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Published: September 16th 2008
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Casa Batlló
This is the house that looks like a dragon. Nicknamed, House of Bones. Last night I was SO COLD. They kept the air conditioner on the whole night and didn’t turn it off until like 6am…and all I had was 1 sheet (which I used as both my bottom and top sheet). So I had to use my small jacket, my scarf, and my towel to try to keep warm!, but I guess that was better than sweating.
I woke up this morning and went down to the common room to use the internet and get my free breakfast. I had granola cereal and chamomile tea…and I hoarded some tea, apple, and these biscuit thingys. Then I just got online while I waited for Prathiba to get there. She called around 10 and couldn’t find the place, but fortunately she was really close. So I met her outside and helped her check-in. Then we went through her Barcelona book deciding how we wanted to spend the next 2 days. The way we planned it out, we should be able to do all that we wanted. So first off, we decided to walk down Passieg de Gracia (one of the main roads in Barcelona - where our hostel is). We found this building
La Pedrera
This is a photo of La Pedrera. Prathiba and I went inside for a free art show, but the architecture of the building was more impressive, to me. designed by the famous architect from Barcelona named Antoni Gaudí. His work is so amazing! It’s very whimsical and way before his time…it’s still futuristic today. The place we found first was this place that used to be the house of a rich family that hired Gaudi to design a house that looked like a dragon devouring people. It’s called, Casa Batlló. It’s incredible! It really looks like that. And it’s so weird to see just this fantasy building surrounded by normal buildings. The roof looks like the spine of a dragon. Then the windows look like the mouth of the dragon full of bones of its victims! On the top there’s this tower thingy that’s supposed to be the sword of St. George (the patron Saint of Barcelona) slaying the dragon. It was really cool, but way too expensive to go inside, so we just had to look through the windows. Plus, I saw it on Samantha Brown’s TV show…the staircase looks like the backbone!
We kept walking down Passieg de Gracia and found another building by Gaudí. This one is supposed to look like he carved it straight out of a boulder…and it does! This is called
Parc Guell
Here´s a pic of me at an area that overlooked the park. You can barely see some of Gaudí´s buildings in the background. La Pedrera. We went into the first floor where they were having an exhibit of these Chinese artists…but really I just wanted to see the inside of the building…the ceiling was really cool and the color of the inside…Gaudí is just amazing! I read in my “Spain for Dummies” book that at night they have concerts on the roof of that building but the lady I asked said that’s only in July and August…bummer.
After that, we got on the Metro and made our way to Parc Güell. This is an outdoor park that Gaudí designed. It was quite a walk from the Metro station, it was like straight uphill!! I’m not exaggerating! Luckily there were a few escalators. When we finally go to the top, you could see most of the city! It was pretty cool, especially because you could see the famous Sagrada Familia, the cathedral. This park was neat, it was like walking through dirt trails, surrounded by plants. It was pretty. We winded around and then we saw all these beautiful buildings, very clearly Gaudí’s work. We walked through these stone pillars and beautiful broken tile mosaics. These benches were really neat and are one
Famous Benches
Here´s Prathiba and me sitting on the famous benches in the park. These benches surround a plaza, and the tile work is different all the way around. They´re beautiful. of the most famous parts of this park. They surround an entire plaza that overlooks much of the park. The benches are completely made of the mosaic. Each one is unique. It’s incredible! As you walk down, you see the famous mosaic dragon fountain. It took forever just to try to get a picture of that. And on the ceiling there are these mosaic “pendants” - all different. Very pretty. Prathiba and I went into this building that we thought was the Gaudí museum…but it was free. We weren’t impressed. It was very small, 3 stories, very crowded, and didn’t really have much. There were a few things that described some of the building and history of Gaudí, so that was cool. But we realized that this building wasn’t the museum. So we took a break and Prathiba had some chips, I really wanted some water, but it’s so dang expensive. We finally found the museum. It cost 5€ to enter…but was definitely not worth that! It was the house that Gaudí lived in for about 20 years. It was neat to see the different rooms that he lived in, but again…not worth 5€. After that we decided to leave
Dragon fountain
This is the famous dragon fountain. It was really hard to get this photo because of all the people, but it´s pretty cool! the park…even though that’s been my favorite thing in Spain so far! I really loved it there…we headed toward the Sagrada Familia. The Metro went straight there…it is enormous. You wouldn’t believe it until you see it! Prathiba said she could see it from the plane!...once it’s finished, it will be the biggest cathedral in the world! Gaudi started it, knowing that he wouldn’t live to the day when it is finished. And he was right…in fact, it’s still being built…but in my opinion, the other architects did not do a good job of producing Gaudi’s vision…unless his vision was completely different than how he started. One side of the cathedral looks completely different from the other…I really liked the older side better. It was unbelievable the detail that was there. Gaudi wanted to put the entire gospel into the building of this cathedral. Unfortunately, there was a lot of construction and scaffolding, so all my pictures are ruined by that. Prathiba read somewhere that’s they’re hoping to finish it by 2026. We decided not to go inside because all our books said the best part is the outside, and we’re both on a tight budget. So we got some
The front....I think...of La Sagrada Familia
This is the ENORMOUS cathedral!!!! It truly is unbelieveable! gelato and sat in a park for awhile…until it started to get pretty cold. Then we just decided to go back to the hostel and rest for a little bit and maybe later go out for some coffee or something. We got back to the hostel around 6. We washed our feet…they were GROSS. Then I went to the common room to use the internet. Today it was working!!! So I got to talk to Ray for awhile. It was nice - but it made me miss him so much…especially knowing that he would have loved the park that we went to today. I would have loved to walk around it with him and experience that together. I got kinda sad thinking about it. After talking for awhile, I went back to the room to rest for a little while…but I fell asleep, and when I woke up, Prathiba was already asleep too, so I just decided to call it a day and go to sleep…I had to get up early any way. Finally…a good day in Spain.
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