I had actually spent the previous day not enjoying Florence but instead freaking out. We had received an email from RyanAir (an airline who I would equate to some unnatural form of evil) saying that protests in Spain may possibly cancel our flight but we could reschedule for free with their call center. I called said call center about 100 times whilst sitting in a small phone booth in an Indian Call Center in Florence. With no luck we decided to leave Florence early to try and get on the night flight to Barcelona from Rome. After a train ride through Flooded Tuscany and no luck at the airport we ended up back staying with people we knew in Rome until the next morning when our flight did miraculously take off without event.
However, the strike did mean that when we arrived in Barcelona we entered a strange ghost town of an airport and we were greeted at our hostel with the words "Welcome to the worst day to be in Barcelona." Regardless Barcelona is too wonderful not to have a good time and we got some (amazing) Paella before making our way to the main protest for the day. The energy at the protest wasn't anger so much as it was commitment to an understanding that something was wrong with the system. The strikes were set off by austerity measures called by the EU to deal with Spain's debt. We ate the free hostel dinner, sat on a rooftop terrace drinking cheap wine, and went to bed exhausted.
The next day was a wanderlusting rambling through the world of Antoni Gaudi as we made our way about Barcelona. We started off by going to Parc Guell up on the north side of Barcelona. It's a beautiful park designed by Gaudi so his patrons could live happily in the beauty overlooking the city.
This is a better picture of the Gaudi house that is in the foreground of this photo.
From there we continued our tour of Modernismé architecture in Barcelona by heading down to this very interesting looking hospital that wasn't too far away.
Just down the road from that hospital is Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia.
This church has been under construction for over 100 years and is a testament to both Gaudi's genius and the immense adoration that the city of Barcelona has for his work. The church construction has been funded by donations over the past century and will hopefully be completed by 2025. Their is something immensely fanciful about the entire design and story of this building that gives it a certain magical air as you stand in front of it.
The next day I spent a few quality hours marveling at a house Gaudi designed called Casa Battlo. Entering Casa Battlo was like being in a dream but not even in my own dream, it was Gaudi's dream, a fanciful place that I could not even begin to imagine. The curves and a strange designs that appeared throughout the home gave it a marvelous feeling of the house having somehow grown out of the ground into this magnificent monument of bright and colorful beauty.
This is the front facade of marvelous, dream-like, Casa Battlo
And here you can see out the large front windows onto the street
This doorway is a good example of the complete and utter lack of any right angle above the floor. Gaudi's love for natural contours makes the space comfortable and strange simultaneously. This place was certainly my favorite in Barcelona. From there I spent most of my time the next day or so rambling and wandering about Barcelona with my friends and alone just trying to take in the winding tiny streets of the Raval and Barceloneta.
Barcelona had this beautiful happy energy that I can only assume blows in off the sea. That inherent happiness alongside the excellent food and my love of Spanish will surely send me back to sunny Barcelona soon enough.
