It is so hot here! The first thing host mom told me when I got home on Saturday was that it hadn’t rained since I left. We thought it might storm last night but after a couple of thunderclaps nothing happened. I got into work today to find everything turned inside out and upside down. After talking about rearranging our office for a year Nadea finally decided to do it. My desk is now closer to the window which is very nice in this weather.

 

Onward with the vacation update! One of the things I liked most about this vacation is how much really excellent art I got to see/experience. For example, I don’t remember ever even hearing about Gaudi before we started planning this trip. But our time in Barcelona made all three of us enthusiastic Gaudi fans. 

 

Monday morning, after a breakfast of some really yummy croissants we headed off to do some serious sightseeing. Em had planned out everything the night before so we went of in search of Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s famous unfinished cathedral. 

 

A quick overview of Gaudi: A Catalonian architect who used a very organic style of design, Gaudi is best known for the Sagrada Familia, for the houses he designed in the center of Barcelona and for the Park Guell project (more on that tomorrow.) He was a strong Catholic and devoted the last years of his life to the Sagrada Familia project, working without a blueprint which caused problems for the church’s construction after his death.

 

I bought a guide book and walked with one hand on Emily’s shoulder reading out loud for all of us to hear. The book later came in handy for collecting quotes that Em is going to use in her scrapbook of the trip. From a distance the church looks like the most awesome sandcastle you’ve ever seen. It’s very tall and looks as if it were built out of wet sand. We entered through the back where the Passion of Christ is depicted in a series of sculptures. The front of the church is covered with statues depicting the Nativity. I really liked the sculptures. They were so detailed. My favorite was a depiction of Peter denying Christ which included a stone rooster. Although construction on the church was only begun in 1882 the story format of the sculptures reminded me of the Medieval Age when Bible stories were depicted on the stained glass windows of the churches so that the common illiterate person could learn the stories. The Sagrada Familia is nowhere near finished so the tour is an interesting look at a cathedral under construction. I’d love to go back and see the completed work. 

 

Continuing on our art theme of the day, we next visited the Picasso museum in the Gothic Quarter. We got lucky that the museum was open. There was a confusing sign at the entrance explaining that it was it was closed on “working Mondays” and opened on “holiday Mondays.” We later discovered that it was indeed a holiday Monday, something called “Second Easter” which also explained why so many of the stores were closed. The Picasso museum was really interesting. Although I’m not a fan of cubism I do like some of Picasso’s simpler art, like his Don Quixote painting.  What was so nice about this museum is that it followed Picasso’s growth as an artist. Every now and then I’d be like, “Wow! That’s a nice portrait!” and then look at the card and see that he painted it at 15. Craziness.  It was really interesting to see how someone who was such an artistic pioneer built off of the same building blocks that all artists use. It gives me an extra appreciation for his work to see how he developed as an artist and the respect he showed to other artists’ works while creating something new. 

 

I figure here would be a good place to include something about the food we sampled while in Barcelona. We ate at several different Tapas restaurants. I’d never had Tapas before but was really interested in the idea which is basically, you and whoever you are eating with order several dishes of very small portions and then you share. Our favorite Tapas restaurant had pictures of all their various different dishes on their place mats so that all you had to do was read the corresponding number to the waiter. Emily and I enjoyed this style of eating but poor J never seemed to get full. By the end of our time in Barcelona it had become our mission to find a place where he could eat until he could eat no more. 

 

Please keep in mind that while all this sightseeing and food eating was going on poor J and Em were living in the same clothes they left the States in. To their vast credit they did not let it get them down and only occasionally went off into tirades about what they would like to do to “Sender” for causing them such grief. The hostel staff were a lot of help to J is his quest to find somebody at some airline who actually knew what was going on. 

 

If memory serves me correctly it was that night that we decided to go out in search of a strange building we had only glimpsed from a distance. We could never agree on how to describe it. I insisted it looked like a flying saucer that had crashed rim first into the ground and J kept on saying it looked like an enormous rolly poly worm. Emily took several pictures so whenever I get them from her I’ll try to post a couple. It took us a long while to find it but that was ok since the plan was to see it after dark as it lights up at night. 

 

One last note: I forgot to say that my bank card did work in both Barcelona and Italy. So, thank God for that. The only place it didn’t work was Romania, which was kinda strange. 

 

Quote of the Day:

 

Beauty and the Artist

 

Beauteous art, brought with us from heaven,

will conquer nature; so divine a power

belongs to him who strives with every nerve.

 

If I was made for art, from childhood given

a prey for burning beauty to devour,

I blame the mistress I was born to serve

-Michelangelo Buonarroti