We spent the day looking at Modernista architecture sights, particularly for Antoni Gaudí. We went through the Eixample (“Expansion”), which was created in the 1850s when Barcelona needed to expand past its original Medieval-era limits. We saw several Gaudí apartment buildings from the outside, and we went inside the Casa Milà, which we really liked. The apartments were designed to let in a lot of natural light, and the view from the roof was really cool.
From there, we went to the Sagrada Família cathedral, originally designed by Gaudí in the early 1900s and is still being built, much like medieval-era cathedrals which were not completed in the architect’s lifetime. We would have gone inside, but the line to get in was around the block, and we didn’t want to wait that long. We started walking towards the Parc Güell, also designed by Gaudí in the late 1800s as a city garden for a luxury home subdivision with never appeared. On the way, we ate lunch at a local bakery, where I successfully ordered sandwiches in Spanish, and then we took these great lemon-flavored donuts to go. Using the free map from the tourist information desk (sponsored by McDonalds), we successfully navigated to Parc Güell. The park was really cool, a combination of nature and architecture. We spent at least half an hour on this terrace listening to some local musicians and a guy with a big bubble-maker who produced bubbles that the kids ran after. There were also a lot of sidewalk sellers of counterfeit (?) goods, and all of sudden they all ran out of the park – I think somebody official was coming by.
We walked back to the hotel, which turned out to be a LONG walk (over an hour). We walked through neighborhoods where “average people” live. Ken claims that it’s my fault that we walked home, but it was his idea. ;-) We had a nice break when I bought 2 clementines at a local fruit stand for 15 cents and ate them.
For our final night, we went to a chain-type restaurant recommended by our guidebook that opened at 7pm for dinner. We got there around 7:45pm, and we probably wouldn’t have gotten a table 15 minutes later. The food was pretty good, and we had a nice bottle of cava, a local type of sparkling wine that kind of tastes like champagne. We got home so we could pack for our 10am flight out the next day.
