bonus, my sister then decided that she was gonna join me! She got there on Monday, and I arrived Wednesday. She would leave Friday, when I was to go meet the wedding party.

Anyway, the approach to Barcelona held a lot of promise which turned out to be fulfilled completely. We were flying parallel to the city, over the water, so I had a good view of the city, but was straining to find La Sagrada Familia. Anyway, what a lovely way to start the trip! I found city centre and Mona without any problems, and after a good lunch we set off to go see Casa Míla, also known as La Pedrera (The Quarry). Our hostel was just around the corner from Casa Batlló, another Gaudí must-see, and Casa Míla was a few blocks away. We decided to start with La Pedrera and continue on to Park Güell later in the day.

Here's a picture of the street-facing facade of the building:

I cannot get over the imagination that Gaudí had, and this goes for everything of his we saw. Simply and utterly amazing. One thing I will say, though, is that you can only take in so much Gaudí in one day. We had split our four places (Casas Míla & Battló, La Sagrada Familia and Park Güell) over 3 days, which was perfect. You just get to a point where you cannot process any more awesomeness, and so you would not appreciate anything properly you saw after that. I think we had a really good distribution, and it never got too overwhelming.

Anyway, back to La Pedrera. :) Here's a picture of the really cool ventilation shafts, which looked like helmeted heads. I absolutely loved the sinuous lines and the mosaics, which are Gaudí trademarks if anything. I have wanted to see Park Güell since reading a description of it in a William Gibson novel (Mona Lisa Overdrive). It did not
disappoint - check out this photo with the famous undulating bench that runs around the top of the Sala Hipóstila, the forest of
columns with lovely mosaics in the ceiling.

You could happily spend a day here, just chilling out, if it's not hot enough to go to the beach. Here's a picture of one of the many fantabulous stone colonnades dotted around the park. As it frequently does with Gaudí, the stone looks like you've taken a mixer to it and just left it like that. I've said it before and I'm gonna say it again - amazing....

Anyway, that's it for Part I, stay tuned for Part II, where we go for tapas......