Barcelona, Spain Day 3

I really just need to finish all of our vacation posts, I am still way behind! I am 6 weeks from delivery and slipping into nesting mode, for most people this means a burst of energy and creativeness resulting in darling decorations and hand sewn blankets, but for me? It means making spreadsheets, detailed research, organizing drawers/closets, ordering baby health products online late at night, stocking the freezer and borderline antisocial behavior. This would be why my mother is receiving packages from Amazon on a weekly basis, I have all the paperwork for insurance already filled out (international requires enough to make a novel), my utensil drawer is sparkling and I owe about 10 people email responses. It was the exact same when I was pregnant with Hadley. We are so very excited for her to arrive, and at least the house will be organized the first week! Bless my sweet mother for being willing to sew the baby quilt (my little sis did Hadley's). Even blogging is losing appeal and I need to get them done before I sink completely!

The third day in Spain we decided to explore a few of Gaudi's works. We started with the Sagrada Familia which amazingly is still under construction. I will be honest - I wasn't prepared to like his work, in all of the travel guides they showed the most bizarre parts to entice tourists and I was expecting some kind of modern weirdness. Instead it truly was gorgeous, not classic styles but really beautiful and interesting with stories behind so many ideas he chose. It also is huge, we couldn't get a picture of the entire structure so it is a bit choppy looking at the pictures.

Nativity facade, so many symbols

The Passion Facade it was designed by a different artist, Gaudi knew he would not see the completion of the building and left basic designs but really wanted each artist that took over to use their own creativity. This was stark and harsh and initially I didn't like it, but they explained that the style was used to evoke exactly those emotions to better related the story of the cruxifiction.

This is one of my favorite pictures even though it is a bit blurry.

This would be what caused our excitement, the inside was stunning. It was so light and interesting, he took inspiration from nature and each element is supposed to relate to natural beauty.

In the museum section they had information on how the building is designed, it appears that Gaudi was a architect first, an artist second. This is a miniature for reference and they would build different sections in plaster, I thought they meant like a few inches high, but the plaster pieces were a good 10 feet. He would come up with a theory and since it hadn't been tested before he would build a model since it was cheaper than trying it for the first time in stone - it looked really labor intensive! He also used gravity to determine parabolas for acoustics, it was fascinating.

Jamie was able to take an elevator to the top of the building (no pregnant ladies or strollers allowed so Hadley and I hung out and people watched).

Overlooking the city

We then walked through a good chunk of Barcelona to figure out the bus system and get to Park Guell. It brought back memories for Jamie from the Mission, although he doesn't recall having to drag a large, unpleasant pregnant lady a who kept asking how much further...

It was not at all what I expected, there were trees and small building scattered around, but no grass. I was envisioning something along the lines of the large parks in England. The pieces that were scattered about the park were really interesting, some looked like cement trees, some overhangs supported bird homes and random sculptures everywhere.

This section was cordoned off, there were so many people we couldn't get a good shot of the mosaic benches in the overlook area.

Overlooking the city (behind all of the people)

In front of the famous gecko (lizard? dragon?) There were so many people this is the best picture we got!

We were able to wander around for awhile and let Hadley explore and then we headed back for our last night. We took a detour to experience some of Barcelona's best food...