I will have to play catch up since I haven’t been able to post in a while. I spent my last couple of days in Barcelona exploring with my friend Joyce who flew in for the weekend. It’s funny – I planned to travel on my own, but have been really lucky to have friends who like to travel, and have met up with me along the way!

Joyce and I wandered around Friday night and found a couple of relaxed spots to have dinner and drinks close by. Saturday we had a full day planned, and started with the La Boqueria market for breakfast. There’s a ton of different stands there all focused on one thing or other – produce, meats, seafood, crepes, candy etc. You could easily lose yourself for an hour or more wandering and sampling (and we did).

With our bellies full, and armed with maps like proper tourists we headed off to see the Picasso Museum. Then like proper tourists we immediately got lost. No matter, we had a good time exploring and eventually made it just in time to wait in line for another hour.

From there we jumped in a taxi to rush to see some of Gaudi’s buildings before they closed for the day. I probably should be embarassed to admit it (but I will anyway) – I really didn’t know much about Gaudi other than he was a famous architect who designed several buildings around Barcelona I was told I had to check out. Like with the Alcazar in Seville – going in with no expectations meant I was completely taken by surprise. I was floored by how amazing and ahead of their time these buildings were! They looked like they could have been in some futuristic movie created now – not like something that would have been designed over a century ago. I’m fascinated by people who are able to come up with something totally original – and these would have been TOTALLY original and out of left field when he was working. I’ll have to add Gaudi to my growing list of things to learn more about. We started with the Park Güell which was just huge, and had several buildings, viewpoints, misc artworks etc. Apparently he was working on an opera of Hansel and Gretel while designing the two gatehouses at the front, and they look like they could have popped out of the set. It was also crawling with tourists, but still very cool.

From there we went to the Gaudi cathedral Sagrada Familia which Gaudi started to work on in 1883, and is still being finished. It’s crazy to think Gaudi died pretty early in its construction year (1926) – and it’s STILL a work in progress! It’s currently scheduled to be completed in 2026. At first it looked totally alien/sci fi to me, but apparently a lot of the elements are inspired by nature. Once I knew what to look for I could totally see that too! In the main area the columns are meant to be tree trunks leading up to the forest canopy like roof. There were also miscellaneous fruit/vegetable/wheat elements built in. The way the light streamed in and played off of everything, and amazing stained glass work was unreal. Definitely not like any church I had seen before. Can you tell I like was impressed?

That night we had a luxe girl’s night on the town. Had Sushi and
drinks at the W, and partied till late.

Which was fortunate, because the next day I left for my 26 hour
journey to South Africa involving bus, planes and taxi. My time so
far has been just a bit – um different? But amazing! More to come on that next time.