Spain! Barcelona: Gaudi. Parc Güell & Sagrada Familia.

Day 4:Parc Güell

So, Barcelona was home to Gaudi. The two biggest works of his to see are Sagrada Familia and Parc Güell. As the weather was holding but due to rain the next day, we went to see Parc Güell.

I was under the impression that it's not located in a particularly awesome neighborhood of Barcelona.

Grand old house with shack assembled on top

Turns out, to get to the park, you have to either walk up a rather large hill, or find the awesome series of street escalators. Here was the beginning:



There was a sign on a nearby building, in between layers of escalators:


It wasn't escalators the whole way up. Here's a stretch of walking, in which you can see something of the incline involved:


Even more escalators; this is looking down from the topmost to the penultimate:


Walking up to the park, we passed by some graffitti'd prickly pears:


Here's a view of Sagrada Familia from just inside the park:


And an anarchist shack, with Barcelona in the background:


We passed by a weird caterpillar train:


This was our first view of the park "proper":


Here's a view towards the 'main' entrance of the park, along the tile-decorated open area:


Gaudi was known for being inspired by nature, and hear had used rough stones to make cool looking pillars:



It's worth mentioning that Gaudi picked every plant that was used inside the park himself and where to put it. And it is a big park.

C. pointed out the pigeon that had clearly been caught and decorated by someone:


Cool tile-work benches along the terrace:



View of the front gate thing:


another view:


Nearby the terrace was this cool columned area with the following 'wave' ceiling:


adjacent to this area:


One thing the park is particularly known for is the 'dragon' fountain. I really think it looks more like a gecko, but you guys can let me know if you disagree.





One of the train stations we passed through had a giant, refrigerated vending machine thingy. This was just half of it:


Lunch after Parc Güell was at Cafe Delfin (overpriced, but tasty), which advertised "traditional Catalonian food". 

Day 5: Sagrada Familia

Sagrada Familia was/is Gaudi's magnum opus. Seriously.
We opted to try out the audio guides (as there were only 2 or three tours a day in English with a live person), and I felt they were well thought out and quite informative.

Gaudi made sketches and models and studies for the church, many of which were destroyed during the civil war, and the church itself was leveled by Franco.  However, even in his plans, he had not planned everything. He'd made it clear that he expected this to be a building that was added to and built more on over 'the centuries' (although he had also originally though the construction the first time would take 30 years (if it had been allowed to finish)).  Subirachs is the name of the architect who took over the project of supervising construction in the early 80's. It is supposed to be finished in 2025, I believe.

The 'tour' starts on the ''passion'' façade (and ends on the nativity façade). Of the two facades we saw (the other two as yet unfinished), I liked it best. All cubist and rough and strange. This is supposed to look "harsh" to symbolize suffering.

The figure on the 'bridge' area shown is a 5m (or so) tall bronze statue of 'ascended' Jesus.:

More from the passion façade. The four column chunks had a meaning that I forget:

There was a comment that in assembling the suffering-Jesus statue, they used a piece of stone that had a palm fossil (which was noteworthy as palms are a sign of martyrs):

Here was Peter looking bummed about his betrayal:

The figures on the nativity side are much more traditional/realist (and I am less of a fan of). Here's the scene of the slaughter of the firstborn: 

The inside of the church was no less strange than the outside. There was a good bit in the audio guide about Gaudi's obsession with controlling the light coming in. I thought I was looking up at windows above the colored ones which were not yet full of glass. Turns out, he had designed those to be color-less "stained'-glass windows at the top to let in more light.

Above the altar, an umbrella-like awning with glass grape bunches (which seem to be lights):


Behind the Altar:


Ceilings


Ceilings above the choir loft, meant to have awesome acoustics:





Ceilings and a cool staircase:


There was an inner 'museum' room explaining stuff about the cool hyperbolic and parabolic shapes used, and things he borrowed from nature.

E.g. this is basically a model for the roof of one of the out-buildings:


Apparently trees can use some parabolic hyperboloids, which were used in some pillars (in the façade?):

model of the joins on the columns, meant to mimic trees that had had a big limb cut off

There was another 'museum' area, underneath the church. It included models, photos of models and other sketches and stuff involved in the design and construction.

These sketches are by Subirachs:

Sketch of the entire passion façade

Here's a plaster workshop that's being used currently to help in planning construction:

Including a pic of a model of Gaudi's of the (future) 'glory façade':



A picture which showed how the ceiling-things were hyperboloids of 1 sheet:


A sketch of the ceiling and supports:



Model of as much as a hyperboloid of 1 sheet which was used in the ceiling thingies:


with a mirror so that you could see up inside and verify for yourself that it in fact was the thing you see on the ceiling of the church:


Another surface used in the schoolhouse nearby or another builing:

Next time, Montjuïc (from which vantage point Barcelona had destroyed their previous citadel) and the tail end of Barcelona, moving on to Málaga, birthplace of Picasso. 

