Gaudi, St George and the pickpocket

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Today we set off early to Las Ramblas - a largely pedestrian street with lots of stalls etc and expecting it to be quiet at that time of day, only to find it crowded with people selling red roses, and others selling books - hundreds and hundreds of stalls of books - all over the city. Turns out its St Georges day - the Barcelonan equivalent of Valentineś day, and also designated the day of the book. so lots of crowds right where we wanted to go touristing. We did a short detour and went to the Boqueria market - bright lights and colours and smells with fresh fruit of all kinds, meat including whole baby pigs and skinned rabbits and hares complete with beady eye looking up at you. Fish and shellfish and lobsters and crabs - many of them trying to escape off the stalls. and in between little cafes with a dozen stools filled with people drinking their expresso and reading the paper. We had planned to go to the Palau du Musica - which is concert venue designed by one of the modernista architects that Barcelona seems to have spawned. On the way their we met two ladies who purported to be promoting a flamenco venue. One of them managed to trick me into opening my wallet on the pretence of needing a small coin ( which I think is completely out of date now) and she deftly lifted a 50 euro note out of the wallet without me noticing. So sour taste in the mouth, cross feeling at being so gullible etc, but have to put it down to experience. We have been aware of the danger of pickpockets and been watching our bags and keeping wallets etc in zipped pockets but got tricked anyway!

The guided tours of the Palau du musica were all full so couldn go there, the textile museum that we went to next was closed because they were shifting so we walked on to the maritime museum. This is built in 16th century ship yard buildings - long arched buildings that in the past would have sloped down to the sea. the highlight was the galley. A large open ship where the 400 odd slaves rowed, ate and slept - and died. It apparently stunk so much that a surprise attack was impossible- they could smell them coming. They had huge oars - weighted about 130Kg and it took 4 men to row one oar.

We decided to have a look at some more houses that Gaudi had designed. One was a large apartment block. The outside walls all undulate and have large windows which meant that all of the rooms were very light inside. He was able to do this because he used a series of internal pillars to support the load of the building and so the outside walls - and the internal ones - were not load bearing. The roof undulates as well. He didn do detailed drawings but made plaster models and sketches of what he wanted - and the engineering was done using system of strings and weights to determine load points on arches and beams. This system has since been checked against computer modelling and proved to be very accurate. We had a quick look at the outside of his most bizarre house which again undulated and waved and swirled - even the roof. Apparently there isn a straight wall inside it. By then "museum foot" had set in and we had to retire back to the hotel for a well earned break. Tomorrow we fly to Stansted and drive up to Sheffield.

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Comments

[HEATHER]

Pick pocket
Ken I am surprised you got sucked in. Lucky I am looking after your money at this end of the world.