I’m stateside now, but hoping to finish blogging some more of our trip before I forget it. We got home Monday evening and I slept 12 hours Monday and then 11 hours Tuesday, which is the day it is now. So I’m almost back to normal from the time zone perspective, and also in the sense that the memories are already slipping. I’m trying to sort through it by the dates on the pictures, but there is a definite possibility that the group of items I cover on this post didn’t actually happen on the same day.

Sometimes I feel like my brain is a bag of sand was a hole in it. There still does to be some stuff in there though, so maybe it’s a very, very small hole, or a poor metaphor.

Our Barcelona trip was entirely spent in four neighborhoods. Eixample, our home base, includes many small businesses, several Modernist buildings, and Sagrada Familia. West of it is Gràcia, which we only visited once, when we went to Park Guell. East of it is the Cuidad Vella, or Old City, which includes La Rambla, Gotic Barri, El Born, and Barceloneta and abuts the Mediterranean. South of both Eixample and Cuidad Vella is the huge neightborhood of Sants-Montjuic, which includes Montjuic, a bluff overlooking the water with both cultural and natural attractions, and the commercial port of Barcelona.

On March 3rd we started with our chef-led tapas-making class, which took place in the chef’s apartment in Barceloneta. It did not seem appropriate to take pictures inside someone else’s house, but we did get one from the balcony, which shows some of the many extra yachts in town to see the America’s cup races.

After the class we decided to take the tram from Barceloneta to Montjuic, a very good cardiac workout for a acrophobe such as myself. The tram ride is about six minutes long, extending between a tower on the beach and a land station about halfway up the bluff. I was clutching a pole in the middle, but my husband got pictures looking north toward the modern city, south at the commercial port, down from the midway point, and coming in for a landing.

Olympic venues from the 1992 games are scattered about the city, and we stopped at a concession near the Natatorium, which has a beautiful view. Sagrada Familia is shown by an arrow in the long shot and then again in a closeup. As you may remember, its highest tower when finished will be a few feet shorter than Montjuic, but the cranes seem to be a little taller than that.

We ended the afternoon at the Fundació Joan Miró, a fun museum at which I took zero pictures of the paintings though they were lovely. I did pose with a friend at the entrance, and took one picture of the Solar Bird, which appeared in many guises and sizes, often alongside the Lunar Bird. The last shot shows the accessible model of the facility, which was designed to be touched. There was another model for the sighted.

In contrast to pretty much all of our friends, my husband and I are visual art challenged, but we both really enjoyed the Miro. Amusingly, Miro also has a large mosaic installation on the street in La Rambla near the Liceu opera venue which we must have walked over at least three times yet never noticed. We looked at pictures later. It is huge, and brightly colored. Feel free to draw any conclusions that seem correct.

… Is certainly Sagrada Familia, which is also his most famous, as well as the largest structure by volume and height. Larger in site area, however, and much more popular as measured by visitor density, is Park Guell. These are the only two Gaudi sites one must pre-book in order to be assured of a visit.

Surely many more people visit S. Familia, but it’s such a large building that you can find a space for yourself even while surrounded by others. Park Guell is another story. The park itself covers 45 acres, but the Gaudi portions comprise only a fraction of that.

We started with a bus ride, on a city bus that was crowded when we got on and jammed by the time we reached our stop, at which two-thirds of the passengers dismounted. I greatly amused a companion by exclaiming, Surely all these people aren’t going to Park Guell!

They were.

Pathways and promenades, vistas and plazas, pavilions and viaducts, all were crawling with humanity. There were long lines for entry into buildings, stairs were packed railing-to-railing, and even to take a picture you had to wait for others to finish. It reminded me of the Mona Lisa, a small painting protected by thick glass, live guards, and velvet ropes, with a long line of hopefuls waiting for a brief glimpse.

