Tag: Gaudi

Gaudi Day

On By SusanIn Barcelona, Travel3 Comments

Can’t go to Barcelona and not Gaudi. Sunday we hit the highlights: Park Güell and Sagrada Familia. We knew we had to go to the park, but didn’t really know what to expect. It’s beautiful and there’s even some shade. Very important in the almost solstice day sun.

Jake rides and escalator when there are perfectly good stairs next to it.

We walked. You don’t have to. (More on our crazy choices to walk later.) There’s a big hill and many steps BUT there’s also a couple of escalators. There’s also a nice bus that goes right there from the corner of our street, but why would we do that? Up we marched. The entrance to the park is at 150 (492 feet); the top is at 210 meters (689 feet). No me importa. It’s good for us. Jake is young and I am planning to go to Patagonia.

Anyway, the park is amazing and very Gaudi. We wandered around and thought we should go into the Gaudi Museum, but tickets had to be purchased online (pretty common these days) and the site was being finicky, so we gave up. We use the “let’s walk this way” method of exploration. There are several different suggested routes through the park, but we chose to wander. The path is mostly circular and we got to hear some lovely salsa music near the viaducts. Gaudi was inspired by nature, tried to consider ecological needs when he designed and was not at all a fan of straight lines.

Gaudi was very religious and very political. He was a Catalan separatist who even spent a few nights in jail after being arrested at a protest. We have seen the separatist flag flying around town, but, despite some fierce opinions, Cataluña is still a part of Spain. He also was kind of a weird dude. Because he had rheumatism and his doctor suggested vegetarianism, he ended up living on lettuce, olive oil, and some nuts. In his later life, he became a recluse and his shabby attire contributed to his death. He was hit by a tram, but nobody recognized him and he did not receive adequate medical attention because people thought he was a homeless person.

From the park, we walked back down the hill and ran into a little Lebanese restaurant. Yum! There are only so many patatas bravas one can eat. Hummus and falafel hit the spot. If you happen to be in the Gracia neighborhood, give Sannin a try.

While there, we debated whether we should go inside Sagrada Familia. Yes. We should. We looked at a couple of pics online and promptly bought tickets. Wow! The light streaming through the stained glass is breathtaking. Construction on Gaudi’s masterpiece cathedral began in 1882 and was supposed to be finished in time for the centennial of his death in 2026, but Covid had other ideas.

My pictures cannot do it justice, but at least you can get some idea.

Between Gaudi jaunts, we stopped at a place I just happened to notice on the map: Plaça de John Lennon! Well worth the few extra blocks. It’s a plaza named after John with a small playground and murals. I took a few photos.

Don’t Do As I Do, Unless You Like Stairs

Today, Monday, was our last day in Barcelona. We stopped back at the La Boqueria market to wander by ourselves, since we had only been there on the tour. You really can’t beat watermelon juice that is just pressed watermelon. Yum! We walked around and took in all the foodie sites and we might even have some treats to bring home.

Steven (you remember him, he’s usually on these trips) had reminded me that there is a cable car, or telefèric, to the top of Montjuïc, where there is castle with incredible views of the city. You can take the Metro to a funicular that drops you right at the cable car. Do you think that is what we chose? If you do, you don’t know us. We walked. The market was halfway there so it made sense to us.

Today’s total, according to my semi-accurate phone health data stands at 24,160 steps, 9.2 miles, 34 floors. Not all at once, but a fair amount of climbing to the cable car.

If you are smart, you will take the funicular up and walk down (or don’t walk at all). You can also take the funicular to or from the top and only do the cable car one way (or not at all). We did the round trip and thought it was fabulous. The castle, with a separate entrance fee, offered more amazing views plus castles are cool! Mostly, you are outside the castle so don’t leave your hat and sunglasses in the locker thinking you’ll be inside like I did.

We did choose to take the funicular and Metro back. We hadn’t been on the Metro yet and we discovered that it’s very clean and easy. We had Venezuelan arepas for lunch at Tumatey. Muy rico! and finally, went to a bookstore to buy a Catalan Pepa pig book for the grandbaby. She’s going to speak many, many Pepa languages before we’re done.

After a break, we headed out for our last night and briefly debated going into Casa Batlló, which is only a couple blocks from us, but the 35€ price tag scared us off. Maybe next time.

