The Rest of Spain in Ten Thousand Steps

On our final full day in Barcelona we set out to explore the remainder of the country by wandering through Poble Espanyol, an outdoor museum originally constructed in 1929 as part of the Barcelona International Exposition.  The "village" consists of reproductions of buildings representing architectural styles from throughout Spain.  It proved so popular that plans to demolish it were abandoned.  Now it's one of the city's most interesting tourist sites.

Today it hosts artisans - weavers, leather workers, glassblowers, iron smiths - and a couple of contemporary art collections as well as lots of classy shops and restaurants.  We ended up spending nearly six hours listening to our audio guide explanations, dining alfresco and browsing the shops and galleries.

The misty morning rain gave way to a sunny afternoon.  In the end, according to Heidi's trusty pedometer, we walked over 10,600 steps - but that took us all over Spain!

To the Tippy Top of Tibidabo and Txaikovski, Too

This morning we eventually reached the summit of Tibidabo to visit the Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor and to admire the view from Barcelona's highest peak.

This evening we attended a concert featuring a young pianist, Behzod Abduraimov, playing Txaikovski (Tchaikovsky) with the Orquestra Simfonica del Valles under Ruben Gimeno.  The concert was held at the Palau del la Musica, certainly one of the most exuberant music performance spaces in the entire world (and one of our chief reasons for wanting to visit Barcelona in the first place).

Birthday Boy In Barcelona

The weather forecast for May 24th all week long called for 100% chance on rain and cool temperatures.  Naturally that outlook was totally incorrect!  The day was a bit cool but bright, clear and delightfully sunny.

Lee's celebration of his seventy-second birthday began with a visit to Casa Mila, considered one of Antoni Gaudi's residential masterpieces.  We'd dropped by earlier last week but found the ticket line too long to bother with, but this time around we walzed right in without much of a wait at all.

The Mila family lived on the first floor of this multistoried structure and rented out other parts of the building as apartments and retail shops.  Visitors today can tour a furnished apartment on the fourth floor, the attic area (set up as a multimedia museum tracing Gaudi's career as an architect) and the rooftop terraces, an unbelievable fairyland.

We began our tour on the roof with spectacular views of the city on all sides -- and surrounded by an army of alien invaders straight out of Star Wars!  Gaudi treated his chimneys, elevator shafts, light wells and ventilation ducts as works of art, and nowhere is that more apparant than on the top terrace of Casa Mila.

The attic display followed with all its informative audio visual presentations, models and detailed architectural descriptions.  The fourth floor apartment was especially interesting, not only because it was fully furnished but because it gave a nice sense of how apartment spaces were laid out curving around a light well with most rooms off a single corridor but with light streaming in from both sides: very elegant and surprisingly cozy.

Following a light lunch at a small local restaurant just off Passeig de Gracia, we returned to our apartment for our usual siesta, then ventured out later in the evening for a water fountain display at the foot of Mont Juic.  The show, complete with music and lots of colored lights, lasted thirty minutes and attracted a huge crowd - better than candles on a birhday cake!

The entire spectacle is repeated four times a night during warmer weather; we wondered if the crowds are always so dense.  We certainly found the people almost as much fun to watch as the cascading water!

Park Guell Images

Lee's lengthiest slideshow yet features some twenty-five images from our visit to Parc Guell:

Surprise! Surprise!

Thursday produced TWO surprises.  Obviously, one can't always predict how one's planned visits will work out when one is actually on the scene.  Before meeting up with neighbors and friends, Lynn and Bob Markus, in the late morning, we took the subway to visit an extensive set of hospital buildings designed by Domenech, one of Barcelona's great Moderniste architechs.  When we arrived, we found the entire complex had become a GIANT construction site!

New buildings had been erected around the periphery, and now the old ones were being renvated for other purposes.  We followed signs to an information center and arrived in time to take a guided tour. However, the tour overlapped with the time we had set to meet up with the Markus's.  The helpful staff at the center suggested we wander around on our own and provided the basic outline for a route to follow.

We should have known better -- the assembled tour group ready for their adventure were all attired in bright orange vests and hard hats!  Nonetheless, hardy travelers that we are, we set off on our own, and proceeded to run into obstacle after obstacle -- bulldozers and cement trucks and "off limit" areas galore.  We tried doors and followed dirt paths, trying to see what we could see.  In the end, while Lee did manage to get some decent overview shots, it was a frustrating experience - one of the hazards of travel but a great "travel adventure" story, too.

