jwg | Entries tagged with barcelona2012

This was yet another great trip. We had six nights in Barcelona, two in Cadaqués, one in Rupit, and one near the Barcelona Airport before our flight back. Barcelona is a beautiful busy city - the old section is huge and delightful to walk around in among many other people. We saw lot of Gaudi buildings, went to a few museums, had some nice meals, and used the excellent public transportation including a train trip to Montserrat. Then we picked up our rental car and went to the coastal village of Cadaqués
with lovely white buildings and not very many people; this included a trip to the Dali House museum. Then to complete the contrast of places we went to Rupit, a small quiet medieval village. A short stopover in Zurich on the way home capped it off. I am not going to wait 40 years before our next trip to Barcelona!

The whole set of posts can be seen here.

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We went back to the Boqueria Market in Barcelona because it is so entrancing. This time I photographed lots of the people working behind the counters - the workers are essentially all women (one exception in this set of pictures :) ).

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This was our first visit.

I also like to collect pictures of signs - mostly warning signs.
Here are a few:

We went to Parc de Montjuic, a hill in Barcelona. It's a park with great views of the rest of the city, a castle/fort, a bunch of museums, a botanical garden - in general a very nice place to visit. Getting there was a short metro ride and a transfer to the funicular that is part of the Metro; there is also a cable car from the harbor.

The fort had various cannons at strategic places. There were some archers practicing - presumably not part of the military. One of the pictures below has General Robert in his "Pentagon" office looking over the city. One of the museums is the Joan Miro museum which was well worth visiting. We went to the botanical garden and looked into the Olympic Museum (1992 Summer Olympics).

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Casa Mila, or La Pedrera is another Gaudi building. It is an apartment building and you get to see the overall building structure, the roof and an apartment. Really nice balconies with wrought iron work. La Pedrera which means The Quarry is its more popular name - (I keep thinking La Pedroia - RedSox 2nd baseman). It was built from 1905-1910. It was restored some years ago

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A short Metro ride, an hour train ride, and a cable car brought us to the plaza of Montserrat. The Benedictine Abbey and the accompanying monastary have been there a long time. The story is that in 880 some children saw a brilliant light which was later interpreted as a sign of god - and that was the imputus for building there on the mountain. Now in addition to the working monastary there are several hotels, several museums, several eating places, and crowds of tourists. At 1 PM every day the boys choir sings in the Basilica; we were there for this and it was jammed with people. There are funiculars that go further up the mountain or down to a cave - we only had time for the one that went up and hiked around amidst nice views. It was worth the trip; I missed coming here the last time I was in Barcelona.

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Casa Batiló is one of the most interesting buildings by Gaudi. It was built as a residence in 1875-77. after Josep Batiló bought it in 1904 he commissioned Gaudi to modify it and turned it into what it is now. In 2002 it was converted into a museum.

You can see a huge amount inside - every step reveals another interesting detail. Mosaics, fireplace, colored tiles, stairwells, furniture, windows, roof top with decorated chimneys, back yard, the elevator, lighting fixtures,... We used the audio tour and that revealed lots of interesting tidbits.

I first saw it in 1971 on my trip with Arthur Stern (deceased) to see architecturally interesting places and returned again in 1972 but you couldn't see much then.

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We spent lots of time walking about in Barri Gotic and nearby neighborhoods. The best known street is Las Ramblas, a wide street with only pedestrians, trees, and stands of various kinds in the center portion. There were lots of people walking at all times of day and night, places to buy food or objects. The huge Boqueria Market is off Las Ramblas. There are lots of narrow streets, some blocked to cars - others only a bit wider than one car - fortunately there were few vehicles. The Monumento a Colón down by the harbor was closed. Lots of restaurants, Tapas bars, and shops with interesting window content. It is easy to get a bit lost since there are few right angles; but then you find a landmark or map.

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Parc Güell is a good sized park on a hill overlooking much of Barcelona. You can see the harbor, Montjuic, Sagrada Familia, and the expanse of the city. There are lots of Gaudi mosaics and various structures including some treelike columns supporting a roadway. The entrance buildings have typical Gaudi roof structures. There were several musicians playing, an awful singer/guitarist, someone with a huge array of percussion and wind instruments and a fiddler and guitarist in one of the cave-like caverns. One section has a long waving bench covered with mosaics - all different.

