The City of Gaudi

After leaving the Sagrada Familia, we headed to the Casa Mila, also designed and built by Gaudi.

 The walk between the two sites was really beautiful.

 There were a lot of beautiful apartment buildings and businesses.

 A beautiful park.

Beautiful designs.

And here is Casa Mila. It was a very interesting looking building. It kind of reminded me of Hundertwasserhaus in Vienna, but slightly less colorful. It was really, really cool.

We were warned again that the line was really long to get inside, yet we walked right in.

 The small courtyard inside was really beautiful.

 With really interesting painted walls.

 Inside was fairly simple.

 But the designs of each floor were completely different.

 The roof was a bizarre.

 


There was a nice view of the city from the roof.

 You could look down into the courtyard.

 You could see the Sagrada Familia in the distance. The walk seemed a lot shorter than it looks in this picture.

 Inside there were miniature doors next to even more miniature doors.

 Miniature toilets.

 Nice views from the windows.








Overall, it was a very interesting house, unlike many I've seen.

 Afterwards, we headed to the Picasso Museum, which also supposedly has really long lines.



Once again, we just walked in. We were having really great luck with our timing!

We couldn't take pictures in the Picasso Museum, but it was really, really interesting.

All I'd ever seen of Picasso's work was his cubism and abstract paintings, but the museum included his impressionist and renaissance style paintings that were really amazing. It made me appreciate his work as an artist way more than I did before. Also, looking at all the paintings while standing so close to them really made me appreciate cubism.

I'm not sure if it was Picasso that said it or another person, but they described his work something like this: As a child, Picasso painted like an adult, but as he got older, his paintings got more and more childlike. That definitely seemed to be happening.

Afterwards, we got dinner at a Tapas restaurant, which was delicious, but more miniature than even Tapas should be. The tomato and olive oil bread was wonderful. I don't even really like tomatoes.

Anna fell asleep at the table, which would soon become a common occurrence on the trip.

 We couldn't stop quoting the IT Crowd, "TAPAS, Tiny food from Spain!"

Refer to this video for the specific quote and inflection we used.

Afterwards, we took the subway to Las Ramblas near Catalunya, which is a beautiful, touristy street leading to the water.

There were a lot of pickpockets, but as an experienced traveler, I spotted them immediately. They worked in pairs, would throw some sort of distraction in the air and, while the tourist was looking up at it, another guy would come and pickpocket you.

I wasn't worried because I spotted them from a mile away. At one point, I (very) briefly looked up and someone was already approaching me, but I looked at him and he stood near us awkwardly then moved away. Again, I wasn't worried since I was always REALLY aware of my purse, so at no time during the trip was I worried about pick-pocketing.


However, during the planning of the trip I was really worried about pickpockets. Typical.

This is Catalunya Square right before Las Ramblas.




To the left are some broccoli headed lions.

Adrienne after photobombing/jumping into my picture. That picture is not here, because it will be in the "Adrienne/Allison/Anna photobombing all my pictures blog/Adrienne zooming in really close to my face instead of taking a picture of me with the background/Adrienne taking a picture of only my forehead and the background blog. It happened enough that that blog may end up being 2 blogs.

This is a famous water faucet, because it is supposed to be lucky.

That or increase fertility.

I cannot remember, so you can pick one and pretend that you know it as a fact.

Some upside down stairs.

 Hello Kitty, Smurfs and Kinder Ice Cream. I went with Ferrera Roche, which was wonderful.

 That building housed the Erotic Museum. We did not go there, but I continuously bothered Adrienne about it.

 Dunkin Donuts! oh, wait...Dunkin Coffee??

 An old market.

 There it is! Proof that it was the erotic museum.

 Shalom!

 This was an old umbrella shop. It isn't now, but they kept the decorations on the building, which were quite beautiful.

 A theater.

 The square where I saw the alleged pick pocket.

Aka I saw a pick pocket but didn't get pick-pocketed.

 We walked down to the water, which had some beautiful buildings.

 This is the Columbus Monument, as in Christopher Columbus.

Afterwards, we headed to our hostels relatively early, because we were quite exhausted. I didn't get to go to sleep as early as planned, since someone was showering for approximately 3 days in the shared bathroom, but I tried at least. But it was a fantastic and action packed first day in Barcelona!

Next Blog: Barcelona and Montserrat, or the day Allison and Anna were late. And no Allison, I will never let you live that down.









I'll just leave you this picture...because it's amazing.