Our stroll between the hospital and Sagrada Familia (where we were to meet the Markus's) proved an unexpected anecdote, taking us along a very pleasant tree-lined boulevard...

The second surprise came when, after a stop for coffee and crossants at a sidewalk cafe, the four of us (Markus's and Makelas) set off to visit Parc Guell, another Antoni Gaudi project in the hills to the west of the city center.  We ended up spending several hours there, wandering garden paths and marveling, not only at the architecture of the "gated community gone bad" but at the wonerful variety of flowers and other plants flourishing everywhere in what has become Barcelona's premire public park.

The weather was absolutely perfect.  Readers will have to check back, however, since Lee hasn't compelted editting the one hundred images taken during our visit.  Here's the one we sent to our Plymouth Church Discussion Group whose Friday evening meeting we four are missing just to wet your whistle:

A Day in the Spanish Countryside

Today we visited Montserrat, a Benedictine Monastery located about an hour outside Barcelona, founded in the 11th century to honor the 9th century appearance of the Virgin Mary in a nearby cave.

The basilica at the heart of the complex today houses a black wooden statue of Mary holding the Christ Child, an image known as the Virgin of Montserrat and honored since 1881 as the co-patron saint for all Catalunya.

The weather, clear, bright and sunny, was the best of the trip so far.  The cablecar ride up the mountainside proved breathtaking.  The sanctuary (refurbished in 1990) was illuminated by camera flash almost more than by the varied donated lanterns lining the walls throughout (despite signs prohibiting the use of cameras altogether).

Throughout the time we were there, the line of the faithful hoping to touch the globe held in the Virgin's outstretched hand wound slowly, slowly, slowly up towards the high altar where the popular image is housed in a large protective glass cylinder, an option we ultimately chose to honor in the breach.

We did enjoy the hour or so spent in the art museum, filled with representative works by various impressionists and Catalan artists worth getting to know.

The surrounding mountain trails also are popular for hiking and lead to numerous hermitages to which meditating monks might retreat in times past -- although today they were crowded mainly by visiting pilgrims and tourists arriving busload after busload.

All in all, the experience proved more "touristic" than "spiritual", but we did enjoy strolling around in the sun, taking in the crystaline views all the way to the Mediterranean more than thirty miles away.

... and the picture-taking opportunities were priceless!

Three Catalan Museums: Picasso, Miro and Dali

Sunday afternoon the four of us (Annika, Dierk, Heidi and Lee) stood in line (an all-too- common experience) before spending an hour or so at the Museu Picasso housed in five adjoining medielval palaces in the center of Old Town Barcelona.  Although, not surprisingly, the works on display are not his best -- they have been bought up and displayed in other museums worldwide, seeing examples of Picasso's stylistic progression over the decades was illuminating and quite instructive.  So, too, was the placement of his evolution in the larger historical and aesthetic context in which he worked.

The same was true of our visit Monday morning with Dierk and Annika to Fundacio Joan Miro on Barcelona's Mount Juic.  Here again we could follow Miro's evolution over the years -- and place him in context with Picasso's experiences as well.  Both Heidi and Lee especially enjoyed the playfulness of Miro's imagery and ended up with a T-shirt and wristwatch respectively by which to remember our visit.

That afternoon we drove to Figueres with the Steinnmans to tour the Teatre-Museu Dali. Quite in contrast to the earlier two experiences, our visit here was completely shrouded in mystery!  Lunch at La Tagliatella adjacent to the museum was delicious, especially the very thin crusted pizza and the sangria; but the lack of informative signage made it VERY difficult even to locate the museum in the first place.  The mystery continued inside: no expanations anywhere beyond the minimum; a confusing overall layout; works not at all arranged in chronological or thematic order.  We decided this was all very much in keeping with Dali's overall eccentric aesthetic - confuse, confound, and theereby cause controversy!

On the other hand, this was the only musuem of the three that allowed photography...

Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia

Sunday morning seemed an apt time to visit Sacrada Familia, the basilica most closely associated with Antoni Gaudi.  We arrived fifteen minutes or so prior to the 9:00 AM opening to find the ticket line already stretching around the corner; Annika and Dierk joined us soon thereafter.  The line moved along quickly enough; and, once we had picked up our audio guides, we began what turned out to be a mesmerizing ninety minutes touring what has become, since its formal dedication in 2010, one of the world's most visited sites.