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The Gaudi House Museum is in the park. Inside was lots of personal items including lots of pieces of his furniture.
Click here for some pictures from inside the museum:

Here's a look inside:

Down in the workshop there were models of components, drawings, sculputres of Gaudi himself and a lot of information about how Gaudi studied various natural formations such as beehives, plants, etc. and various geometric constructions to get ideas and work out design details.

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One of the very first things we went to see the first morning we were in Barcelona was Sagrada Familia. In 1882 work on Sagrada Familia started. In 1883, Antonio Gaudi was commissioned to carry on the work and continued until his death in 1926. When I visited it in 1971 the overall structure was there; since then much more has been built and it was consecrated by the Pope in 2010; completion is projected for 2026, the centenial of Gaudi's death.

Many years ago current (with cranes digitally removed)

We spent several hours there; there are endless things to see. We didn't go up in the towers - next time... There was lots of construction activity outside and inside - we watched some workers installing stained glass. There is a workshop in the basement with lots of more interesting things in it.

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We're back from a wonderful trip to Barcelona, Cadaqués, Rupit, and a few hours in Zurich. The contrast of the bustle and Gaudi architecture of Barcelona, the seaside town of Cadaqués, and the medieval village of Rupit with our hotel there in the countryside inn on a sheep and cattle farm was a special treat.

I have several thousand pictures and will soon be working on selecting some for some more detailed posts.

In Barcelona we stayed in the Barri Gotic with a view out our hotel balcony (Hotel Colon) of the Cathedral. We wandered through the narrow streets many times, finding some nice restaurants and various scenes. Lots of delicious Tapas. We saw a lot of Gaudi: Sagrada Familia (construction started in 1882 and the end date is projected to be 2040), Parc Guell, Casa Batllo, Casa Mila, Palau Guell, the Gaudi Museum; visited the Joan Miro and the Picasso museums; walked around Montjuic: and went to Montserrat for the day. I saw some of these in 1971 and 1972; but there is much more to see these days since there is much more open to visitors. I have to dredge out my old slides for comparison. This is one incredible city; I recommend that you find time to go there if you haven't done so!

We rented a car at the end of the Barcelona part of the trip and drove up the coast to Cadaqués. This is the town where Salvator Dali lived and his house is a museum absolutely chock full of stuff to see including some Michelin Men lounging about. Our hotel there (Playa Sol) overlooked the Mediterranean. It was a nice small town and a short hike to the nearby place where the Dali museum was.

Then we went to a medieval village in the mountains that I read about in a Boston Globe article about 8 years ago. It was quiet small village with narrow streets and lots of possibilities of hiking to surrounding spots. Our hotel there (Mas la Serra) was a few kilometers away in an isolated spot (tough to find). The views there were of fields with sheep and cows.

Spain, which is currently in great financial stress, has a pretty good infrastructure. The Barcelona Metro is great - count-down signs at all stations and trains at about 3 min intervals (MBTA: they are way ahead of you); the roads are well marked with good signage, pavement in excellent condition, and well engineered merges and divides on the highways (Mass Highways: are you listening?). Drivers on the highway get out of left hand lanes, use direction signals, and everyone lowered their high beams at the right time.

Yesterday, the day we left, there was a general strike in Spain. As a result our 2:40 flight to Zurich to catch the 5:45 flight to Boston was replaced with a 9:45 flight. We stayed at Mas la Serra only one night instead of the two planned since we didn't want to have to get up so early and stayed in a near-to-the-airport hotel. The extra time in Zurich gave us the opportunity to go into Zurich (a 10-12 min train ride and a train goes about every 10 minutes). We walked around a bit, had a nice lunch in one of the many resaurants on the pedestrian street and then noticed the National Museum was right there. We went in for a short visit for a very interesting special exhibit called Kapital about the medieval/renaissance histories of Venice and Amsterdam.

At the edge of the Rambla in Barcelona is an incredibly huge market. It's been there since 1200 although many improvements have been made and it has expanded considerably. There are other markets, but this is the biggest one. There was a lot of everything there with many fish, meat, vegetable, candy, etc. vendors. Deciding where to buy would be a tough decision. I do wonder if they actually sell all the potentially spoilable stuff everyday; there was a pretty big inventory of fresh fish for example. We wandered through for a while and I snapped a bunch of pictures. Here a few:

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