Barcelona: Gaudí's Casa Battló

Well, I can think of no better way to start my Saturday than to wake up at 5 AM to get on a train, can you?

However, that train was headed to Barcelona, which made everything better!!

We managed to successfully navigate the Metro with the giant suitcases (doesn't everyone just love being the people on public transportation with all their luggage? Yeah, me too.) and find the hotel, which is a block away from one of the main attractions of Barcelona–the Casa Batlló, one of Antoni Gaudí's creations.

It's an amazing building, and there's essentially zero conventionally flat surfaces, except the floors. Everything is moving, with wavy outlines and random shapes.

Not everything in the house is original–it was originally built for the Batlló family, but eventually fell into disrepair and had to be restored. Unfortunately, this means the tickets to see the house are pretty expensive, so they can restore it properly, but hey, I can deal with dollar-store food if it means I get to see this house.

This fireplace is an original though. It's built so that a couple can sit on the big seat on the right side, and their chaperone can sit on the little seat on the left–since dating was a smidge different when this house was built in the early 1900's.

The building is all "sea-shapes" as the audio tour called it, like this ceiling is built to look like a whirlpool, and the windows in the room are all wavy with colored glass.

Also, Gaudí put in access to natural light in every room in the house, even the office, the smallest room in the house. There was a center light shaft in the middle of the house, which provided access to the elevator and the apartments on all the upper floors, and this light shaft is made out of blue tile that's darker at the top and lighter at the bottom, so that it all seems like the same shade of blue, even as you move down and there's less light.

The roof is pretty snazzy too, Gaudí grouped all the chimneys together so they could form a castle-like shape instead of littering the roof with random structures. And the front of the house looks like a dragon's spine.

The apartment doors are marked with letters instead of numbers, in a calligraphy that Gaudí made up himself, and the door handles are an unconventional shape, that's made to fit to your hand.