After our first night of sleep in Barcelona, we were ready for our first day of planned activities. Not pictured here is the delightful breakfast we enjoyed at the hotel, complete with two automatic coffee machines. Never-ending cappuccinos!
After a quick review of the public transportation systems available, we hit the metro for the first time. We were headed towards the mountains to see Park Guell.
Largely designed by Antoni Gaudí, this park is a visual wonder.
Aside from a distant art history class memory, this was my introduction to Gaudí and he made a very good first impression. The use of natural materials blurred the lines of where the land stopped and the architecture began.
There were very few straight lines and most of the buildings and forms seemed to move with the land and the wind on the side of the mountain.
And color! Color abounded both in the mosaics and in the applied color to buildings.
As an admirer of Dr. Seuss, seeing Park Guell was like seeing a Dr. Seuss drawing come to life.
The park was situated on the side of a mountain overlooking the city of Barcelona. From this perch you could easily see the entire city and the sea. It was popular, though and you sorta had to fight for your selfies and group pics.
Each level offered something totally new and unexpected. The attention to detail was amazing.
Down at the lowest level there was a little house and a gift shop. We walked through both.
I was inspired by the bold use of color on the interior spaces.
The colors were great, but also the walls seemed to be more than just architecture. It was easy to see hints of living things that could have been inspiration.
That's me the only day I wore pants on the trip.
And that's the group, or at least as many as we could get to gather at the designated time. Many people didn't have phone service without wi-fi (which is pronounced "wee-fee" in Barcelona) so we relied on word of mouth, yelling, and actual clocks.
After the group photo, we were free to find our own lunch and our own way down to the center city to our next assigned tour...and the reason I wore pants. Our little group broke off and took a scenic walk down the mountain. We stopped at Guelli Sandwich Park on the way and had a great little sandwich. We also signed their wall. They were very nice guys. Somehow we ended up climbing up a lot of stairs on our way back down. Not sure how that worked.
After lunch we hopped back on the metro and found our way to Sagrada Familia. This amazing cathedral dominates the skyline. Shoulders and knees should be covered in a cathedral, thus the pants. With a little extra time before our tour, we decided it was time for coffee.
With a little effort, we found a cool coffee shop and asked for a table. Some poor guy was having his coffee at a large table and the owners asked him to move to make room for us. This was a coffee I remember. It was very good. It was also my fourth cappuccino of the day.
Our guided tour began in the front of the cathedral and our tour guide explained so many subtle details. This was also designed by Antoni Gaudí and it became clear pretty quickly that Gaudí was not a regular human. He was either an alien or a time traveler from the future. Every square inch of this place was filled with double meanings and symbolism.
The columns were columns but they were also giant tree trunks designed to make you feel as though you were standing in a forest looking up.
And this is paratrooper Jesus over the altar. There was an explanation for this too but at this point I was being pulled away from the audio and back into the space by the visual vibrations of this place. It was so majestic and so sacred. It was very difficult to believe that we were standing in a place designed by man. I was aware of the tour guide speaking, but I took out my earphones and spent some time with God.
The building was oriented to maximize the sunlight coming through the windows. The eastern side had windows of blue and green glass as they told the story of the early parts of the life of Jesus while the western side had windows of yellow, orange and red as they told the story of the latter parts of the life of Jesus.
Somehow the light became a physical part of the space.
I stood here for a very long time. People were ready to go but this light and this color...you just had to stay there and feel it.
The promise of food finally got me out but first we walked over to a park to get some photos of the building from a distance.
We happened upon more of us eating on the sidewalk and took a quick photo before sniffing out our own place to eat. We absorbed Sean, Katie and Anne into our group along with Brianna before finding a restaurant.
This place was fun. The waitress sort of told us what we were going to drink and eat. It was like a little Barcelonian pub. After we ate, we went back to the hotel to rest for a few minutes before heading back out at 9:30 pm to find dessert.
I don't remember dessert, but I do remember finding this cool art gallery in the Gothic Quarter, another accidental discovery. We walked in to check it out and met a nice lady named Cleia who was one of the artists selling work in the gallery. That's her on the far right. We asked her to show us something of hers and she pulled out a painting in progress and talked to us about it. She was Italian but had moved to Barcelona. The painting featured an anatomical heart and had the text "More Love XFavor" on it. She told us it meant "More Love Por Favor". She also gave us stickers from the gallery.
On the way back to the hotel we started to realize that it still wasn't dark at 10:00 pm. This made us think it was still early. Sean and I still made it back to the room before Pat. This was when we started calling him "Party Pat". In truth, he only came in a few minutes after us each night, but I think he only beat me back to the room once the entire trip.
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