I’m going to return to the trip I took during the break in the middle of December – after Paris we went to Rome, but I’m going to skip that and come back to it later because I went to Italy again with Anne – so I’m going to jump right to Barcelona. Confused? That’s okay. I’m a bit confused myself. (It comes with the territory.)
Barcelona is Spain’s second largest city and commercial center; it’s notorious for pickpocketing and partying, and for a couple of historical landmarks, though those landmarks are easy to mistake for more common things, like post offices:
There are also some interesting things, just hanging out on balconies:
This isn’t a real person – but that didn’t stop me from a massive double-take.
Barcelona is well-known for masterpieces of architecture by Antoni Gaudi, who is famous for using nature as his inspiration. There are many examples of what he’s done in Barcelona alone, but the greatest of all of them is La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family), a cathedral that has been in the works for decades, with no sign of its completion on the horizon. It costs 10 euros to get in as a student, and it is 100% worth it, especially with the satisfaction of knowing that I contributed to this masterpiece.
Note all the cranes in the background…
I walked around the inside of this building three times, very slowly, with my head bent back, just staring at everything. It’s intricate, but somehow all the craziness makes sense, takes your breath away; it’s been a few weeks but I can still remember the feeling. The stained glass – what they had completed – was a great mosaic of chips of color; I’m sure that if it were a sunny day, we would have been bathed in color. Each column is just a bit different, but they all seem to reach up to the ceiling like great trees; the stairways are numerous and reach upwards in dizzying spirals. You get a massive crick in your neck and you regret it not one bit.
I finally emerged, realizing that I’d lost Julienne and Suzie, thankfully finding them leaning on the railing on the other side of the building:
This is an act of architectural incredibleness that you really have to see to believe – it’s different from anything else I’ve seen; I’ve seen my fair share of cathedrals since I’ve been here, as Spain has been a breeding ground for Catholics with money for generations.
The other major Gaudi masterpiece we saw was Parc Guell (with the two little dots over the u, I don’t know how you write that), which is architecture that meets a very well tended garden:
This was a guy playing a steel-drum thing; it was extremely cool, and you could just tell that he was having a good time with it – his concentration was immense.
Right around here was where I dropped my camera, which still worked afterward but to this day bears a dent.
There’s much more to the park that we didn’t see, but that’s what Google Images are for, after all. (We were getting hungry, and you wouldn’t want us to starve, now would you?)
Those are the major things we saw; the rest of what we saw was found while walking, though for some of it we didn’t have to walk far for, like, for instance, the door to the building our hostel was in…
OH MY GOD — FISH!!!
I know I have a habit of showing silly pictures of fish, but in my defense, there were many more than this picture shows, and they were all really big. This was right by the aquarium, which is the largest in Europe. We didn’t go in, so I will make this a substitute.
The harbor:
Right by the harbor is a large roundabout with a huge pillar/statue complex:
This is a homage to Christopher Colombus: on his 1491 voyage he left from Seville, but came back to Barcelona. This doesn’t really make much sense to me, as Seville was the port from which all the ships to the New World left – it must have been that the royals were nearer to Barcelona at the time, though I certainly do hope that they stopped in Seville to wash off their accumulated filth and debauchery along the way. There are various plaques along the bottom, showing the journey, a bunch of cowering natives, and Columbus’ return to Spain:
Interesting tidbits: Columbus was actually an Italian from Genoa: he’s remembered as being Spanish because the Spaniards were the only ones that gave him the money and resources to go abroad; he was also technically Queen Isabella’s project – King Ferdinand likely allowed the expeditions to go out, but took less interest than Isabel. On another [random] note, Columbus had completely white hair by the time he was 30 years old.
As some of my diligent fans might remember, I saw Colombus’ casket in Seville’s cathedral: it is borne by four kings of Spain (this is from when Spain wasn’t completely united – Isabella and Ferdinand’s union actually united a great part of the countryside, which is what made them such a power couple); it’s highly pretentious, especially for a man that killed or ruined the lives of millions of people, directly or indirectly. Let’s just say that I’m ‘not a fan.’
We went shopping after walking around for a bit; I looked for pants (with an air of complacency I would later regret) and Julienne and Suzie looked for gifts for Christmas. On the main street we ran into a bit of a surprise:
This is one of the apartment buildings that Gaudi designed (one of two that I know of); the rent is guaranteed to be astronomical but it’s nice to ponder the possibility for a moment. And the lesson? You can run, but there’s no way to hide from Gaudi in Barcelona. But who would want to?
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