This is Park Guell (pronounced Park gu-ay). This architect called Gaudi made all sorts of cool stuff in the late 1800's and one is still under construction. Most of his stuff seems to be classified under the UNESCO Heritage designation so he's a pretty important dude.
Park Guell has this neat balcony that over looks the city, the benches are carved into a wave and covered in mosaics. In the distance you can see the cranes that are still constructing parts of his church - the Sagrada Familia.
Here is another picture that makes the wave a bit more noticeable. Do you notice the columns behind me? Do they look natural to you? maybe made out of dirt? Gaudi liked nature and liked natural environments...
But looks can be deceiving...neat huh?
He even made twisty columns!
Casa Batllo and Casa Mila are the two houses closest to the tourist quarter in Barcelona. We didn't bother with Casa Mila, the fact that it was completely plastered with a car ad means that there are also no pictures to show you (so I suggest Google).
This is Casa Batllo and it was really neat. I'm sure living in a place like this would get you weird looks from your neighbours, but it would be worth it, I mean who wouldn't want a dragon skin roof? How cool is that?
This house wouldn't look out of place being built today - but keep in mind this house is over a 130 years old...
Personally I think the most impressive thing about the entire building is that everything had thought put behind it. The walls in the roof had vents to keep it cool, the doors handles are molded to his hands, the windows get bigger the greater the distance from the skylight so as bring in more light. He even made his own furniture.
So away from the dragons and off to the church...This is the Sagrada Familia. As you can tell it's still under construction. (Sorry no interior shots but the line to get in wrapped around half the block)
This side of the church was done when Gaudi was still alive.
This side looked mostly done now.
They were still working on the third side, they have the big central tower to go and atleast a few smaller towers plus a lot of detail work.
This is what it will apparently look like when it's done - as you can see they still have a bunch to do.
Here are some closeups of the cool carvings and mosaics
There are of course other things to see in Barcelona. Being an old place they tended to build stuff on other stuff and so on and so forth so occasionally when you dig you find something old and cool, say like a roman ruin.
This is the Barcelona City Museum
Use your imagination... all that you see before you was a street with a fish processing plant, a fabric dying shop, a laundromat, baths and a winery.
Let's return now to modern times and talk about one of my favourite subjects...food!
Every European city has a market - well at least one - Barcelona has two within walking distance of Las Ramblas - which is the tourist centre and where we stayed.
Of course you can buy all sorts of stuff there...but hey we're in Spain so...wine and spanish ham anyone?
I must make a confession here, if i never see another piece of spanish ham (like prosciutto we have at home) in my life it might be too soon. Who knew you could get sick of it? People here apparently don't, this is the local deli section in the Carrefour that was next to our hotel. I seriously have to wonder how long it would take to finish a whole leg.
In case you've never seen this before - this is how you slice it - very carefully!
On to restaurants!
We had to try the tapas, even though apparently tapas are Spanish and Barcelona is Catalan NOT Spanish...I can't say I completely understood this but maybe it's like being in Quebec and NOT Canada.
Either way...
Tapas - There are a bunch of places you can go to get tapas in downtown Barcelona, though we found that the farther away from the tourist area the better the food is. This picture was taken at a chain restaurant where the food was actually pretty good. The left dish is foie gras and the right is razor clams.
Pintxo (or toothpick tapas) which are exactly what you would expect. To be honest we weren't terribly impressed, they looked neat but they didn't taste that great, but maybe more booze was needed.
Here is a shot of the restaurant - it's very much a serve yourself place. You ask for a "plato" and they count the toothpicks when you are done.
Esqueixada - which is a catalan dish with cod, tomatoes and some other stuff - it tastes like ceviche. On the side you can see the delicious tomato bread which was served at every restaurant we went to. Apparently it is a Catalonian dish and it is super easy to make: Toast bread, rub with garlic and tomato - or just tomato - add olive oil and voila! Tasty treat.
Paella (pronounced pie-eh-ya) should need no introduction
Hot chocolate! Yes this is not a Spanish thing, at least I don't think so, but this had to be the best hot chocolate I have ever had. I think they melted real chocolate and then added an amazing amount of cream. I mean really, could you say no to that?
Of course no trip would be complete without the odd quirky food. I have my doubts about this being a Spanish dish but hey how could I pass on a meringue that is bigger than me? For the record it wasn't just meringue - it did have hazelnuts in it - and it took a very very long time to eat.
Carnival!
We happened to be in Barcelona during Carnival. From
what I understand Carnival is understated in Barcelona and we really
didn't see much of anything, sure we saw batman, darth vader and a few
other well known people with their parents but it wasn't until we were
looking for dinner one night that we saw the party.
...and then they were gone...with nothing left except confetti...what can I say? we were hungry and they were gone by the time we were finished dinner....maybe it was past darth vader's bed time.
So that's it for Barcelona, but we
actually have a busy year ahead. My bud has burned most of his
points and we're headed off to snorkel in the Florida Keys, safari in South Africa and then relax with the family in Scotland.
After that travel might slow
for a bit as I'm getting a travel buddy near the end of October and apparently not everyone takes to being a travel buddy naturally. Apparently some people need to be taught! Strange isn't it? How can this not come naturally?!?! Oh well, there are lots of books to help me with this...speaking of which I had better get back to reading.
