Gaudi, Tapas, Wine, Flamenco and even more Food!

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Barcelona part 2

I awoke the next morning/afternoon in time for lunch with Kyle at a local tapas place near my apartment. We decided to try octopus, which was a little disappointing as it was quite bland. Afterwards we checked out Gaudi's house, casa Batllo, the house of bones, that he designed for the Jujol family. We had audio guides that directed us around each room. Each audio snippet began with some cooky elevator music and then two condescending posh english speakers who described the "beautiful and elegant archways grow as the spectacular curves turn and twist like the wind which represents the glorious and magical linear pathways for the natural world's soul to take a winding journey through the green and blue waves of colour glisten with wonder and amazement through their journey of enlightenment". Neither of us managed to listen to the whole audio guide...I did wonder if they visited Amsterdam before writing the audio guide's script. The house was truely incredible though. Gaudi was way beyond his time in designing and building his architecture in entirely new ways. The front of the house was built without a strict architectural plan and only Gaudi's supervision and a clay model! The house was my favourite museum I have visited so far. He was so passionate about bringing the beauty of nature into his architecture and ensuring it was represented as athentically as possible. I have always loved the natural world as I am a farm girl at heart, so his work truely resonated with me.

Adventuring in Gaudi's Gardens... The gardens feature two gingerbread like houses with tiled mosaic artworks on either side of the entrance with a bigger structure rising in the centre with the iconic lizard fountain and massive columns with circular artworks placed in the roof. To understand my excitement about the place we found I have to shamefully confess I once watched America's next top model and their final runway show was filmed in a spectacular long stone archway which they used as the catwalk. It was in fact Gaudi's garden and his tunneled archway which they used for filming...and I was practically in raptures of delight over how exciting this was for me to see "in the flesh" so to speak.

We walked to the top of the ridge where we could hear salsa music and went to investigate by walking through the open gateway in the park, we stopped when we realised it was actually a private party! We walked up further to the highest peak in the park where a busker who was dressed in leopard print from head to toe and wore big black boots, had shaggy long dark hair and skin like leather that had been left too long in the sun. He was rockin' out his funky tunes and getting into the music. Definately another fellow who was entirely in his own unique postcode. Inspiration struck Kyle who began to grove along with him. :-) We had a giggle and headed down to the other side of the park but as we passed leopard man he stopped playing to "meow" loudly and a little seductively at as as we walked buy. Of course we were then in fits of laughter at the whole musical experience.

After a long walk through the garden, up 112 steps to another peak, down another road to a nearby nursing home...we made our way back to the centre point where the house where Gaudi lived has now been turned into a museum. This walk was interspersed with canon fire which began infrequently but gradually became more frequent and louder as we appeared to get closer. Anyone who knows me well knows I don't deal with loud surprising noises very well. So you can imagine how jumpy I was at canon fire at unpredictable intervals. At one point I scared a small child of about 8-9 by gasping at the noise....I scared him more than the canon fire...it almost had me missing school, :-) just kidding. I don't miss report cards which I would be writing at this time at time. We had a late dinner in town at tourist place which was surprisingly good! Meat paella this time and it definately did not dissapoint!

Next morning began with a western breakie of eggs on toast... It is the little things that you miss when travelling and France and Spain don't do eggs on toast for breakie, it has been almost impossible to find since leaving my hostel in Vienna. So its small mercies that you are really thankful for - like eggs on toast or hearing from family and friends. I had a very lazy day in my apartment sitting on skype catching up with the news back home for about 3 hours and updated parts of my blog. Kyle and I met later for an early tapas dinner at a really nice restaurant where we tried fried camemburt in raspberry sauce, delicious prawns and a roasted vegetable stack. Yum!

After dinner we headed to a flamenco dance concert which was incredible. It began with two musicians rocking the cajon drums (the ones you sit on and use your hands too play on the front), a spanish singer, guitarist and flautist. Then one of the drummers stood up to dance flamenco with the female dancer who appeared mid-song. Their dance was so intense! Afterwards our guide took us to.....wait for it.....the Travel Bar!!! The third time we've now been there! Haha We joined a new group of people, Anna and Kitty from Germany, Christine from the US and a family from New Zealand. More sangria to get the party started and yes...more tapas! Now onto our second dinner, luckily I had skipped lunch, this time we had a few new tapas, namely sheep stomache soup! I tried it, it was chewy but tasted quite good if you could manage to forget you were eating stomache....I couldn't, but at least I tried it. A mostly non-violent game of spoons began, followed by a strange game of snap which Christine instigated and then won as she was the only one who managed to remember all the rules. Haha The bar staff closed up shop so we headed to the wharf for a walk. 3am bedtime....early night in Barcelona!

My last day in Barcelona began with a wander around the city to check out the few sights I hadn't yet seen, namely some Roman ruins and a big castle behind the church we saw on our bike tour. This was followed by the BEST LUNCH EVER. I met up with Kyle and he found a tiny hole in the wall place not far from the bike tour where we munched on yummy marinted pork bits with french fries, a cheese platter with fruit and nut toast which was to die for, crummed chicken balls, a fried fish thing (can't remember the details on this one), and a vegetable tagliatelle with crispy cheese. It had olive oil galore but over here it just tastes so good. There was no one in the restaurant who could speak English and no tourists inside so we knew we had found a local's hideaway.

From here I was navigator so we had a slight stop at a train station which was not our final destination....Kyle was nice enough not to pay me out for the detour and we got back onto another train to our destination of Sangrada Familia to see the inside of the church. It was truely the most incredibly beautiful and sacred dedication to religion I have seen. It is still not complete, even though construction has been happening for the last 200 years. It is supposed to be finished around 2026 but our guide said that was highly unlikely as Barcelona gets more tourists coming to see it unfinished. Also a massive underground railway is being constructed underneath which would totally collapse the foundations if there was a problem. As it is the ground shakes whe the metro trains pass by underneath and a unit block only a street away collapsed not long ago. If I were to choose a church to get married in (if that were to happen in the first place ;-)) I would choose this one. It is a perfect mix of nature, beautiful architecture, sacred mediation and you can almost feel Gaudi's dedication to his religion eminating from the walls. It was like something out of a fairytale. Gaudi's original plan was to bring religion to the young people and help religion and his church to be more appealing. We headed back to town to see the food markets and get a Spanish gift for my dad and another fruit smoothie and then headed out on the metro to the other side of town to the old Olympic park where the sun was setting (at 8pm). Our last dinner in Barcelona was at a nice restaurant on the edge of town, seafood and lobster paela! Home by 1am! Practically a grandma's bedtime by Barcelona standards! :-) Definately my absolute favourite party and architecture town...strange mix, but it works!

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