Barcelona, Spain

We added another country to our list two weekends ago with Barcelona, Spain, the capital of Catalonia. Flying with Ryan Air, the trip from Pisa to Barcelona Girona was only about an hour and fifteen minutes. Situated on the Mediterranean Sea, Barcelona is a very seaside city, featuring palm trees and lots of outdoor restaurants and shopping. While the March weather wasn't warm enough to hit the beach, the warm sun was a nice break from all the rain that Florence has been getting the past couple weeks. Barcelona is recognizable for the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, a very unique designer who utilized colorful Catalonian tiles and very free/curved forms. Coming off of midterm reviews, our goal for the weekend was just to explore the city, as opposed to the structured trips we usually take. We stayed in a small hostel for the weekend which housed a maximum of 16 people, making it more like an apartment than a hotel. Considering we needed it only for sleeping, it more than fit the bill. After unpacking our stuff, we set out towards the city center. We stopped at a place for lunch selling the traditional Spanish "Tapas," or finger food, which is the common lunch fare in Spain.  While my high school spanish classes helped a little in understanding the language, the area still has ties with the Catalonian language, a sort of mesh with French. Luckily like most places in Europe, there is enough English to get yourself around. Wandering past the center of the city, we found a mall with a rooftop view. From there we saw the Olympic park from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, which we then explored, including the track and field stadium, as well as the many surrounding parks. 

On Saturday our goal was to find Gaudi's major works in the city, starting with Sagrada Familia, a combined Gothic and Art Nouveau design which began construction in 1883 and is still unfinished today (they plan to have it completely done by 2030). The best way to describe it is a giant drip sand castle, definitely the most unique church I have seen in Europe. By the time we got there at noon, the line to get in stretched all the way around to the back of the church, forcing us to put off going inside to Sunday. From there we continued north toward Parc Guell, a giant park inspired by the English Garden movement which was originally intended to be the location of luxury housing. It's raised location provides a view from the top, all the way across the city and to the beach to the south. From there we went to Casa Mila, which we referred to in architecture history studying as the "biscuit house" and finally Casa Batllo, a colorful Gaudi design which features a facade depicting the story of St. George the dragon slayer. We spent the rest of the day wandering around with no agenda, running into soccer games and neighborhood block parties along the way. For dinner we tried Paella, a popular Catalonian dish which is a base of brown rice, mixed with vegetables, meat and seafood. Around the port we found a Starbucks, where I had the first cafe mocha I've had since coming to Europe. That night we walked along the beach which was pretty much deserted at this time of year, but was still worth it to hear the sound of waves crashing.

Sunday morning we went first thing to Sagrada Familia to get inside the church and climb the towers. The interior of the church is unbelievable. It's hard to even form an opinion on it as you spend the entire time just trying to understand it. To provide some logic to it's form, the interior is based on the structure of trees, with the vaults acting like a canopy. What gives Sagrada Familia its unique form is the way in which Gaudi designed its structure. By hanging bags of sand upside down at different heights and observing the shape of the strings that occurs when they naturally hang with gravity, Gaudi was then able to invert those shapes, knowing the line in which the sand bags will want to fall if they are turned right side up, and making structure of that exact shape. From the towers we were able to get a panoramic view of the city, and upon leaving the church we wandered down La Rambla, the major street of shops and restaurants before it was time to make our way to the airport. This past week was spring break during which we traveled to Paris. I'll try to have that trip posted in the next few days. Until then, enjoy the pictures below!