Spain! Starting in Barcelona: a museum full of ruins.

I just got back from this trip, uploaded all the photos, and am parceling out and editing the notes I took as I went.  The trip was for 2 weeks, with 4 or so days in Barcelona, and the rest jumping around Andalusia.

We were in Barcelona and doing interesting enough things there that I am splitting that part up into three chunks. The agenda after Barcelona was:

Málaga
Granada (to see the Alhambra)
Córdoba
back to Madrid, mainly to be able to fly out. 

Day 1: Hamburg to Madrid. 

Hamburg is actually sort of an inconvenient airport to fly out of, despite it being Germany's first airport. There are almost no direct flights to anywhere, so one always have to connect through another airport, which drives up the prices. This time, I'm flying Brussels Airlines, which is a step above EasyJet and maybe the same tier as airBerlin. That ends up meaning that while there is, technically, a ''business class'', an ''economy plus'' and the rest of us, the line between is not drawn thickly. Business class passengers do not get a little curtain between them and the rest of the plane, or comfier seats. They *are* guaranteed a seat in between them and the other person (so, all seats are aisle or window) and free snacks and beverages. I think they were offered 4 types of snacks in the course of our 1 hr flight.

Something about European flights -- their carryon-bag restrictions are tighter than the states. So, everyone has these teeny tiny carry-on bags. They're cute.  Everyone who's not EasyJet allows you to have one checked bag and one rather tiny carryon. So, rather than as in the states, people check a smallish bag and maybe take a tiny wheely bag as well on the flight. Maybe this speaks more to the purpose of most flights. Maybe most inter-Europe air travel is business-related. 

We spent the first night at Hostal Alaska, which has a very small sign and a very unobtrusive door on a street off of Plaza del Sol, which is clearly a very major train stop. The plaza was covered with people in various costumes and also ones doing the whole 'statue' gimmick. Also guys wearing vests which advertised a place that buys gold (weird).  

Walking around looking for food, we came across this mural: 

Day 2: Madrid to Barcelona. 

Breakfast was sandwiches (on toasted white bread). I got one with salmon (and egg, apparently) as well as a coffee. We ate at a place on the Plaza del Sol that seemed easy to order from, and wasn't particularly remarkable. 

We made our way to the Madrid train station, where C. (thankfully fluent in Spanish) figured out how to turn our tourist 4-trip passes into actual train tickets.  We passed by the inner area of the train station that was very lush and tropical and had some turtles: 

Around the corner was a store that sold skull balloons with bows: 

We took the Renfe (high speed) train from Madrid to Barcelona (going ~286 km/hr),  which took about 3 hrs. There was even an in-train movie. 

It was not until we got to Barcelona and our second dwelling place (via airbnb) that I realized that in Spain, they do sheets like we do in the states. And quilts/light blankets on top. Turned out, we were right around the corner from Sagrada Familia:



Here was our view:

And our balcony, which it was too cold to really use:

Lunch was what we prepared after going through a grocery store (full of delicious meats, which my companions do not eat but which i bought myself a selection of). We went to a real bakery (Supan ("your bread")) and got the most German-looking bread, which is apparently made with spelt flour (in German, it's "Dinkel", and is also a very common flour).  Also got some sheep's milk cheese that was like a soft manchego. I thought it was delicious. Two of our party thought it tasted like feet or smelled like fish (weird). 

After dark, we went by the Sagrada Familia (we stayed quite nearby) and took some pictures.  

We also found a columbia bakery and had some delicious foods, as well as some weird Yucca bread:

Day 3: Museum of History of Barcelona, etc. 

This includes stuff from Roman-colonial-era of Barcelona up until Medieval times. 

The timeline is roughly:

• [~11 B.C.] Roman Barcino
• [2nd Century] Textile processing/dying factory. 
• [3rd Century] Garum(fish sauce) factory. 
• [3-4th Century] Wine-making. 
• [5th-6th Century] Roman bath, built atop the garum or the textile factory. 
• [4th Century] (still Roman) defensive towers and remains of workshops. 
• [6-7th Century] Church & Necropolis. 
• And then more churchy stuff. Maybe also a hospital at some point. 

Our self-guided tour started in the stuff excavated from the original Roman colony of Barcino, from about 11 BC.

Some random Roman writing supplies:


Remains of a Roman street, and diagram of said street:


We first saw the "garum"(fish sauce) and salted fish 'factory'. In case you like diagrams of archeological  sites, here's the bit on the `garum' era:



Later in the tour, but earlier in time, it was a textile producing place, where people dyed fabrics. You could see the troughs and the special-made floors used in this process, some still with traces of Egyptian blue dye. On top of that, but later, the Romans had built a bathhouse, of which remained the cold water pool.  

Laundry-washing floor:


Dying trough:


The remaining cold water pool:

4th Century Roman times yielded a few towers, one of which was left (still underground, but mostly intact), built using stones from the older Roman structures (evidenced by some stones with inscriptions being used on their side in the construction).