Gaudi himself was a very conservative Catholic and, when he took over as the chief architect for the building project in 1883, conceived of the church as an "exculpatory temple" constructed to seek God's forgiveness for the negative effects of modernity's excesses visited on the world by industrialization and mechanization.  What is even more obvious at this point in the building process (completion is scheduled for 2020 or thereabouts), however, is that Gaudi "gets it" -- in terms of what a twenty-first century religious space should be about.

The soaring interior is breath-taking.  Both of us were emtionally moved when we walked into the chancel area.  The eye is immediately drawn upward.  The organic shapes of the supporting pillars, the brilliant stainglass windows, the flowing lines everywhere awe and humble one simultaneously.

Gaudi hoped his efforts would serve as an expression "of solidarity, of Faith and Hope embraced by Love which, with its invocation of God the Father, our Creator, is the sign of the brotherhood of all human beings."   Certainly we were drawn into that vision, an uplifting experience of exultation and hopefulness and gratitude.

Modernisme Two: Strolling Around Gracia

Anikka and Dierk arrived right on schedule, just in time for a quick lunch before we four headed off to Passeig de Gracia and the district's polethera of houses in the Modernisme style.  This area of Barcelona, the Eixample, grew up as the city expanded following the dismantling of the Roman era walls that had earlier confined the population to a small area close to the port.

Three well-known Catalan architects, Antoni Gaudi, Lluis Domenech i Montaner and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, helped imlement the city's orderly expansion plan initially drawnup by Ildefons Cerda i Sunyer in 1854.

We first stopped by Antoni Gaudi's apartmetn complex, Casa Mila, (built between 1906 and 1910).  However, the ticket line looked longer than we wanted to wait; so, instead, we wandered through a beautifully mounted photography show featuring the black-and-white images of  Chema Madoz -- and were able as well to see a bit of the Casa Mila interior courtyard as we entered and exited the exhibit.  We'll return to this architectural gem for a more extended visit later, that's for sure!

There are numerous other architectural masterpieces in the immediate area, so for the next hour or so we simply walked around the neighborhood, Lee snapping pictures one after the next ...

Our final stop of the afternoon took us to another of Antoni Gaudi's creations, Casa Batllo, from 1906. The ticket line here was much shorter and moved along quickly. Moreover, the use of audio guides means everyone moves through the building independently at one's own pace which provides all the room needed to see and contemplate that which interests without having to push through a crowd trying to listen to a single guide. This visit, too, was immensely rewarding -- and quite a different experience from that of Palau Guell.

Moderisme One: Antoni Gaudi's Palau Guell

At long last, we have begun our exploration of the Modernisme movement centered in Barcelona.  

Yesterday (Saturday) morning, while awaiting the arrival of Annika and Dierk Steinmann, our German "daughter" and her husband who were flying in for the weekend from Trier, we toured Antoni Gaudi's first major archtectural commission, the palatial palace built for the industrilist Esebi Guell between 1885 and 1890.

Guell, a personal friend as well as a patron, provided Gaudi with the ideal opportunity to prove his metal as an architect.  The plans for the palace incorporated "public spaces" for receptions, musical performances and other similar undertakings.  This meant that Gaudi's designs were exposed widely to leading figures in the Catalonian community.  Furthermore the palace was constructed without any financial constraints being place on its architect and built with the essential aid of the leading artisans of the day.

The result (as restored to its glory and reopened to the public in May 2011) is an astounding and surprisingly liveable "home" that reflects Gaudi's multifaceted concerns with not only structural matters but also interior design and a host of other functional issues.  We were mesmerized for the entire couple of hours the excellent audio tour took to guide us through the palace's various spaces -- all the way from the stables in the basement to the laundry facities in the attic!

In the end, however, Lee just had to purchase a beautifully illustrated guide so he could review at leisure all the myriad elements incorporated in this incredible piece of Modernisme architecure (initiating a practice that has persisted through out all our subsequent visits to other Gaudi masterpieces).

Here are a selection of images taken during our trip through the magical realm of Palau Guell, an architetural gem of incredible beauty and creative elan.

More Floral Displays from Girona

Here, as promised, are the highlights from the second half of Friday's trove of images from the Flower Exposition in Girona:

Girona itslef is a beatiful nineteenth century village. Its Old Town area seems almost entirely built of stone, making its architecture, streets and walls eminantly photographical - as this selection of shots ambly illustrates: