The Barcelona Arts and ... the Beach

Saturday morning in Barcelona started with that excellent breakfast at the hotel. After that we were off to see the many works of famous Barcelona architect, Gaudi, who designed many buildings in the early 1900s. His work is incredibly unique. Gaudi is quite famous for his mastery of mosaic and his style that is inspired by nature. We first visited the Parque Guell. It had a beautiful lizard mosaic fountain and buildings that looked exactly like CandyLand (the board game). We also saw an apartment building designed by Gaudi with was very unique. The center of the complex was a courtyard with the building towering overhead. Interestingly, the apartments were not square layouts like we are used to seeing. Instead, there was only only apartment on each floor that wrapped around the entire oval courtyard. It was amazing. The terraced roof was also beautiful. One of my favorite parts was the fashion design exhibit on the ground level of the apartment complex. It is placed there temporarily because the fashion collection was also inspired by nature, and it complements Gaudi's architecture perfectly.

Next we were finally off to the beach!! We got to spend about 2 hours at the city beach. It was very beautiful even with a ton of Europeans sporting their euro swim wear - aka not much on at all. We sat behind this fun group of British women who were on vacation for a bachelorette party. It was fun listening to them talk to each other, and it was nice being about to understand them! For lunch, Kara and I ate paella, a famous Spanish seafood dish at a restaurant just near the beach. It has rice and many kinds of fish in it. This particular one was topped with a crawfish and mussels. The crawfish was awesome. It tasted almost like crab or lobster. And I even ate the mussel. Honestly I barely chewed it, but I was quite proud of myself. It was pretty tasty. Being in the sun was awesome. There was a little breeze, so it was a wonderful beach day!

After the beach we went to the Picasso Museum. It was very interesting! The museum is set up as a tour of his life. I was surprised to see that his many pieces of work were so diverse. He had a landscape phase, people phase, objects, abstracts, and of course the blue-depressed-artist phase. It was great to see room after room of his work. Picasso is a very odd guy but brilliant nonetheless.

That night we ate at the same restaurant again, but we got free sangria this time due to a scheduling conflict. It was great! And the food was better too. After dinner, a bunch of people decided we were going to go to a famous club called RazMaTazz. It was such a funny experience. I'm not sure how to even describe the place. It was a huge warehouse with many floors and different rooms. It was honestly a lot like a video game. Think about one of those dark video games where the player goes thru all these winding warehouse rooms encountering and battling .... whatever it is they battle. Except that there is a different kind of techno in every room. Interesting stuff. It was 15 euro to get in and that came with your first "free" drink. Well Kara and I hadn't quite finished that drink by the time we were ready to go. We were glad we went and glad we experienced it but we were ready. So Kara, Alice, and I were headed out of RazMaTazz when right as I walk out the door (not only do I see her, but) I make direct eye contact with McKenzie Cowan (a Theta with us)! It was the craziest thing, and the most perfect timing. We didn't even have to call each others names to get our attention. Just boom! There she was. We got to chat for just a second before one of the 5 bouncers asked us politely to move along. So we hugged her one more time and said bye!

The next day we visited the Plaza de Espana near the 1992 Summer Olympic Park. Later, we visited Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, an absolutely beautiful church. It has been in construction for over 100 years, and the city aims to finish it by 2026 - the centennial of Gaudi's death. I cannot imagine how much it costs to build this monstrosity. It is funded by the common people and wealthy citizens of Spain - solely off of donations. It is amazing! Pictures will be coming soon.

After that, it was off to the train station, on to the bullet train, on to the metro, short walk back to the apartment, and much needed rest. All in all, it was a good trip!