Oh Barcelona! How I loved thee! I'm so glad SIL and I will be departing from Barcelona on our cruise next year. What? Didn't I mention another cruise? Well, more on that later.
For now, let's focus our attention on Barcelona.
The main attraction in Barcelona is the amazing Gothic Cathedral designed by Antonio Gaudi - La Sagrada Familia. I've seen photos of it in the past, but nothing prepared me for what we saw.
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| This is the Nativity entrance to the cathedral. |
It has been described as a melting sand castle. And really that's pretty close to what it looked like. There was so much on the outside to see that after awhile you just can't distinguish individual items any more.
The Church will have three grand façades: the Nativity façade to the East, the Passion façade to the West, and the Glory façade to the South (yet to be completed). The Nativity Façade was bears the most direct Gaudí influence.
The cathedral isn't done and won't be until 2021. It's been being built since the late 1800's and while Gaudi is gone, his ideas are still being incorporated.
This little detail outside had me smiling. Why someone would think to put a turtle under a column that's holding up the structure is beyond me. I'm sure he had his genius reasoning and I think I'm glad he did.
If standing outside with my mouth gaping open in stunned amazement was something...walking inside, my mouth gaped open again.
Gaudi wanted the inside to appear to be a forest. The columns aren't all straight and they have branches at the top. The light the beautifully ornate stained glass windows produces causes a feeling of foliage against the tree columns.
It should also be mentioned that there isn't a single wall in the cathedral that's flat. How cool is that?
Above the altar is this umbrella shaped overhang. It' depicts life. Wheat and grapes can be seen as part of the altar.
This is just above the altar and stretches into one of the spires. I have no idea what it's official name is (and searching on Bing didn't help) but it was lovely and illumines.
The cathedral was filled with stained glass. There is no actual lighting in the cathedral. All the light is indirect light and cast from the stained glass. It was, in a word, magical to me.
One thing you learn in Europe and by visiting all the cathedrals, you look up and you look back. In this spectacular building, the view up was nothing short of breath taking.
As we walked through the cathedral, I tried to focus my attention on items NOT of the cathedral type, but more on the abstract. Being in a place so filled with whimsy it was almost like I could feel my creative juices starting to percolate to the top again.
This photo is of doors that leave, I think, to the south. The entrance not yet completed. The interesting thing about this photo - and something I only knew AFTER I shot this is that while I thought this was the actual door, it was, in fact, a cloth covering the door showing what the door was going to look like.
Every Catholic church has a holy water holder just inside the doors so that believers dip their fingers in the holy water and then do the cross thing on themselves. Each cathedral I entered I looked for this "fountain" - for lack of another word. Most of them were rather normal and not all that interesting. Gaudi, I knew, had to have something interesting. And a shell as the holy water holder was interesting to me.
I exited the cathedral on the other side to view the Passion Façade. And wow, what a striking difference from the other entrance.
The figures on this side appear more sharp angled. Less curvy if you will. And their features seemed almost tormented and emaciated. Jesus on the cross is naked, which was a HUGE scandal when it was created. The cross is actually coming out of the roof - almost perpendicular to Jesus.
Again, looking back into the church I was struck with this statue of Jesus. He's holding on to a column and it is supposed to be from the story of when he was whipped, before he was crucified.
The other interesting note on the back side of the cathedral was this grid of numbers. It was covered by a cloth as it was part of the wall they were currently working on. But, the guide told us that no matter what direction you add the numbers up in, up/down, side to side, diagonally, they all add up to 33, which was the age of Christ when he died.
Leaving La Sagrada Familia I was a bit numb. That was a lot to take in at one time. As our bus drove through the streets of Barcelona, you could really feel the Baroque influence everywhere.
Then we came across the house Gaudi built. The main one I wanted to investigate further was blocked off and hidden by a piece of canvas. I guess they were restoring it.
The other building was, thankfully, on my side of the bus and in plain view. I believe they call this one the Batllo house. This playful house was nothing short of amazing from the outside. I wish we had time to stop and see the inside.
Next time in Barcelona, I will tour that house and the other house Gaudi designed.
Moving on we then went to the Gothic Quarter. The second main reason I was excited to see Barcelona. This part of town is jammed full of small, labyrinth alley ways that take you back in time.
This medieval area I could have spent hours in with me and my camera. Just not enough time to shoot everything I wanted to shoot.
There's a cathedral, of course, in this area...also very medieval and awe inspiring. I had sun issues - as was the standard MO for this trip - and it was directly behind the cathedral. I used an action on it to help tone down the over exposed photo.
As we walked through the Gothic Quarter we came across another church that amused me greatly. It was all spikey on the outside and had the craziest gargoyles I had ever seen.
I mean who uses a unicorn as a gargoyle?
And I don't even know what this one is?
One of the many things to see in the Gothic Quarter is the Roman columns. The Roman's, of course, conquered this area as well. During some excavation for building they found these columns. Now they are in a little tiny room with a building built around them.
The Gothic Quarter is covered with these bridges that connect one building to the next. When asked about it the tour guide said they were added on when this part of town was inhabited by the more wealthy types. The streets were full of muck, and they didn't want to have to get themselves dirty to get from one place to another.
She did wink after she told this story so I'm not sure it's accurate. But it's a good story all the same.
The alley ways were small. This one is hard to really see well, but inside the alley way if I stood with my hands dangling by my hips with palms forward, my pinky fingers on both sides touched the walls. One more gelato and I wouldn't have fit down that alley way. (look just above the man's head to see the entrance).
I don't recall where this turtle was, but the tour guide said we had to touch it as we left for luck. So we did.
No blog post in a foreign city would be complete without the food. I didn't stop to have lunch like the rest of our group. I choose to do the walking tour of the Gothic Quarter, so I was hungry. I decided to find a ham and cheese.
Leaving Barcelona we went to this little touristy part of town in which it was an area that was built up to show the tourist - us - all the different styles of living in Spain. Each section was designed as you would find it in that area of Spain. On our way there we got a view back into Barcelona.
Can we say dense?
And I'll leave you today with my gelato photo of the day. I can't remember the flavor of this one, I'm sure it was chocolate something or other.
If you want to see the rest of the Barcelona photos, visit me at Flickr.
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