We slept and showered our first day away and woke up ready to really get into the sights and scenes of Barcelona. My boy is an aspiring artist, so Gaudi, Picasso, and Miro were on the list. I knew I planned too much, so we prioritized. Gaudi first. But before we could get to Gaudi, The Daddy had to stop by the local Harley Davidson store for souvenirs for his buddies back home. No problem. On the map, the store was right near the Royal Palace. We could cross off two items on the list, THEN see the works of the famous architect. We found the HD store easily enough, but finding a place to park was a whole other story. We drove around the block probably 137 times before my husband ultimately decided to pretend to be a local and just stopped the car and put the hazard lights on. He did go the extra step of parking in front of a closed and graffiti stained door instead of double parking in front of open, busy shops. Crazy town. For real.
After the gift shopping, we parked above the palace near a Guell garden, designed and built by Gaudi. Fortuitous! There was a group of tourists lined up and waiting for the gate to open, but once the group was in, the tour guide closed and locked the door and said you had to be special with a special pass to enter. The gardens weren't open to just anyone, and I guess we were the rabble that day. Fine. We took some pictures of the outside and moved on to our original destination.
The fountain outside the palace and my cute kid. He makes me smile.
The palace. Which was closed up and clearly not in use. The gardens are open and the paths well worn by the residents running, walking, and cycling through. The thing about the horrible traffic and parking conditions is that all the locals walk and ride bikes. The only fat people we saw were clearly tourists. Mostly American.
There was a bamboo forest. Nicco had fun getting "lost" inside. He broke off a stick that he carried with him everywhere throughout the day. Sorta made me crazy. But, he was happy.
We took a nice walk and a few nice pictures, then parked the car at what I thought would be fairly central location for three more Gaudi landmarks. We walked to the most famous of the three, La Sagrada Familia, which was unfinished when Gaudi died. Work has continued in his name and style for about 90 years, I think. They don't expect it to be finished for another 12 years, which will mark 100 years since Gaudi's death. We walked up to the church, admiring the towers. Then we saw the line. We started walking around the block to find the end of the line and didn't, so we settled once again for photos of the outside of the structure.
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| The Holy Family, for which the church is named. |
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| The Tree of Life |
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| Signature towers and spires |
I wish we could have gone in, but it would have taken easily 4 hours just to get to the door, I'm sure. So we learned another lesson...always buy tickets online and ahead of time. There was no wait for advance purchased tickets.
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| Streetlamps...some of Gaudi's early work. |
Since we couldn't go inside and had to walk to our next destination anyway, we decided to walk along the street market. There was a guy teaching an exercise class of some kind, to everyone in general and no one in particular. No one in particular was participating.
Oh my goodness, the freshy-fresh bread stand. The big oven and the fresh loaves ready to go in and just coming out. Yum.
Olives...typical and traditional Spanish fare.
A weaver.
We worked our way back to the car and parked closer to the next place on the list, walked only 3 blocks to La Pedrera, and stopped at a nearby café for lunch. I bought tickets to the museum while we waited for food. It was a good move.
The waitress was an Irish lass who told us that for Spanish Tortilla and Paella, you can't beat this place. It's all made fresh in-house. We asked for one paella and one tortilla to share among the three of us.
Nicco loved the tortilla. It was one of the best I've ever had. Yummy!
We also had chorizo (authentic-yippee!) and tomato bread in the style of the Catalan.
Then she brought out the paella. Huge. And delicious. And huge. The bill was also huge.
We learned yet another lesson. When we said we wanted one paella to share among the three of us, we meant one small dish. But here, they serve and charge by the person. So we got three servings, for three people (even though one of us is a small person), in one large pan. Lunch was delicious, but not really worth the price tag. That paella there, $41 euro. That's a lot. Of paella and euros.
After lunch we went to La Pedrera, dubbed by us The Crazy House.
It's a bunch of apartments. It's also pretty amazing.
I loved the door and ceiling.
And the columns too.
We started walking up the stairs marked "visit" with an arrow pointing up the stairs, but were called back by one of the guides who said that if we wanted to walk up the eight flights of stairs, we had to use the other ones, which were around the corner and not clearly marked. It would be better, she said, to take the elevator. So we did. And this is what we saw.
We wandered around the rooftop terrace ooh-ing and ah-ing and admiring the architecture and the views. Nicco loved it. I did too, and so did the Daddy, but my favorite thing was watching Nicco's wide-eyed wonder.
Inside the building is a museum. We walked down the stairs one floor to the attic with all its arches.
There was a model of the whole building, which is impossible to capture from the street.
There were display cases with a variety of objects found in nature...objects which inspired Gaudi.
We left The Crazy House and Nicco said, "That wasn't crazy at all! It was really neat! I liked it a lot and I would live there if I could."
We walked across a couple streets and down a couple blocks to another crazy house. This time we just took pictures because time was running out on our meter and I wanted to get to the park before the sun went down.
We made it to the general vicinity of the Parc Guell, but the only visible parking was for buses only. We had to drive up a hill about a quarter mile and park on the side of the road then walk down to the entrance.
The park kind of made me think of Alice in Wonderland...curiouser and curiouser. All wavy and funky.
There was a big courtyard bordered by a mosaic bench all the way around.
Interesting. Intriguing. Beautiful in a weird way.
Nicco spotted a face.
We walked down some stairs toward the more interesting parts of the park. Here's a detail of the ceiling:
And the columns supporting the courtyard above.
One of many sculptures, and my silly boy with his bamboo stick.
This lizard is an iconic Gaudi image. It took a lot of patience to get a picture without some silly tourist sitting on it or touching it.
Nicco pointed out how the railing around this part of the park looked like one of the spiny creatures in the museum we visited earlier. So fun to see him making the connections!
A gingerbread looking house.
After we got our fill of the Gaudi park, the sun was beginning to set. I asked, hopefully, if the boys could stand to stay in town long enough to go back to the National Palace to see the Magic Fountain at night.
They said yes! I was so happy.
The day was almost done. There were some small disappointments and wrong turns, but nothing like the day before. While we didn't quite get to do everything I had planned on my list, I was satisfied and I think the boys were too.