Tomorrow, we take the train to Madrid.

Dead Person Bingo (plus Dali and Gaudi)

On By StevenIn art, France, living abroad, Paris, Uncategorized1 Comment

Today was our first day of wandering around the city. We were here last weekend, but we were still getting adjusted and settling in. Today, we were in full venture out and see things mode.

On Friday night, the weather looked like rain all day and so we decided to postpone planning until Saturday morning and see what the weather actually was. When we woke up, the forecast was for partly sunny and cool, but little chance of rain until late in the day. Perfect wandering weather.

We walked over the farmers market and picked up our fruit and vegetables for the week and then headed home to plan our outing.

We decided that our destination would be the 11th Arrondissement which is a hipper area than where we are staying. The metro stop is right next to Père LaChaise, which is a cemetery that has many famous people buried in it. It was about a 40-minute ride from our nearest Metro stop (which is 2 minutes from the zpartment).  Before we left we found that there was an immersive Dali & Gaudi exhibition at the culture space called Atelier des Lumieres. We booked 2 tickets for 14:30 and headed out.

Our walk

When we arrived, Sue wanted to wander in the cemetery, take some photos and see if we could find Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde’s graves. There are maps at each of the entrances and with the help of our trusted google Maps app, we headed off to look for their graves. It didn’t take 10 minutes before we started to feel a little bit of rain, and then within another couple of minutes it was raining pretty hard. Sue had a coat, but I was in short sleeves. We looked at each other and thought, nope this isn’t going to work, so we headed for the nearest exit and found a café for a cup of coffee and a re-think.

The rain quickly ended and we decided to look for a store to buy a couple of umbrellas just in case. In a couple of blocks we found the perfect store; a little hole in the wall that sold everything from umbrellas and flip flops to kitchenware. We picked up our umbrellas and headed off to see what we could find. We walked up Boulevard de Ménilmontant, turned left onto Rue Oberkampf and left again on Avenue de la République, which this being Paris, took us right back to where we had started on Boulevard de Ménilmontant.  A perfect triangle; it seems all streets in Paris operate on a triangle system. It rained on and off during the walk, but we had our trusty little umbrellas and so we were not bothered.

While we were on Rue Obrekampf, we found a nice little Chinese restaurant and went in for lunch. They were kind enough to give us dual-language menus, unfortunately the languages were French and Chinese (I realize that there are multiple Chinese languages and I have idea which one it was, so let’s leave it at Chinese. I’m betting it was Mandarin). We managed to find two dishes that looked interesting, and we ordered them. Sue (who knows how to say, “Je suis végétarien”) had what we would call tofu in chili sauce and I had beef with cumin, Both were delicious and while to portions did not look big, we were totally stuffed by the end of the meal.

One thing that I have not mentioned up until now is that the French government is now requiring all people entering restaurants, concerts, museums and large social events to produce a government-issued vaccine card. The rule went into effect on August 1st, but up until now we had not really given much thought to it. No restaurant has asked us for one, and have mostly been sitting outside at cafés. However, the Atelier des Lumieres website specifically stated we would need one to get into the Dali/Gaudi show. Along the way we had asked a number of pharmacies (who can issue them) whether they would accept a U.S. vaccine card as proof and then issue us a French one. They all have said they did not know and it seems as if the rules for that are not in place. We decided to go to the show a bit early and present our vaccine cards and see what happened. The women checking the cards took one look at them and said they were fine. So we were all good. We will continue to try and acquire a French one, but for now we are not having any issue.

The Dali/Gaudi show was great. It was a series of three video/light/music shows (Gaudi, one developed by local artists and then Dali). We sat on the floor for Gaudi but made our way up to a balcony for the other two. That was a much better choice as we had clear sight lines and better perspective. We enjoyed ourselves immensely (and immersively). It is the modern version of the planetarium laser light show, complete with Pink Floyd music. For reals.

Oscar Wilde’s final resting place. It is surrounded by glass

At the end of the show, we emerged to find the sun shining and so we walked back to the Père Lachaise Cemeter and started to play find the famous dead person. It was sunny and mild out so we wandered around and despite a few challenges found all three (Morrison, Piaf and Wilde – Bingo!). Once we had completed the Bingo card we headed for the exit grabbed the metro home.

A long but very enjoyable day.