Barcelona: La Sagrada Familia

12.30: Here's the thing that I have wanted to see the most in Barcelona since I started learning about Barcelona in the first place. The Catedral de la Sagrada Familia is Gaudí's biggest creation, but unfortunately it's still unfinished because a) Gaudí died halfway through the construction (he got hit by a tram) and b) they ran out of money for a little while.

But even though it's not finished, it was worth the line that wrapped halfway around the city block to get in. Plus, this means we got to see more of the outside, where once again Gaudí used a lot of references to nature to decorate the cathedral, from fruits and vegetables atop the towers, to shells and lizards decorating the walls, to a giant tree atop the main façade at the front of the church.

The façade on the opposite side, where visitors enter, was sculpted after Gaudí's death, but depicts the story of Jesus, excepting his birth. I don't know a ton about the Bible, but the Last Supper, Betrayal of Judas, and Crucifixion are all there, along with several other important chapters. Over the doors are carvings of the Greek letters Alpha and Omega.

Inside, the ceiling looks like flowers, supported by giant stone pillars that branch out to look like a forest.

Another one of Gaudí's trademark style points is the use of natural light. The church is covered with what will eventually be about ten sets of stained-glass windows on each side. 

The main altarpiece of the Cathedral was designed by Gaudí but sculpted by another artist under Gaudí's direction. The backside of the altar is surrounded by a series of chapels where the stained glass is finished, and the metal organ reflects all the colors that come through the windows.

Above the altar is the largest skylight in the church, the top of which is capped by a circle of gold to symbolize God.

The church is expected to be finished by the middle of the century, and will eventually have four middle towers and one giant tower in the absolute center. For now, they're working on the four surrounding towers, but the ones along the outside are finished.

Also, a lot of the museum exhibits (this one is inside the school Gaudí designed for the children of the workers and local kids) were about the physics and mathematics of putting the church together… which Cordis the engineering bro took as an opportunity to try to teach me advanced math–so here's Cordis the "schience!" teacher.

 After seeing every little thing in the church, we went to get a snack–ice cream!

Noms. After this, we went to find a park with more things designed by Gaudí–it was at this point that Cordis started making fun of the audio guide tours that praise Gaudí at every opportunity, so Cordis now refers to Gaudí as "the god-king Gaudí!" But the park was really pretty, even if we managed to accidentally enter on the wrong side and got to climb a lot of stairs and hills to get there!! It just meant we got to see more of the park–and nature is something Salamanca is slightly lacking in, so I didn't mind a few extra trees.

The true Gaudí part of the park consists of an itty bitty church, which is now a gift shop. Gotta make money somehow, I guess. 

But it made for a nice afternoon adventure!

After all of these shenanigans, we went back to the hotel to grab our luggage and switch to the other hotel we're staying at in Barcelona. Which is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I'm spoiled rotten, I tell you. We're only here two nights because it burned a fair amount of hotel points to stay here, but it's so worth it! We're right on the water, and everything about this place screams hospitality. There's free hot chocolate in the lobby. It was originally built to be the Olympic Village living quarters in the '92 Olympics. It's crazy beautiful.

Chocolate in the lobby!

Munchkin's reaction to the thought of being an interior designer at this hotel...

Bilbao

Soooo here's what we found in Bilbao to do:

• eat a lot of Italian food (like way too much Italian food)
• Guggenheim museum

Not that this makes it a bad visit, but this will probably be a shorter post. Because while the Guggenheim is super awesome from the outside…

 

…and includes a crazy spider sculpture that the artist made to represent her mother (in a good way, like how they keep mosquitos from spreading disease and are both strong and fragile at the same time), the art inside the museum is a little underwhelming.

There were a few things I really liked, like the Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe's face, or a digital installation that was originally put in for a fundraiser for AIDS relief. The digital installation scrolls messages in English and Spanish on the front side in red, and in Basque (because we are in Basque country, after all) on the back in blue. It's all short phrases that are basically about being human–big themes like love and loss. It's just really interesting to read them, because they get strung together like a story.

And the art inside is not bad, but after visiting the Museo del Prado, Reina Sofia, and the Vatican Museum… It's just not quite up to snuff. Very interesting art though, there is no denying that. There was a pillow shaped like a piece of pie, or some incredibly crazy large pieces of metal that were made into huge spirals that you could explore. Just unconventional stuff, which was definitely interesting and we spent a while looking at it all.

