I spent the first 8 days of May in Barcelona, Spain.  I've wanted to travel there for a long time-- ever since I became aware of Gaudi and his expressions of Art Nouveau.  I saved up money, bought two guidebooks: Rick Steves' Spain and Lonely Planet Barcelona.  That was probably overkill; if I were to pick only one, I'd pick the city guide over the country one.  But I consulted both because they did have some different recommendations and information. 

In this post, I've summarized my trip and provided some links to my photos, all of which are uploaded to flickr- Barcelona collection.

Day 1: Arrival

Left Oklahoma City at 12:30pm local time, landed in Barcelona at 10:00am local time (7 hour time difference).  I didn't sleep much on the plane, but I did watch "How Do You Know?" (cute, love anything with Reese Witherspoon) and "Black Swan" (hated it, almost as much as I hated "The Wrestler"). 

Got to my hotel around 11:30, but couldn't check in until 1:30.  I was exhausted, but this forced me to stay awake as long as I could, which helped me adjust to local time pretty quickly. 

I headed back out to the central city destination: Las Ramblas.  This is a broad boulevard-- the center is wide, bricked, and full of cafes and vendors.  It's tourist central-- perhaps what Times Square is to New York. 

Las Ramblas begins at Plaça de Catalunya and ends at the harbor-- specifically, at a statue honoring Christopher Columbus.  The statue is located on the spot where Columbus presented hale and hearty "Indians" to Ferdinand and Isabel and said "hey, look at these choice slaves."  Or something like that. 

I stopped at a cafe and ordered tapas-- mussels and fried small fish.  (I had decided that I was going to be a more adventurous eater on this trip.  I've head mussels before, but I didn't know quite what the small fish would be like.)

Turns out they're WHOLE fried small fish.  I would never eat fish heads in my normal life, but, ADVENTURE!  So I jumped in.  They were not that good, in fact.  Chewy, not much flavor.  But the mussels were delicious.  So was the red wine (rioja) I had with lunch. 

I wandered a while longer-- Barcelona is an amazingly walkable city.  The streets are narrow and the sights are interesting.  I spent a lot of time on this trip just picking out different sections of the city and walking. 

Seafood paella for dinner.  Mussels, clams, and prawns cooked in a savory rice.  It was fantastic.  I don't know how you're supposed to eat prawns, though, so I might have muddled that a bit. 

Day 2: La Sagrada Familia

After a breakfast of cafe Americano and a croissant, I set out for La Sagrada Familia.  I could have taken the Metro (subway), but I wanted to see the city as I went.  It was a long walk-- my feet complained by the end of the day-- but walking enabled me to approach the church gradually, getting peeks as I got closer. 

Of all the sights I wanted to see, this was on the top of the list.  This is Gaudi's masterpiece.  Construction begin in the 1840s and continues today.  They expect to complete it in the next 15 years or so.  Thought I've always been a bit suspicious of Catholicism, there's no denying that they know how to build a worship space.  I still remember the visceral awe I felt when visiting Notre Dame (in Paris, not Indiana) 20 years ago. 

La Sagrada Familia (The Sacred Family) is an amazing combination of nature and structure.  Gaudi is part of the Catalan Art Nouveau, and Art Nouveau is known mostly for it's elaborate, nature-inspired decorative features.  In La Sagrada Familia, however, nature doesn't merely inspire flounces and flourishes-- the structures of trees inspire the structures of pillars.  When you walk in, you are immediately in a magical forest. 

The two existing facades are striking: the Nativity facade contains scenes from Jesus' birth.  It also contains animals and other decorative flourishes.  This facade was mostly completed by Gaudi.

The opposite side is called the Passion facade.  It contains 12 scenes from the end of Jesus' life.  This was conceived by Gaudi, but not completed during his lifetime.  Artist Josep Maria Subirachs created angular, weighty figures to act out Gaudi's plan.  According to the tourguide, Subirachs' work here is controversial.  It is clearly not in keeping with Gaudi's aesthetic. 

For reasons I don't understand, it is supposedly very cool that you can add up the numbers in the 4x4 box in any direction, and you'll end up with 33, Jesus' age when he was killed. 

If you go to the basilica (the Pope visited in November 2010 to officially christen it a basilica), you can pay a few extra Euros to ride up one of two elevators.  Do this, and pick the Nativity elevator (not the Passion one). 

The elevator takes you up 4 floors or so.  You walk across a small bridge behind the dove tree (you can make out a few heads to the left of the on the bridge in this pic). 

You wander down narrow spiral staircases that present view after view after view. 

All of my La Sagrada Familia pictures are here. 

Christopher Columbus monument pictures are here. 

Miscellaneous Barcelona photos, including Las Ramblas, are here. 


Edited to add:

I forgot to include my visit to La Pedrera-- one of Gaudi's buildings.  I stopped on the way back from La Sagrada Familia.  This building is mostly occupied by private tenants, but the roof and one apartment are open to tour. 

Most rooves in Barcelona are hideous: chimneys, air conditioners, storage shacks.  They are unseen places, for the most part.  Gaudi made them fantastical.  See my arty photo of some chimney tops? 

See all my La Pedrera photos here.