2017 Transatlantic cruise

---

After an amazingly cheap ($!50 for Simon, $200 for me) but awful 11 hour overnight direct flight from San Francisco to Barcelona, we checked into the Vasanta Hostal Boutique near the Plaça de Catalunya, the center of the interesting sites. After a dinner of paella, Simon rested while I went for a neighborhood walk to take in the architecture and shops. Some of the buildings are in the Modernisme style, Antonio Gaudi being the most famous architect of the genre. It is like art nouveau in that it has many curved shapes mimicking natural forms.



The next morning we walked south to the old Catherdral , the older parts which are Romanesque but the newer parts are Gothic, the facade being 3 main spires, each with many smaller pointy spires. The inside has many tall beautiful stained glass windows and the adjoining cloister has a pool with resident white geese. We walked through the adjacent old medieval Jewish quarter with its narrow alleys where 4,000 Jews were once crammed into a few square blocks by the charming Catholic officials, and peeked into an old building that had been the synagogue. Then down the narrow street, under the Career del Bisbe Bridge, built in 1920 in Medievel style to the Plaça Saint Jaume, the plaza where the stone fronted city hall and provincial government buildings sit. There were crews with cameras and many young people about as if in anticipation of more separatist demonstrations. There had been much political unrest after the recent separatist vote. Catalan, the province of which Barcelona is the capital recently voted to separate from Spain, but Spain called it illegitimate and has been threatening to take control of the Catalan government. The plaza had many Catalon flags and some "let Catalan vote" signs. After lunch we peeked into another Gothic church, Sata Maria del Mar, we visited the Palace of Music, an amazing piece of Modernisme architecture with some recent remodeling updates. After dinner Simon rested while I did some more exploring of the streets near the hotel and bought some wine for the upcoming cruise at a wrought iron covered market. I was caught in an impressive downpour from a thunderstorm rivaling the ones I'd grown up with in Florida and despite having an umbrella, my socks and shoes were soaked through.



The following morning we walked over the the famous Gaudi residence, Casa Batllo (pronounced bot yo) for our guided tour. It had been an ordinary boxy building with balconies and a flat roof that Antonio Gaudi remodeled into a marvel of textured surfaces, organically shaped bay windows with columns that look like bones and free-form balconies, stained glass, a tiled roof that has a curve like a dragon's back, a rooftop of organically-shaped chimneys and a small tower toped with a four-sided, rounded cross. There are two interior air shafts covered in blue tiles that are light near the bottom and progressively darker toward the top. A subway ride took us to Hospital Santa Creu i Sant Pau, an amazing complex of buildings also in the Modernisme style that was originally a hospital. Directly down a diagonal tree-lined boulevard is Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Basilica, the Modernisme church with tall Gothic-like towers and a very high interior with beautiful tall stained glass windows and huge columns that branch into smaller ones near the top and large flower-like medallions on the ceiling. It was mid-afternoon when we arrived and the lowering sun shone through the stained glass painting the interior in red and yellow light, the predominant colors of the glass on that side of the basilica.



On our last day in Barcelona we took a tour of a Gaudi apartment building called la Pedrera or Casa Mila. It has a fantasy land of chimneys in organic shapes on its undulating roof which is held up by hundreds of brick arches in the attic below. The apartment we were allowed to visit has free-form vegetation-like iron railings atop the curving balcony surfaces like the other apartments. The period furniture seemed fussy and out of date in the unconventional architecture. We spent the early afternoon wandering along The Ramblas, Barcelons's most famous street that is a wide pedestrian way filled with tourists, many trees, interesting old buildings and a few contemporary ones. Then we got a taxi to the port and boarded the Royal Princess to begin our Transatlantic cruise.

---

Comments

[Melanie Peter]

How beautiful !
Thanks! You look so happy. The weather looks gorgeous!

[WilliamAtkins]

Thanks!