Oh yeah, and there's a puppy and a giant stack of marbles outside the museum too. Fancy art. And at the top of the hour, a "fog sculpture" takes place, something installed by a Japanese artist who's been working with fog for something like 30 years… I'll just leave you all with that tidbit.

A Very Long Adventure

So today began with a breakfast buffet... that my roomie and I did not really get to enjoy because we'd misunderstood the times. We were supposed to be downstairs and ready go go by 9:30, not downstairs for breakfast at 9:30. So I chugged my peach juice, stuffed the rest of it in a napkin, and we dashed out to the bus!

Mmmmm breakfast foods

The bus took us to el Museo del Prado, a lovely little art museum. And by little I mean giant, but that's not the point. We took a tour, focusing on El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. So I got to see a lot of religious pictures, courtesy of El Greco. And Las Meninas, from Velazquez, and a portrait of the family of Carlos IV, including his wife who got pregnant 24 times, courtesy of Goya. Don't worry though, she only had 14 of them. Only.

I couldn't really take pictures in the museum, so I only have one of a street performer who dressed up like Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter from Alice. He pretty much just sat there, pretending to drink tea, but he was very, very made up. It was pretty cool.

Museo Prado, Sidewalks, Reina Sofia, birds, Reina Sofia

After Museo del Prado, we duckling-trotted on over to el Museo de la Reina Sofia (see photos of sidewalk adventures...), then they turned us loose for 15 minutes to find snacks. I found a lemon Fanta (did you know that was a flavor??) and sat on a bench in the plaza by the museum with a few other kids. One of them had gotten potato chips, and was giving the crumbs to the birdies, which began inciting mini bird riots. Good entertainment, they're just so cute.

More art en la Reina Sofia! Modern this time though. Picasso and Dalí. We saw La Guernica, which I definitely could not take a picture of, and a lot of interesting surrealism paintings from Dalí. Not the clocks though, they did not have the clocks.  

The Reina Sofía was the end of the planned activities, so six of us went wandering the streets, and stumbled upon this pizzeria called Diablovetta (I think), which turned out to be really yummy. Also 5/6 girls in the group went to either high school or college in Colorado. And the DU people are really outnumbering the group, because ISA is one of our partner programs. It's kind of silly. There were only 2 of us at the lunch but I think there's roughly 8 of us, plus 2 CU people and one CC girl. Craziness. 

After lunch, myself, my roomie and another girl decided to go wander (sorta). We were on a mission to find some shopping locations, so we started off for Punta del Sol. We'd given our map to a girl who was taking the subway home alone, so we were not exactly equipped for this adventure. It was a lot of fun to explore the city though. We ran into the Plaza Mayor on our way there, so you guys get to see me for the first time in these photos! It's beautiful. The crazy thing about it is that you're bustling around this crowded, tall city, and all of a sudden you find this pocket of open space, and it's so pretty.

Palacio y Catedral

After the Plaza Mayor, we finally found the Punta del Sol, so I bought my token souvenir thimble (I was shocked they actually had them) and we stopped in a McDonald's to use the restroom. McDonald's is nice here. Two floors, nice decorations, etc. Why don't we get nice McDonald's??

Anyway, then we wandered to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace). Which is basically the largest horizontal building I've ever seen ever. What do they do with all that space?? We wandered along that for a while, then turned a corner and ran into another plaza between the Palacio Real and the Catedral de Madrid. Gorgeous, both of them. That's where I took the two photos on the bottom of this collage. The white one is the Palacio, the blue/grey one is the Catedral.

Fotos de la catedral

We decided to go explore the Catedral, since chances were good it wasn't too expensive. At first we saw a sign that said you could go to the top of the cupola, but it turns out that it was closed as of 14:30, and it was now almost 17:00. So we just went into the main cathedral room instead. Here's photos. It was very colorful for a church, I didn't expect such bright colors, especially the ones in the stained-glass windows and the ceiling!

We also toured the crypt of the church, which was slightly creepy but mostly cool. There were even some graves that had been laid within the last year, we didn't realize that people could still be buried there! 

We then decided to take the Metro home, since we were eons away from our hotel. We made it through that process mostly fine (buying tickets was an adventure) but then we got out of the station... and had no idea where our hotel was. So we walked for another 30 minutes, but obviously found it since I'm posting this!

Overall, a very busy but very fun day, I'm having a great time!