day 1: 1-may-2016

Today was our first full day in Barcelona. None of us had that really satisfying "sleep of the dead" but  the boutique hotel ("1898") we were staying in had one of the most amazing breakfast spreads I have ever seen. I may have to revise my opinion of which country(s) have the best food. Everybody thinks it's France and I think the food in France was amazing. Or is it Italy? I think the food in Italy was amazing too.

We purchased a guided tour to visit Sagrada Familia. It is a Catholic church designed by Antoni Gaudi and there are a number of things that make this a must-see attraction. First, it is a terrific example of this architectural style, modernista, as you will see from the pictures. Conservative and staid it is not. In fact the descriptor "gaudy" comes from his name. It doesn't have a positive connotation in English.

Here's an example that we saw on the way to Sagrada Familia. This was also designed by Gaudi.

Second, Gaudi never intended to finish Sagrada Familia before his death. It is still under construction and has been for some time. The best estimates are that it will be done around 2026. It has already been visited by three popes.

Unlike yesterday, today was brilliant sun and while it still was not "vacation warm" (about 60F, 15C), the sun made sitting outside with a light jacket enjoyable. We did not think the people sitting on the top deck of those double-decker tour busses had made the best choice.

Our coach dropped us off about two blocks from the site and we walked the rest of the way. Our tour guide said it was largely because of traffic congestion. This was entirely understandable. It was Sunday. While there was little motor traffic, the site was mobbed with many tour groups and individual tourists. This may have been because it was a national holiday (Labor Day in Spain) although I'm not sure that the locals wouldn't have been doing something else on a Sunday morning. However, between being Sunday and a holiday, there weren't many other things open.

Here it is from the approach although this is not the official entrance.

The outside is covered with intricate designs. Here's the entrance up close. The tour guide explained how everything has meaning but there is too much to explain here and I don't remember much of it.

Photo-bombers!

For me, the most amazing part of this site is the way the structure appears on the inside. Gaudi was a master of light and he arranged windows to maximize light inside but more importantly, to highlight color from stained glass. So rather than stained glass high, the stained glass is low and the higher windows are clear glass. The latter maximizes the light inside and the former creates beautiful color. Here are some examples.

And of course there are the usual spectacular scenes.

This next one is a picture of the ceiling right at the center.

A terrible place to work if you are afraid of heights.

The tour ended at the other end of the church what is eventually supposed to be the front.

Here there is an entrance to a museum in the basement and a free-standing school that Gaudi built so that the children of the workers would not have to miss school.

Here's the school with another tour guide holding court and another one of Jaime standing in front of it. It's also in a style consistent with the church.

We ended up in a plaza around lunch time and picked a cafe overlooking all the action. There was a demonstration for legalization of marijuana and maybe a political rally too.

Later, the plaza was back to normal. In front of the church where there had been demonstrators (above) was now occupied by street musicians. I really liked these guys who were playing New Orleans-style jazz. It was pretty impressive that they wheeled around a piano.

But my favorites were these three young women. They reminded me of the Connotations, Annie's foray into the world of a cappella.

Here's a video of them: https://youtu.be/zHNJzxQ13kE

Too bad the sound is so crappy. They really did sound great in person.

Later that afternoon we decided to take the metro to Montjuic, a hilltop overlooking the city. Here's what the metro stop looked like. Golden arches, ruining what would otherwise be a very artistic mural.

Outside the metro stop was a funicular that took us to a cable car that would take us to the top of the hill.

At the top was a fortress that we decided to skip.

On the way down, we ran into what was probably an event organized by a cruise. As it turned out, it was the only time we actually saw flamenco dancing. Serendipitous and free - the best.

We stopped at Martinez, a restaurant/bar that Lara had recommended. (Thanks Lara!) Here's evidence that we were there.

Once again, we were thrown by Spanish meal times. It was probably around 5:30 when we arrived and their first dinner reservation time slot was something like 8:30. So while we couldn't get in for dinner, we were able to get seated on the patio and drank beer. It was a very cool place with very cool people. We were surprised they let us in.

Here I am pretending to be cool.

They either felt sorry for us or they wanted to get the uncool tourists off the patio so they gave us a table inside as soon as they opened for dinner (7:00pm).

Jaime left us to meet someone he had been chatting with at an on-line language-exchange group so Mike and I had dinner and stumbled down the hill to the metro in the dark and back to the hotel.