Gaudi in Barcelona

Christmas Facade of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church

Hiking through Park Guell

Gaudi houses in Park Guell

Park Guell

Another little update on our trip—Barcelona’s great, and we’re really enjoying the time here.  Thanks, Mom and Grandma, for watching the kids for us!

We woke up really late, and got into the hotel breakfast—very good food, served on the 23d floor—just before its 1030 closing time.  We headed out to the metro station, bought a pass, and headed for Sagrada Familia, which is probably Barcelona’s most famous landmark. It’s a church designed by Antoni Gaudi, Barcelona’s famous architect of the last century who designed in the modernist manner—lots of curves, odd textures, and strange shapes in all of his work, apparently.  They were on display here.  Really, a beautiful piece of work.  Actually, unfinished work, since it’s still a construction site with cranes and people banging on things.  It’s been in process since the turn of the century, but looks to be complete by 2026, in time for the 100^th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

The outside really shook us both.  The two facades that are finished were starkly different.  The Christmas façade (pictured) shows Jesus’s advent.  The other was the passion façade, done in a much different style decades after Gaudi’s passing.  Both were quite moving, though.  If the facades were jarring, other parts of the huge church displayed whimsy—like the spires, topped with huge lacquered bowls of fruit.  The interior was just as powerful—reverent and joyful at the same time.

We walked to a restaurant I picked out (you KNOW it’s authentic when they don’t have any menus in English—or even Spanish.  Only in Catalan, the regional language of Catalonia), then marched to our second helping of Gaudi: Park Guell.  We hiked the entire lower half, which included superb natural beauty as well as Gaudi’s manufactured spaces , including huge amounts of mosaic work and lots of rock caverns and viaducts and the like.

Took the metro to dinner, then returned to the hotel to write y’all. 

Love, Michael and Nancy