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Published: September 22nd 2006
Gaudi's Facade of the Sagrada Familia
Gaudi's side of the Sagrada Familia. I don't like this side as much as the other. I see it as too detailed and looks somewhat like a drip drop sandcastle. Where to start? At the beginning. I left San Diego a little over a two weeks ago to begin yet again another adventure in Spain. Plagued by nerves and disbelief that I was going abroad for a long time I got very little sleep except for a cat nap that I took in the Frankfurt airport during my 5 hour layover underneath a speaker announcing departure gates in German. Ein, zwei, drei.
After a grueling 22 hour trip from San Diego I was greeted in the Barcelona airport by 3 smiling Catalans holding a big California flag. You can’t imagine how great it felt to be greeted by friends when I am so far away from home. Marta, Clara, and Jaume then whisked me away from the airport and brought me to Marta’s flat right in the middle of downtown Barcelona.
I have spent the last 2 weeks of my life seeing the sights around Barcelona and other various parts of Catalunya.
The sights in Barcelona are like none other in the world. Sprinkled with monuments of exhibitions of modernist architecture Barcelona boasts a great collection of these.
La Sagrada Familia is the hallmark monument of Barcelona. La
Subirach's Facade of the Sagrada Familia
This isn't a great picture, but this is the other side of the Sagrada Familia. I really like it, he uses a lot of negative space and solid lines without too much detail. There is also a cool detail that I didn't get a picture of which is a square divided into 4x4 of smaller square with different numbers. No matter how you add them, take any four of the numbers and they add up to 33, Jesus's age at his death. Sagrada Familia is the most well-known work of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi. La Sagrada Familia may be the sight that attracts the most tourists as well as the strangest. Famed architect Anotni Gaudi died suddenly during the construction of the monument which has dramatically slowed its construction. Before his death Gaudi was able to complete the construction of the front façade which took nearly 80 years. After his death the construction of the back façade went to Subirachs Nevertheless, the grand plans for the Sagrada Familia are still yet to be realized. The monument is still under construction and will perhaps be under construction for the next 30 years or so to complete the 10 remaining towers to be made.
Yet another monument displaying modernist architecture in Barcelona is Gaudi’s Parc Guell. The remains of a failed project to create a neighborhood with a central common park for the habitants of neighborhood, Parc Guell attracts thousands of people everyday. It is located on the mountainside of Barcelona with a great view of the entire city and the ports of Barcelona. In Parc Guell, like all of his works, Gaudi has blended natural elements with traditional architectural material to
Gaudi's Dragon in Parc Guell
Pauline and me posing in front of the dragon. You can see behind us some guy wanted an original picture of himself and the dragon. create an organic and eclectic space. The entire park is covered with mosaics of broken pottery and ceramic. If you walk up into the park you’ll find Gaudi’s dragon which is probably the most photographed part of the park. You’ll see hundreds of people crowded around like the sample lady at Price Club. (Costco to you Nor-Calers) If you manage to get your way in there, you too can get a picture with the dragon but you can’t escape the feeling that millions of other who have visited it have the exact same picture. In any event, if you take some time to walk around Parc Guell you too will be taken by the strangeness and the beauty of the space. You can climb all the way to the top and get a great view of the city as well as a house inhabited by members of the Okupa group, an anarchist group that settles in abandoned houses and refurbishes them to live in.
Sorry to sound so much like a tour guide, but these are 2 things that I really love about Barcelona and I just think that describing them will help you feel like you too are
in Barcelona with me.
Although seeing the 2 aforementioned sights is hardly an good description of my life over the past two weeks. It is a start for now. In my next blog I’ll write about what I’ve learned about the history and culture of the province of Cataluyna, which I find to be really fascinating.
Thanks to those of you who decide to read this, I hope to make it more interesting in the future.
I wish you could all be here with me. I am really lucky to be staying with such wonderful people who are so proud of their country, culture, and language and have taken me in as one of their own.
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anonymous
non-member comment
awww dani!! you sound so alive and happy in Spain. i cannot tell you how happy i was to discover you wrote your first blog. now i can live through your travels!! xoxo