Barcelona, the rest of day 2

After overdosing on La Sagrada Familia and Casa Batlló, I headed over to Parc Montjuïc. This is a hill overlooking the harbor, and was featured somewhat prominently when the Olympics were held here. There are several museums here, not all of which I went into, mostly due to lack of time. I headed for the Archaeology Museum, since that seems to be a theme for this trip (or at least this portion of it). It had very nice stuff going all the way back to Roman times.

I took a few more pictures along the way.


The picture on the right is the Plaza de Catalunya, which is at the north end of La Rambla. The other two are views from Parc Montjuïc.)

After all that, I got on a night train (2d class compartment, no nice private locking doors, shared with 2 Argentinians), which arrived in Granada bright and early.

Barcelona, Casa Batlló

After La Sagrada Familia, I wandered over to what is probably one of Gaudí's more outrageous works, the Casa Batlló (Flash site, it has English). Gaudí was asked by one if patrons to remodel his house in a then-trendy section of Barcelona. The result was a riot of whimsy, color, and a marked lack of straight lines.

The facade is a all wavy lines and color accents.



Even the sidewalks have some stuff going on.


Every room in the house admits natural light somewhere.



There are some really neat details of construction.


The interior stairwells look like aquarium interiors.


The back patio has some really wacky stuff.


The roof has a dragon shaped, um, structure, on it.

Barcelona, La Sagrada Familia

This one's for you, Phil. Put on some Alan Parsons Project.

The next day began with a visit to La Sagrada Familia. I've seen and heard much about this unfinished masterpiece, and it entirely lives up to its billing as an incredible work of art and architecture. I'll leave the details of what's going on there to the cathedral's web site, since that's what the web is all about.



There are two places where one can take elevators up into towers of the cathedral. I went up one of these, and walked down, taking lots of pictures. There are many details that would be barely visible (if at all) unless one is up in the towers.







Since the church is a big construction zone, the interior is almost entirely filled with scaffolding, and there are cranes around the exterior.





There are also piles of construction materials that look interesting.


And in some places there is stained glass in place, although seeing it through the scaffolding is a bit of a challenge.


One of the doors had writing on it.


Also, if anyone knows what this building is, let me know.


By the way, did y'all know that Barcelona also has a triumphal arch?

Barcelona, day 1

I arrived in Barcelona on a night train from Paris, at about 8:30 AM. Barcelona is the city of Antonio Gaudí, an important Spanish (well, actually Catalan) Modernist architect. His most famous work, the Sagrada Famila will appear in the next entry.

The first part of the day was spent getting my bearings. My room was near the main drag in Barcelona, La Rambla, right next to the Mercado Boqueria. La Rambla is a mile or so long road with a wide promenade in the middle. It is a constant whirl of street life, populated by buskers and beggars especially in the evening.

On one side is a square, in which can be found a street light based on Modernist ideas.



I then proceeded on narrow streets (this being the old part of Barcelona) towards the cathedral.





As it was hitting siesta time (and not in Akron, Okhiiiioooo), I wandered on to two fairly interesting museums. The first is the Museo Picasso, which is interesting both for its site and its content. The content was founded on donations by Picasso and his heirs of works of his, and has much of interest to anyone curious about the early days of Picasso's development as an artist. The buildings housing the museum are a set of adjacent historical mansions which have mostly been gutted in the interior for modern museum galleries, but much interesting architecture (and reuse of existing structures) abounded. No pics, sorry.

The second museum, right across from the Picasso, was the Barbier-Muller Museum, which housed an interesting exhibit of native arts and crafts from all over the world, currently showing those with bird and animal themes. Interesting to see e.g. Mayan and Egyptian objects juxtaposed. Small museum, but quite worthwhile.

I also visited the City History Museum, which is built on top of Roman ruins. You take an elevator down 2000 years into the past to view them. The ruins are of parts of a laundry, a wine-making operation, and, as the levels go up, elements of early church architecture. A really nice presentation...

I ended a long day of walking with dinner at Organic, a restaurant that Russell would hate. On the other hand, they had T-shirts bearing the words "Organic is orgasmic", so they can't be all bad. I almost bought one, but my backpack was feeling mighty stuffed.

The next day I went to Modernist heaven.