28 - And all through Gaudi's House, plenty of stirring - Barcelona

 Sunday, 24 December 2023 - Barcelona

Another full day planned today; there's plenty to see and do in Barcelona so I'll give it my best but know that I won't be able to take everything from this enormous city.  Many things in Barcelona have timed tickets i.e. you may enter at X time, so I booked a couple things last night that serve as the scaffold for the day's schedule.

My first stop was a short walk from my hotel deeper into Gracias to visit the Casa Vicens, which was refurbished and open as a museum in 2017.  What makes this place noteworthy, aside from it's eye catching colors and designs, is that it was Antoni Gaudi's first project as a building architect.  I booked a guided tour and thought the guide had done a great job of explaining many things I might not have noticed or understood on my own.  

Enroute to the museum, these mourning doves were cooing quite loudly while settling into their new nest.

The house has been touched by multiple architects: first was Antoni Gaudi then his student.  The vertical line indicates the boundary of Gaudi's original summer house design vs the expansion done by his student.  

It's just a little extra

Basically everything in the original house was done by hand; kinda crazy that the house was built in 2 years.  How many craftsmen were hired for this job??

Ceiling decorations are done in paper maché

The smoking room, fresh from restoration to remove the gold paint coating added by the next owners

The original summer house was for a small plot and the house faced an arch with a waterfall.

The 2nd owners acquired more land, expanded the house with the idea of renting some of the extra rooms, and eventually built a chapel at the corner of the new plot.

After some suffering financially, the 2nd owners had to sell off much of the land (which involved destroying the arch waterfall); the house/museum is now owned by an Andorran bank.

Pretty good idea to include stairs along the roof to allow access to the roof tiles.

I finished up at Casa Vicens around 11 AM.  My next ticket was to Park Guell at 13:30 so I figured I'd take the time to check out the Sagrada Familia, at least from the outside.  And it turns out that I'll only see the cathedral-in-progress from the outside since all tickets for the next week and a half appear to be sold out per the online portal.  That's ok; maybe when the place is done, 400 year old me will pay a visit to the inside.

Comparing this to the unfinished cathedral in Narbonne, I find it kinda funny that with more modern materials and techniques, Gaudi seems to have changed where the craftsmanship and details are shown off.  There's no need for flying buttresses and modern tools make shaping stone and/or concrete much simpler, so to compensate the complexity (and eccentricity?) is cranked way up.  Though I also wonder how his design would look like now; considering he died in 1926 everything he thought was state-of-the-art is likely well obsoleted by now.  On the otherhand, he had a real penchant for making things extravagantly (I hesitate to say needlessly inefficient) so maybe the cathedral wouldn't look too much different and still take forever to construct.  

After the cathedral, I popped over to another place that showed up on Google Maps, took a peak and then had a tapas lunch.  I'd intended lunch to be a short ordeal but my chipirones (fried squid) took about 30 minutes to arrive; so I had to hustle from lunch to Park Guell.  

Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau

Fortunately, I made in time to the park!  This place was great and an excellent use of an afternoon.  Various musical buskers had worked their way in and the calls of parakeets kept a lively yet relaxed atmosphere.  The sun was out but there was plenty of shade such that I never felt too hot nor cold during my time in the park.  I have a hard time envisioning what the place would look like if the plan to turn it into a gated residential community had come to fruition.

A great view of the surrounding Barcelona from the upper viaduct in the park

And a view of the theme park Tibidabo!

Three crosses atop a cavalry where a chapel would have gone

Oh hey, the Sagrada Familia

The "modest" guard house on the left and the visitor center (now the boutique) on the right

El Portico de la Bugaderia (bridge of the washerwoman)

The mosaic salamander!

A couple parakeets flew down for a drink of water

The place was just a little crowded, though I'm sure this is a light crowd compared to the summer

Parakeets at work eating palm dates and making nests

These lower and middle viaducts were more impressive from below than above

From Park Guell, I found a place recommended to me for orxata (horchata) that I hoped to slake my thirst; unfortunately, it seems that the sweet drink isn't really served in the winter here 😑.  Oh well, I guess a cup of coffee it is.  My next scheduled item was at 19h and I'd left Park Guell just before 17h, so I pointed myself towards the area near the city's main park to pass a little evening time.  

Just before I found the city's Arc de Triomf, I stumbled across this ham shop and felt my stomach gurgle a little.  

The family running the place were super nice and offered me a couple samples; ultimately, I came away with 80g of vacuum sealed iberico and a sandwich 

The park was really lovely and the weather was great for strolling.  

The fountain had me forgetting I was in Barcelona, it was so grandiose and "classic" that I felt I was in Versaille or Potsdam.  Still, a really impressive piece and I guess a good reminder of the classic architecture before Barcelona embraced modernism.  

My 7PM scheduled item was at the Palau de la musica catalana where a group was doing a flamenco performance, likely for a theater full of tourists.  The Palau was very intersting: only part of the external facade was highly decorated, while the inside showed a lot of detail work (especially concerning passion flowers).  I liked the use of chairs in the venue instead of fixed benches, I could shift my chair instead of having to crane my neck and it was a comfy, raised chair with a foot rest.  The performance was great: the music was enticing and the dancing/tapping was impressive.  Who'd have guessed the hems of dresses could have so much of a role in dancing?

I'm fairly certain those are passion flowers decorating the ceiling, but I'm open to correction

Afterwards, I wandered into El Born again for a bit.  There was more activity in El Born than the previous night, the neighborhood is nice with almost everything in stone and a mix of plazas with wider & narrow streets.  I stopped by a bar to have some tapas and had a "duh" moment once I'd sat down: the name of the place was "golfo de biskai" and this mannequin was a dead give away that'd I'd walked into a bar focusing on Basque cuisine 🤦‍♂️.  Still, I suppose there are worse fates, so I had a glass of wine and some pintxos and continued on.  The next place I stopped at, I double checked I didn't see any euskal references and ordered a dish I wasn't exactly sure of but it referenced "Catalan" in the name.  

I assume this is "Happy Holidays" in Catalan

Hmm, what could this gibberish mean?

Wait a sec, that guy is looking pretty Basque...

Ous Estrellats amb Botifarres Catalanes; I guess deep fried egg with a black pudding/blood sausage and fries.

After eating, I was completely exhausted.  Despite having resolved to use public transit a bunch, I still ended up walking to the point that my feet were getting sore.  So without even a thought of leaving milk and cookies out for santa, I showered and hit the hay.