A day full of Gaudy Gaudi.

So I've decided that the term gaudy, as in all things overly ridiculous and a bit tacky comes from Gaudi.  While I absolutely adore his architecture and everything I have to admit his stuff is a bit gaudy.  So hence commences my account of my second day in Barcelona, full of Gaudi architecture, and other random happenstances.

First things first, I woke up around 9, got ready, ate breakfast and went on my way with a bunch of other people to the free tours that our hostel offered us. Yay! Free tours!! It was actually a really good tour too.  Now when they say free they really mean "we're going to beg you for tips if I do a good job" but the tips don't have to be that good, and given as I'm a poor college student studying abroad I'm going to just pool my money with my other friends and make it look like we all gave you an excellent tip.  It's funny, because all europeans seem to think that since we're American's abroad we're all rich.  I guess their thought process is that if we're here in Europe not working and just traveling we're loaded, they clearly do not understand how weak our dollar is here and how much it pains us to spend money.

Anyways, we started our tour around 10:30 or so and had two to choose from, Gaudi tour or a tour of the Gothic neighborhood.  Now I still have never looked at the Gothic Cathedrals, but I knew that I wanted another tour of the Gaudi stuff and learn about what I was looking at.  So I went with that, as did many others in our group.  There were about 15 of us from AIFS that were at the same hostel and such, so many of us were on the free walking tour together.

We started off our tour in the plaza we stopped at, where we saw Gaudi's first and only piece he did for the city of Barcelona.  This was also his first piece he did for money, and the last one he did for the city of Barcelona because they stiffed him. After he was finished they decided they didn't want to pay him in full and only paid him half the money.  But as a good ol' American would do he took them to court and got all of his money.  But then he swore he'd never work for the council again, and he didn't, he only worked for private owners after that.  But this cool lamp has red touches and influence from nature, as does everything else he made.  Most of his stuff is very colorful, and he looked at nature for inspiration.  A lot of the designs are based on nature and he studied things to see how they really looked, worked and fit together.  It was really cool.

After that we headed to Gaudi's first piece that he was commissioned to make.  It was a remodel of a building in what once was known as the red light district. This guy named Guell hired him to remodel the building in hopes of bringing the rich people to the area and reviving it.  There's a phoenix in the middle of the two doors (don't ask me why though) and all the way up the windows actually get smaller.  Our guide also told us a funny story about the couple that lived there.  Basically what happened is that no one else ended up moving to the red light district but the Guell's, but they of course had guests over all the time.  Apparently they had a huge window built so they can see from their rooms the carriages coming into the garage area.  Then they would look to see if their guests were dressed better than them and change if necessary.  Can't have your guests upstaging you now can you!! I thought it was an entertaining story.

Next building is my favorite.  It's called Casa Batllo, and it's very colorful.  I saw this one about 3 years ago and we were there during Carnaval so I have two women dressed as cats in the picture. haha Now I have even more pictures of it!  I honestly couldn't tell you much about it, just that it's very pretty and really super cool.  You can go inside it and see the inside, but I didn't think it was worth my 15 euro, I was saving that to go into La Sagrada Familia.  Oh and apparently you get to see the head of my american tour guide!! haha He was a pretty funny guy, and his name was Ross! He's from American and apparently got his job by doing the pub crawl that the hostel offered.  I guess he was just very energetic, and was being a tourist.  They had a job open and he got it, that's how he described it to us "I wanted to get drunk and came back with a job".  So it was certainly an interesting tour, but he was a funny dude.

Next stop, La Pedrera, which also has other names, and I cannot translate that name for you. haha But it has many other names by the locals, and this was the first house that Gaudi was able to completely build from scratch.  Guell only had once request and that was by his wife, she wanted a room to play her piano...guess what, Gaudi didn't give her one. haha  He was one stubborn man and only built what he wanted to build.  In this building there are no 90 degree angles, unless you count the modern windows that were installed (which I don't).  All the walls, ceiling, floors, everything is rounded out.  It was pretty cool.  Oh yea, and this building gave George Lucas his inspiration for the Star Wars movies.  The tops of the buildings look like Darth Vader and the snow patrol people (if I just butchered Star Wars I'm truly sorry to all you Star Wars people out there).

