Buh-buh-buh-barrrr-celona (to the tune of My Sharona)(josh made me title it this)

Alright. It took us all week just to upload all the photos for this post.

No, no, don't worry; there aren't that many, but I did decide to split them up into installments. So today we have the General Barcelona and Lots-o-buildings section.

Let's start with general Barcelona. We were only away for five days, but I think we covered decent ground. We wandered around the first two days, headed 3 hours North to an expo in Zaragosa on the third, and spent the fourth day doing more wandering (and beach-going). Of course, the excuse we used to go to Barcelona was that our friends, Queenie and Anthony, were flying in from NYC. Although it was great to see them, I think Josh, the only non-architect in the group, was at a disadvantage. He had to entertain himself while we stopped at random buildings to snap (a decent number of) photos. Poor guy.

Ok. Let's get to the pictures. (Read the rest...)Ok. Let's get to the pictures.

First things first. Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia cathedral. Construction began on this crazy thing in 1882 and continues today. I wasn't expecting to visit a full construction site (and to pay to enter one), but the building was amazing, cranes and all. While the size, duration of construction, and probable cost seem a bit much, it's an interesting place that I would love to see when complete (2026, apparently). I find it refreshing to walk into cathedral unlike any I've seen before.


Josh has a 35mm fisheye camera (lomography!), so we tried using that viewfinder with our digital camera... entertainment that allowed us to get a bit more cathedral time for our money while playing around with it.
I'm just going to skip chronological order and go for topical. So, next. While walking, we happened upon the Santa Caterina market, renovated by Enric Miralles. You might remember him from our photos of the Scottish Parliament building. (I left out the photos of Josh sitting idly by while we photo'ed away.)

The Bari Gotic or gothic neighborhood was a lovely place to wander with narrow streets opening to cafe-filled plazas and the big medieval cathedral.

Josh and I had a nice dinner in this large plaza. Definitely an over-priced, tourist hot spot, but we spent the meal trying to come up with a shorter word for 'justifiable tourist trap,' if that says anything!
The Catedral (nice, but Durham's is still more impressive!):
Josh up close and personal with goose in cathedral courtyard:
Aahhhhh, the beach. How I miss it. I always sing praises of Michigan beaches, and while most people don't believe me, I still insist they are just about perfect. I'll not admit that their location of 15 minutes away from my childhood home might have something to do with that. We spent two nice afternoons at Barcelona's beaches, enjoying the surprisingly cold Mediterranean, the hot sunshine, and the nudists at the other end of the sand (or at least enjoying lazy contemplation of our innate American prudishness. My suit is staying firmly tied around my neck).
Contemplating where to go for dinner. I think we ended up with paella that night- rice and seafood cooked in one great big, flat pan. Also in the background is the fish by Frank Gehry (designer of, most famously, the Guggenheim in Bilbao).
This photo shows the National Museum of Catalonian Art and part of the grounds of the 1929 World's Fair.

Josh spent some time wandering around there... while Queenie, Anthony, and I made an architect's pilgrimage to the reconstruction of Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion for the 1929 World's Fair. It's called the Barcelona Pavilion now, and I was completely appalled that Josh hadn't heard of it. I'm still a little shocked. I'm sure I've mentioned it. He knows who Philip Johnson is, for goodness sake. Anyway, it's only one of THE pinnacles of modernist architecture in the 20th century. That's all. But, you know. Whatever.
Behind the big museum are some of the facilities from the 1992 Olympics. We hopped our way from shade to shade before finding this nice spot. The soccer/football stadium is in the background.
Our last day, we walked up to Gaudi's Park Guell. While there were some nice parts, it wasn't nearly as big or interesting as I had hoped, not that the crowds indicated that. The mosaics were nice, though, and this part below completely reminded me of that very strange rock garden in Chandigarh, India...

It was a wonderful weekend with warm weather (at laaaaast!), good friends, nice food, interesting architecture, and unending sunshine. Check back for some more photos that actually have us in them. Oh, and Josh booked our hotel on Hotwire based on the location of Q+A's hotel. These photos from our window show how fantastic it was. Yea for the Internet!