Some–I mean all–of our photos contain people as well as things. This is the exit, originally designed as the main entrance to what was intended to be a gated community, but it was too far from Barcelona to attract tenants, so Gaudi sold it to the city as a park. It’s flanked by two lovely little houses but we didn’t get a picture of the entire expanse. It’s known as the Stairway to Heaven. I think this predates Led Zeppelin.

The Guardian of the Stairway, followed by a close-up of his hide.

Here’s one of many adorable edifices that most people of the time didn’t want to move this far to live in. There are several, mostly repurposed as museums with additional entry fees, but all the structures are of this ilk. This could be a restroom for all I remember.

Here’s a closer look at the top of the colonnade that crowns the Stairway entrance. It is a plaza outlined by a very long Dragon Bench. You can some heads poking up, representing a few of the hundreds of people on the plaza.

My husband took that picture from our favorite spot, a relatively unvisited promenade perhaps 200 meters long, near a small forest. It was quiet enough to hear cries of the ubiquitous monk parakeets, and included the statue of the water-bearing woman below.

The original entrance is the tourist exit, as I mentioned. The tourist entrance is near the top of the park, where one can find a colonnade that is sort of a precursor of the forest nave of S. Familia in the way the columns form a canopy at the top. Note some are tilted, as real trees would be.

From the top, or close to the top is a view of far-away Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea, with which I will end this post.

Our first eleven days in Barcelona were slow with respect to visitors. After that, we scheduled three consecutive couples staying six, five, and four days. We’re in the midst of that now, and I have not any time to blog. Too busy having fun! After today, I may not get another chance until I’m home in California.

I do have a little time this afternoon though, so I’m going to write about the Gaudi edifice mentioned in the title. This one I found truly impressive, the most fanciful and creative of all the ones I plan to see on this trip. It’s a single-family home with a theme of marine life and an interior composed of wood, tile, and stucco arranged in a series of nature-mimicking curves. In addition to being beautiful, it is well-engineered and ergonomic.

All the words in the world can’t do it justice, and I was so stunned I didn’t take a lot of pictures, so I’m hoping these few will help you imagine the rest. Let’s start in the dining room, looking at the ceiling.

Next is the door entering the dining room from from the study. Notice the texture of the walls. The tri-fold wooden door makes a perfect seal with the complex shape above the opening.

This is the front window of the dining room looking out onto the main street. Keep that marine environment theme in your mind. Also notice the crowds; this is a popular site, though hardly Gaudi’s most popular. There are latches between the lowest windows and those above them, shown in the second shot below.

This window can become a balcony! First open all the latches roughly at waist level across the entire opening, then find a hinged, vertical panel at your left which conceals a lever. That moves the upper windows in some manner–we did not see this done–leaving the lower portion with the latches now serving as the railing to an open balcony.

Your many notice the street Passeig de Gracia, is particularly crowded. This was October 6, and there was another large free Palestine demonstration, the second we’ve seen.

Finally I will reveal the facade. The configurable balcony would open the upper part of the middle of the second story, which is the lowest level shown in this shot. Also notice the serrated wall at the top which forms a dragon’s back. You’ll see the other side of that later.

Now for a few random glimpses. There are two ground to roof openings to circulate light and air, which fill the entire structure wonderfully. Those shafts look like this from the inside.

There are some gorgeous stairwells of many different designs. Here’s one.

Even the simplest features seem fluid and biological.

Now let’s skip to the roof. Instead of making 27 holes for the 27 chimneys, Gaudi grouped them, making the roof seem spacious and exposing views of Barcelona at many angles. In this shot you can see the central skylight at the left, one group of eight chimneys, and a portion of the features at the front of the building, including the one known as the dragon’s back, which conceals a clever water distribution system. The roof includes a concession where one can enjoy a drink al fresco. After all those stairs, we were happy to indulge.

Gaudi made a model of the exterior. According to an interpretive sign I don’t completely believe, he directed the construction using only this, no other drawings or plans. And yes, the sign was in English.

I have no more words to summarize this creation than I did to introduce it, so I will bid farewell.