FINALLY, our last stop was La Sagrada Familia.  This place is AWESOME.  Literally it is my favorite Cathedral/Basilica ever.  Technically it's a Basilica, I don't know what makes something a Basilica really, but it is one.  So we took the metro to La Sagrada Familia (LSF as I will refer to it because it's easier).  We took the metro and our guide had us exit a certain way and then turn around all at once so we could get the full affect.  We sure did, well, at least everyone who had never seen it before did.  Everyone turned around and was pretty awestruck, I mean honestly how can you not be when an enormous Basilica stands before you.
Before I start explaining everything I'll also give you a link to their webpage.  I cannot possibly tell you everything about it, but in case you're interested here it is.  http://www.sagradafamilia.cat/sf-eng/?lang=0

There are no pictures I could take to possible give you a good idea of what this building looks like.  From afar it kind of looks like mush and a ton of detail.  But believe me, up close it's amazing.  There are three facades to the building.  The first one is the only one Gaudi saw finished before he died, the Nativity Facade.    It's the facade of the birth of Jesus and is topped with an evergreen tree to stand for the ever lasting life I think....

Next is the Passion Facade, which shows the Passion of Christ. That one is not finished yet, but it looks really cool!! This is probably my favorite facade.  Maybe because it's not directly made by Gaudi, but it's all his sketches and his model, someone else just created it.  I think this facade is really pretty.

Then there's the Glory Facade, which has yet to be finished.  It is the facade currently under construction, I think...again look on the website to confirm my information. The Glory Facade will depict the life of Jesus complete with bible stories and other such things.  This was also the side that Pope Benedict blessed in 2009 so it will be the official entrance of the Basilica.  There's no pictures of the Glory Facade because it's just blankness.

So here's the thing with this building, it started in 1882 when Gaudi began sketches and building.  It's not been 125 years...and it's still not scheduled to finish until 2030...and they are funny if they think it will be done then.  It won't, I promise you.  Barcelona brings in over 15 million euro a year from toursits entering this place, and once it's finished they can't charge people a dime for entering a public church.    So it won't be done, and they will figure out a way to extend the amount of time it takes to build this thing.

After I walked around the outside me and my friends resolved to grab something to eat and then go inside La Sagrada Familia.  After all, our guide said it's definitely something that's worth going into, and I've been dying to go in for 3 years now...  So finally I got to enter......dun dun dun!!  That's meeee.  I'm standing in front of a piece of the Passion Facade.  Up there is a saint I think, and on his right is a magic square that adds up to 33 all ways...which is the age Jesus died.  So that's pretty cool.  Walking up close to these things was awesome, I could stare at it all day.  But I practically did.  I spent probably about 2 hours inside LSF.

Oh, did I mention that when this massive thing is done it's going to be twice it's size.  Yup,  it's going to have 18 towers in total, one of Jesus (which will be the highest), one for Mary (slightly lower), 4 for the Evangelists, and 12 for the disciples.  So if you think it's big now...just wait another 50 years and it'll be massive....

After I gawked at the sculptures outside I entered...where we were allowed to take pictures, which I thought for sure would be forbidden. yay!  The inside is magnificent.  All the columns look super tall and like a forest.  The stain glass windows are so pretty and the light comes in perfectly.  The alter is incredibly pretty and the area behind the alter is really pretty cool.  There are several small chapels behind the alter for private prayer that you can't take pictures of because there are some people praying or watching the video of Pope Benedict blessing the Basilica.  There are spiral staircases going to the upper levels.  There's a huge choir loft that is very tall and can hold a lot of people, that they obviously used for the dedication ceremony thing ( I have no idea what to call it).  I was so excited to be inside and read all the little information that had about the architecture of the place.  Unfortunately I don't remember much of it anymore, but it was really cool see at the time.  So to the left is me inside and then below is a main part of the place.  That's where they had chair set up and people could go through there to get better pictures or rather to just plain see better. 

.  After I wandered around the inside of the church I wandered outside to the other side where the Nativity Facade was.  They had a really cool informational sign about all the different parts of the facade and which stories it told.  So it showed you were the three wise men where, Mary and Jospeh, Angels, animals, etc.  I had a really fun time reading all of that, even though it was freezing.  They also had a small area that had some info about Gaudi and some of this works.

But there's an even bigger museum downstairs...it's huge and it even has Gaudi's casket in there.  Ironically the only part of this place he did not design or build is the crypt, and that's where he is buried.  The museum also has a ton of his original sketches of the design for the Basilica, along with the remains of the original models they were able to recover.  The government burned down his workshop at some point, I don't remember why though.  They were able to recover some pieces and are rebuilding them based on the sketches he had.  They also have the original sketches from other architects who have worked on the building, and some portraits of Gaudi and others.  It's a really cool museum and there's tooooons of stuff to look at.  I definitely spent an hour down there just looking at everything.  By the time I was done looking at La Sagrada Familia I was definitely a huge Gaudi fan, not that I wasn't one already.  But I pretty much fell in love with him genius/madness.  Did you know...he actually used real people, dead people, dead babies and real animals to create casts of the animals and people he sculpted.  He wanted to anatomy and everything right.  So he cast casts of dead people, and dead babies, and just tranquilized animals to get the right anatomy of them (that's why we don't know if he was mad or a genius, personally I think both ;) )

