The Catalan city of Gaudí
Trip Start
Dec 06, 2005
1
56
80
Trip End
Jun 17, 2006
Barcelona,
Spain
Friday, May 5, 2006
Anyway so the majority of our time in Barcelona was taken up by doing daytime stuff - a lot of time checking out a bunch of Antoni Gaudi work - he was a "modernist" artist from Catalunya (the province of Spain where Barcelona lies) who created some really interesting and eye-capturing buildings and sculptures. His most famous creation is the Sagrada Familia - a cathedral which sticks out, in Brooksy's words, like "dog's balls". It's a huge thing that is still unfinished - since Gaudi's death last century some other architects have taken over and are still working on it, the work is expected to finish sometime in the next 25 years
01 Gaudi building #1
. It's a cathedral with a bunch of crazy stuff all over it - a giant Nativity scene, massive tree-like columns, 8 (out of a complete set of 12) huge spires sticking out in the cityscape, large bunches of grapes symbolising something, and a bunch of other random mathematical, geometric, and spiritual things. Gaudi was a unique artist with some bizarre yet feasible ideas.Saw another flamenco show, with a great 6-piece band and 2 incredible dancers (1 male, 1 female) who stunned the crowd with their foot speed, body control and implementation of fantastic choreography. In Spain we have now seen 3 versions of flamenco, all significantly different - one jazzy version in Madrid with no dancers, one traditional version in Seville with all the locals dancing in the Feria, and this version with the dancers being absolute pros.
We were walking through the Gothic area, getting lost amongst the tiny curvy streets that existed in medieval times, and suddenly were approached to "perform" in the recording of a short film. It would only take a few minutes, assured the director, so why not. Found out the film was called "blow" and were getting a little sceptical, but turned out it just involved us blowing up a balloon until it burst. Random.
Our last day in Barcelona involved a visit to the Olympic Stadium of 1992 which was pretty small - only seats 60,000 - but still a very nice stadium with a really small torch (remember the archer who shot the flame into the torch?).
Ate good food here. Paella at a local market, a brilliant Japanese buffet with a moving conveyor belt delivering all kinds of great food right to your table, and one of the tastiest pizzas Cam and I have ever eaten.
Barcelona was great, would be cool to check it out on a weekend when the nightlife is happening, but we must move on to the land of pizza, Ferrari, the Pope, and the Ninja Turtles.
