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Published: July 19th 2010
Random house
There is a "modernism" walk that takes you through a street in the city known for its modernist art.Day 5
The final day in Barcelona
Well, today was the last day in Barcelona. The flight wasn’t until 8:20 at night so we had to find a way to kill a day. First, we packed everything but our most valuable things in our suitcases so that we could leave them in the pension (low end hostel run by a family). There was just a space behind a desk that we left them. Not that I really had a fear of losing anything, but I would much rather have things that I can’t live without on me rather than leaving them where someone could mess with them (passport, computer, money etc.)
With our backpacks filled with the “must not lose” items we made our way to visit some of the Gaudi homes in the area. There are two main houses that are must sees to visit as a tourist.
La Pedrera and
Casa Batlló . The plan was to just do
La Pedrera, but we came across
Casa Batlló first. When we came up to it Allison wanted to enter there, but it was a bit expensive for my initial taste. We then decided to at
Casa Batillo
I can't see this too well, but i think it is the house. We came up on it first and decided to walk to La Pedrera first. least go and check
La Pedrera since it was the furthest house, then we would return if we didn’t want to do
La Pedrera.
We get to
La Pedrera and it is about 10euro. I have an architecture crush on Gaudi. He has absolutely no straight nights. Everything is curved and reflects nature.
La Pedrera also has a Gaudi museum (some stuff is repeated both in
La Sagrada Família and
Casa Batlló , so just be aware you may get a taste of both. One of the things I learned here was that much of Gaudi’s influences were things of nature: branches, animals, textures, curves, etc. It was neat to see real-life representations of what you could see in his architecture.
After you walk through the museum you are directed to the roof which really looks like a cake castle. The “towers” are like ice-cream cones and if you were to look from the sky it would look like a curve-squared 8. There are stairs that are not your typical stairs but more a winding journey around the ceiling.
After here you are directed to an apartment that is created in Gaudi style. The apartments in this
Sidewalk
without realizing it I took this picture because I thought it was neat, only to realize Gaudi designed it. I think i have an architecture crush on him! building are deceptively large. Again, you can see no straight lines, it is nothing but curves. Gaudi designed everything from the building to the furniture. It is all inspired from forms in nature, but is also fit to the human body. I was able to sit in one of the chairs and it was amazing how comfortable they were.
After this we headed to
Casa Batlló . The best description is this: you feel like you are on the set of Tim Burton’s
Alice in Wonderland.You can see evidence of the nature inspired shapes: conch shaped ceilings, arches, windows that change color depending on what room you are in and at what time of the day. I will say, with this house you get the audio-guide as part of your ticket, but it was very repetitive. This house is a reconstructed house, and the Batlló family asked for it to be completed. It is now in the hands of another family and they choose to open it to the public to help pay for upkeep and restoration. It is a masterpiece of a house with different “apartments” that you can’t always go into. The roof is also amazing. Gaudi
Casa Batllo
First sight of it. was a very religious man, so you can constantly find evidence of nature and the Church. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.
Later that day we just walked around Barcelona until it was time to get to the airport. The Barcelona Airport is one of the nicest and neatest ones I have ever been in (and I have been in my fair share of airports). We just so happened to have the plane ride AS the world cup was going on! The pilot would come on every so often to let us know the score was 0-0. Man, I wish I could have seen that game live! Upon arriving at the airport we grabbed our bags and ran into someone from the 2nd Phase of the Master’s, Eddie…unfortunately his luggage did not make it on the plane so we had to stick around. This in itself was interesting…all the people who were supposed to be working…were watching the game! We walked in the workers lounge every so often to watch the game just to see what the score was, and then when Spain won, there was much screaming!!!
Granada was chaos when we got to our
Random house
I think the architecture in Barcelona is amazing, it is so worth walking around. hotel. We had to grab food because at 11pm it was too late to grab food at our hotel, fortunately places were still open. Everyone was in the streets honking horns and singing “Yo soy español, español, español.” The street was a parking lot. It was insane and fun to see. The funny thing was, it was tame in comparison to Barcelona the night they won the finals…I can only imagine how Barcelona was that Sunday night!
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