Barcelona touring...

Well showing Barcelona in pictures is challenging.

It is a really great city. The highlight is the general feeling. The buildings are beautiful, and possibly it is that we are staying in the beautiful area of L'Eixample. About 4 blocks away are these 2 Gaudi designed buildings. (in the background).

Just one of the street intersections. They have cleverly designed their streets in a grid pattern. They have also chopped off each corner to make it a diagonal. This means each and every intersection is more open allowing for more air and light.. giving a much more open feel to the city.

Thanks to some clever gift giving for my birthday, I had tickets for the bus tour as well as a visit to the Casa Batlla. the building on the right in the first photo here) This photo is of a large public art piece done by local artist Joan Miro.

Another gorgeous building. On the left is an area that is built of the remains of roman ruins.

There was an existing market that they need to put a communal roof over. This impressive wavy roof covered in a large mosaic of tiles and just hidden down a street.

The next day we walked down San Joan through lovely gardens and then their' Arc de Triomph'. While not near the size of the the one in Paris its still impressive and we were having some fun there.

Close by we stopped and watched a group of around 20 older men playing bocce in allocated spaces within the street scape.

We then headed into the Barri Gothic area. A myriad of lanes it was great to wander through, do some shopping, and just lap it up.
We then took a funicular (yes Georgina was VERY brave) which gave us a great view over the extensive harbour and city. It was just a 10 min trip which dropped us off in Montjuic. This is the suburb where Barcelona has held many past world events. From World expos in the 1800's to the most recent 1992 Olympics. You may recall seeing the diving event with the amazing view behind the divers. This was just 100m up from where the funical dropped us.

Yesterday Lucas headed up the coast for the day and Mar, Georgina and I had a day of art. First up we toured the Casa Batlla. What an amazing building. Designed and built by Gaudi for the family of his main benefactor. This is the front lounge room. The house had the most clever ways of getting natural light in without losing their privacy. There was also hidden parts in the timber carvings on the walls and windowns that opened to allow airflow.

On the rooftop which is about 6 floors up. Its a very big house and water was stored on the roof. But only Gaudi would do these fab mosaics as well.


Looking down the central light well. If you look carefully you can see how the tiles toward the top are darker than the ones at the bottom. This was so that the light reflected more at the bottom where it was needed and was absorbed at the top so as not to be too glary. So clever!



In the afternoon we visited the Joan Miro gallery. A large gallery with an extensive collection of his works. From paint to textiles to clay... his large body of work really developed and changed throughout his lifetime.