Day 9 - 5/31/2003 - A Gaudi Day

Temperature: 25-29° C = 77-84° F
Weather: Hot and Sunny
Location: Barcelona

We started off the day visiting my favorite attraction so far … another church. But this church was different!! It wasn’t Gothic. It was Gaudi. I didn’t know of Goudi before today, but he was (and is) very famous for being an architectural genius (among other things)

When we first set foot outside the subway station, it was right there behind us: four looming towers with cranes an scaffolding all around it. At first, I thought they were restoring it, but then we realized … they aren’t done yet! We took a live tour through the church and there was so much attention to detail. The two facades are complete and were designed to represent the birth of Christ on one façade and the opposite wall depicted his death. The birth side was filled with rounded edges and a more traditional style of sculpture with almost every inch covered. The other side, however was very empty, and the sculpture were very rigid and filled with straight lines, which can only be made by the hand of man. This was how Christ died: by the hand of man.

Also the church had many influences by nature, with trees and branch-like support beams. Half of the church has yet to be built. The existing towers are 112 meters high. The main tower will be 170 meters tall! In order to distribute all this weight, Gaudi devised a method for determining a balance, even though he wasn’t a mathematician. He put strings representing the support structure of the church with weights hanging from their strings. This modeled what kind of stone had to be used for which part of the church.

Then, we took the elevator up to the new façade (the death of Christ side). We saw an incredible view, but I was terrified because the stone railings were low and the building swayed in the wind. (They’re making it Earth-quake proof).

We could have taken the stairs to 90 meters, but we decided (well … I decided) 60 meters was enough and we took the elevator back down. I’m a woos … I know …

We took a few more pictures and went on a subway, in search of more Gaudi buildings and to grab some lunch. On the subway, an accordion player boarded our car and started playing. I thought it sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it until he got to the chorus .. “ Kalinka, Kalinka, Kalinka…” It was the same song that we couldn’t escape from when I went to England with the College of New Jersey Chorale 6 years ago! It’s only relevant o those on that original chorale trip, though. =)

We found the Gaudi buildings and ate lunch at the café across the street. The buildings were in no way as grand as the church we saw earlier. You could tell he designed them, though. They stood out over the other buildings on the street. The balconies on one of the buildings looked like it was right out of Star Wars, Episode I. I felt the buildings were really weird-looking. I didn’t get any pictures of them, unfortunately. =(

After that, we walked in search of a chocolate place that we couldn’t find. But we did find another place that seemed to fit the same description: They had hot chocolate as thick as syrup. I couldn’t even think about thick, hot, gooey chocolate on such a hot day after walking all over the place, so I just looked at Hilary drinking her hot chocolate with the following expression on my face.

We then took the subway to the Olympic Village (near the Mediterranean coastline). They built up this whole area for the athletes to live during the Olympics. It was just a lot of buildings, though, so we didn’t stay long.

Instead, we headed to the beach! We wore our bathing suits under our clothes again all day, in case we got to go in the ocean. We thought there might be a place to rent towels or beach chairs like in Cannes. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anyone who did. Plus, we hit a significant language barrier. (We don’t know 10 words of Spanish). =(

So we sat on the beach at a snack bar and I ate ice cream and watched the water an the people. The beach was crowded! There was also a lot of topless sun-bathing going on. (Not to mention topless paddle-ball) =) It was good to see that not only attractive women were sunbathing topless, either. There is definitely a cultural difference between Europe and the US (a country established and settled by puritans)

After we paused for a while at the coast, we walked along the shoreline, just taking it all in! It was our last day, so we wanted to enjoy it instead of running around, cramming as many sites as possible into one day.

We came to a pretty spot that looked like a good place to eat, so we ordered a few tappas and sat overlooking the Mediterranean. And we overlooked the sidewalk salespersons, too! They were selling sunglasses, bootleg CD’s, and other items. We didn’t mind them, but apparently the police did. As soon as a siren flared in the distance, they all packed up their things and fled! It was like that in Florence, too, but this time, I think someone was arrested this time. A little while later, the music started up again (pan flutes and guitars) and everyone rolled out their portable sales blankets once more. Our waiter then bought a bootleg disco CD from one of the street vendors. =)

Hilary and I had what would be our last ice cream in Spain (Limon Hellado). After that, we continued our stroll along the water-front. We cut through Barcellonetta (a little Barcelona within Barcelona)(again .. redundant) =) and made our way to our hotel just before sunset.

We showered and got ready for our last meal, and we went down to the hotel restaurant. It was very nice! They served an appetizer of part of a partridge! It wasn’t too big, but that was okay by me, because we had had tappas only a few hours before. I had lamb and Hilary had chicken.

We were tired after our meal, and we had 9 hours of flights the next day, so we called it a night after that.

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