A sewage channel added in about the 4th Century A.D.:



Wall of workshops and street by the sewage channel (also 4th Century A.D.?):


Then there was the wine-making part, 3-4th Century A.D. It was on the same level as the dyeing and fish-stuff-making parts, and had neat giant round pottery in which the wine was stored.

Diagram of the wine-vat area:


The vats themselves:

In the 6th Century, there was a Church-Palace (it said "Episcopal Palace") and Necropolis built atop. There's a really great part of this where they reinforced this layer, and you are looking at the roman courtyard with the leftover column slabs (just the first stone or so) and then past the courtyard, you see the Roman mosaics, there's about 2 ft of air, this reinforcement, and the wall and windows of the 6th Century building atop.

6th century church-palace on top, roman mosaiced courtyard underneath

another view of the mosaic

This is a view of what had been the peristylium (i.e. courtyard) of the 10 B.C. Roman household (looking down at the pillars that had surrounded said courtyard, tucked under the 6th Century church):



Diagram of the Church and Necropolis era of the dig:


Necropolis-era pillars:


More Necropolis-era pillars:

There was yet another church-structure built atop this, a gothic cathedral.  Later on, I think it was also a Jewish hospital (there was something like a dedication stone, with a Hebrew inscription). 

The whole thing is well designed, with floors or ramps installed between the different eras of buildings. It was really delightful. 

Diagram of Roman streets under exit of current era cathedral

Emerging from all this into the last layer of cathedral (show on the pic above), part of this gothic cathedral houses an exhibit on calicos (fabrics which were originally imported from India), and how Barcelona started producing them and this leading to Barcelona going from a town of craftsmen to a town of factories, which necessitated tearing down the city's wall.  

Calicos made in Europe were originally made by hand-stamping the designs onto the fabric. Later, there was a series of drums/cylinders one could roll over the fabric (makes me think of a printing press), one for each color in the pattern.

some old-style calicos

stamps used to make calicos

diagrams of machines involved in the process

The tag says: "Model of a stationary steam engine, similar to those used in Barcelona in the second half of the 19th Century"

Later-era roll for stamping calicos

The exhibit included the debate about the wall-tear-down and how the factory growth and population boom necessitated it for safety's sake. I saw a map of then-Barcelona, which included a Citadel. This prompted me to look up the history, which is awesome. 

[ASIDE ABOUT AWESOME CATHEDRAL DESTRUCTION:]

TL;DR -- Spaniards built citadel to keep Catalonians in check, who later destroyed it from the nearby fortress on Montjuïc.


Barcelona, in 1714, fell to Philip V of Spain (War of the Spanish Succession). To maintain control and try to keep the Catalonians from rebelling (like they apparently had been doing the previous century), he built the citadel, which was the largest in Europe at the time. 

Diagram of the old citadel [wikimedia commons pic]

[By the way, I recommend the wikipedia article for hilarious and mis-used English. E.g. "...was destroyed to obtain the necessary space, leaving its inhabitants audaciously and carelessly homeless"   and "[h]undreds of Catalonians were forced to pertinaciously work on the erection for three years".]

Time passed.  

Timeline:  

• 1841 city decides to destroy fortress. 
• 1843, new regime (via its queen) says restore it! 
• 1848, after abdication of the queen,  "General Espartero razed most of the buildings within the fortress with its walls to the ground by bombarding it from a nearby mountain fortress Montjuic, which helped him beget political popularity. "(This made me really want to go see Montjuïc)
• 1869: new General (Prim) turned over the rest of the demolishment of it to the people, as it "was viewed as by the citizens as a much-hated symbol of central Spanish government".  

[END OF ASIDE ABOUT AWESOME CATHEDRAL DESTRUCTION]

Walking out and past out cathedral to lunch, there were the rest of the 4th Century Roman fortifications:




We also passed this super-skinny building (on the left of this picture):

And a storefront that had some really classy alcohol:


S. was stealthily trying to take pictures of the Barcelona people who were walking around in fur or down coats, by the palm trees/plants, in our ~12C weather. Here's my attempt at such a pic:


Nearby was some awesome graffitti:

Later on, we made it down to the waterfront and Rambla del Mar.

Cool statue/fountain of dude with a star:


I liked the "palace" of post and telegraphs, which was very fancy:

Down by the water there was a really cool buoy: 

I liked this Archangel Michael statue we came across. It looked like he was ready to get to business: 

Due to the coastal clime, there were also (small) parrots, rooting around with the pigeons. Some of them were tagged, even:


On the train, we saw a group of guys who sounded like they were from the states, all with tricked-out scooters. This was one of the guys:


We also passed the following note in Catalan:

Urgent girls for massages  -- 24hs -- 20-30 yrs/old   (?!?!?)

C's pedometer said that at the end of the day, we'd walked about 6.5 miles (~10.5 km) [spoiler: that was about average the entire trip, outside of one day].