The Second Coolest Churches in Europe

The Sagrada Familia is the coolest church in Europe, in my humble opinion, but I also really liked the churches with cloisters, too.  Something about a garden attached to a church just really appeals to me:

Another cloister church also had my favorite cross so far.  So much of the Christian iconography we have seen has been so dark, but this cross seems a bit more hopeful even though it is depicting a rather awful death:

Castles, Dali, and Picasso, oh my!

We visited a castle on the top of Montjuïc in Barcelona. It had some neat stuff, including a big gun:

a lovely garden:

and a great view of the shipping port:

It's unbelievable how big that place is.  Thousands of shipping containers, and many ships out at sea waiting to pick them up.

We also took a day trip out to the Dali museum.  That was certainly an interesting place!  From shiny things:

to paintings of rock people:

to Abe Lincoln's "cheeky" (look closely, folks) portrait:

We also visited the Picasso museum, but weren't allowed to take photos.  Paul and I concluded that we like Picasso's earlier work - you know, before he was about 19 when he still painted and drew quite realistically.  The first piece of artwork they had by him was a drawing that Picasso did when he was 9.  Pretty neat!

Barcelona: The Food

We spent five nights in an apartment in Barcelona:

It. was. awesome.  We were so happy to have a place to ourselves with a kitchen to cook full meals for the first time on this trip.  I was very very very sad to leave it.

We purchased fruits and vegetables from La Boqueria, a famous market on the Ramblas in Barcelona:

And made delicious home-cooked meals and homemade sangria:

and

Rick Steves has a "sweet walk" that involves 3 delicious stops.  The first stop, however, was not selling Horchata (also spelled Orxata, in Catalan, I think), a drink made with the chufa nut, but we found some later in the Gelateria and Orxateria below our apartment.

The second stop on the sweet walk involved churros dipped in hot chocolate - hot chocolate as thick as the stuff in Lake Como, if not thicker.  It was delicious:

The final stop was a very old candy store with delicious chocolates that came in a fancy little bag:

And, of course, we tried tapas:

Yum!

My New Favorite Architect: Gaudí

Ah, Barcelona, where to start?  We did so much in 5 days.  I think I will cluster posts by artist/topic instead of a timeline.  Welcome to the Gaudí post!

I have discovered that I love Gaudí.  I would recommend that if you are in Spain, save the Sagrada Família until after you've seen the rest of Gaudí's work.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Thus, the order of the Gaudí buildings below is not the order in which we viewed them.

We started with the block of Discord, which includes buildings by Gaudí and others.  We did not go inside any of these.  Here's Gaudí's Casa Batlló:

And Casa Batlló among other buildings:

Then, there's Casa Milà, a wavy apartment building

with a crazy rooftop:

The windows you see below the railing in the foreground are in one of the building's two courtyards.

One of the courtyards has a stairwell that is quite pretty as well:

Then, there's Parc Güell, which includes a great view of the city,

mosaics,

crazy structures:

and great benches:

And finally, there's the Sagrada Familia.  I'm less impressed with the outside, although it looks pretty at night.  Perhaps it's all the scaffolding.  When it's finished, it will be have a tower much taller than the church is now.

But the inside is breath-taking:

Ceiling of the cathedral

with lots of incredibly colorful stained glass windows:

There's a museum as well, and Paul was impressed with a technique for devising the correct shape for arches by using hanging strings and weights:

Hands down, my favorite church in all of Europe so far.  I would love to see it when it's finished, which is projected to be in about 2030.

CSI Barcelona: The Funicular

Paul and I laughed repeatedly at a sign that I declared indicated "no cowboying."  Sadly, I have no photo of this one, but it was in the subways to indicate that you should not to walk through when the doors where closing.  Maybe we'll see it again, and I'll get it picture.

As a result, we started paying more attention to the signs we see.  Thus, I have decided we need a series of blog posts called CSI: Creative Sign Interpretation.  Here are several from the funicular that takes one up Montjuic in Barcelona:

CSI: "Do not pretend to be Link leaping from pot to pot."

CSI:  Well, since the first sign had a slash over it to indicate "no," this one clearly means "Please practice your balance by standing on the very edge of the platform on one foot."

CSI for the one on the left: "When the alarm sounds, do not run from the funicular."  or "Do not run screaming from the funicular."
CSI for the one of the right: "While it may hurt, please feel free to stick your arms and baggage in the way of the closing doors."

We welcome other interpretations!  Please leave them in the comments.