Last stop...another thing I was waiting for all day....Parc Guell.  Parc Guell was designed and created by....you guessed it, Antony Gaudi.  This park was actually a failed project, so the tour guide said they didn't bring us there because that consider it a failure.  This park was supposed to be a private residence.  Gaudi said he would build anyone a house there that paid him to build one, the thing was they got no say in the design.  haha as you can imagine pretty much no one lived there.  There are only 3 houses on the property, and only one of which is lived in now.  Gaudi, and two residents lived in the park.  But he designed a ton of stuff in the park, including a market area, a fountain and tons of other really cool architecture.  Mostly just cave like, market type areas.  There's an amazing view of the city from the park, you can see all the way out to the sea.  It's incredible.  Where we entered we had an amazing view of the LSF, and it was really impressive, I can't imagine what it'll look like when it's finally finished.

Then we walked over to probably my favorite part, the market type area.  There's an awesome dragon spiral type bench area.  The bench is all made of small broken pieces of what looks to me like plates and stuff.  It's very pretty and intricate.  And under it is the columns that I love so much because of Gaudi's brilliance.  The tiling on the bottom of the columns change in height as you go down the line.  Gaudi understood how the eye works, and he knew that if he made them all the same height they would not look all the same.  So he changed the height a little at a time, based on distance, and they all look uniform.  I think it's pretty sick and shows his brillance!  This area was supposed to be where the market was, but as you know that whole residence thing never happened...so now it's just a pretty spot to be in .

Next I got to see the lizard!! Dun...dun...dun....  I love this cute little lizard dude, he's not very cute, but very cool.  This is pretty much the spot to be in the park.  This is where all the tourists are to see the things they see in movies and such.  Another little factoid, you guys know the Cheetah Girls movie where they all go to Barcelona.  Well the song with the little Spanish boy showing them around the city and them dancing all over the place.  Well I was pretty much in all of those spots, and Gaudi's lizard was in the movie! haha The lizard is very famous.  So there's me with him!!

After that I explored the park some more.  There's sooo much more to see than just the big touristy spots.  We wandered around some more, and looked at those little houses that I saw last time.  The ones where I was told about them representing the whole hansel and gretal story.  Turns out you can't really go in them, but there's a little gift shop in one of them where I ended up caving and buying a book all about Gaudi's works.  I just couldn't help myself and I know I will be happy with my book purchases in the future.  I'm still on the hunt for a children's book though, more for a classroom but that just having one would be fun for me either way.

I wandered over to where Gaudi's house was.  Unfortunately it was late so their awesome museum inside Gaudi's house was closed. :(  But I walked around the house and looked at his cool stuff.  He had cool statues and other things out in his patio area.  Now it's just a museum obviously, but Gaudi did live there!!  We also saw some cool looking areas to just chillax.  There's one cave area where surrounding it are chairs!! They're all wooden columns and sculpted at the bottom are chairs!

And that was pretty much it.  That was the end of my day.  Me and Jen headed back to the hotel after spending about 2 hours in Parc Guell.  On our way we helped a hopelessly lost American older woman find her way to where ever she was going.  I stayed in for the night but it was a girl in our groups birthday that night so most of the people went out on the free pub crawl the hostel offered.  I stayed in and bought some food to make at the hostel on the way home.  Then I headed in early for the night because the next day was our last day and we had to travel home.

On Sunday I woke up late, around 9:30, grabbed some breakfast and checked out of the hostel.  We were able to leave our bags there because we still had most of the day to wander around.  So me and Jen wandered up towards the Olympic Stadium, but we got hoplessly lost when we left a small garden on the way out and ended up on the wrong side of the stadium.  Then it just looked kind of weird and we realized we ended up near a stupid toy place racing track.  After we got oursevles out of there we headed to Plaza Catalyna where we found a free museum!! Apparently in Barcelona they are required to host days where museums are free, it's part of the their cultural requirement or something.  Anyways we found the national art museum was free, along with pamplets, which is a steal cuz they usually cost at least 1euro.  By that time though I was cranky and tired so I pretty much sat on a bench while my friend looked around.  We finally left and headed back to the hostel to meet up with our friend and go to the airport.  Our flight left around 8 and we got to the airport around 6 or so.  I finally got back to Granada by 9:30 and was home by 10.  It was an extremely busy and adventure full weekend, but I was extremely glad to be "home".  I couldn't believe how much I missed my Julia's food, and a nice warm, comfy bed to sleep in.  I didn't even realize that I called this place home until then.  But it is my home now, and I'm glad of it.

Now you've finally heard about my whole adventure.  Unfortunately it's taken about 2 weeks, and now I'm off to Paris next weekend.  But at least you're getting to hear about mee!!

Love you all!