Barthelona 9/1/2008

When we woke up our legs were achy from the hiking the day before. We have done plenty of walking over the past few days, but not with nearly as much elevation change. Kelly’s feet were worse than mine and she had to wear shoes instead of sandals due to her blisters.

First we went to the Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe (a very influential modern architect). It was designed originally for the World’s Fair in Barcelona in the early 1900’s. I know that if I start going into any detail about architecture, or any other element of culture, I am liable to severely confuse and disorient some of my less learned relatives from back home (Avid-day Etty-pay). Therefore I will just say that it is a very famous and influential structure that we walked around for a while. We have studied it many times and it was pretty cool to see in person. We wanted to sketch some, but forgot our sketchbooks so decided that we would come back again later in the week.

From the Pavilion we walked up some big steps to the Olympic Park from 1992. There was a large plaza surrounded by the stadium and aquatic center that had a great view of the ocean and the city. I think it would have been really exciting to have been there when it was full of people before an event, but when we went there were probably 10 other people there. I went up to each one and told them “Michael Phelps #1” but most of them didn’t understand. There was a giant telephone tower at the plaza designed by Santiago Calatrava, who is a famous Spanish architect who does some amazing things with the engineering of his buildings.

After the Olympic Park, we went to La Pedrera, an apartment building designed by Antoni Gaudi. The apartments look like they were molded out of giant hands. The railings were very interesting, and looked like a train wreck was molded onto the outside edge of the balconies. There were curves all over the building, which was drastically different than the orthogonal geometry of the Barcelona Pavilion.

From there we walked to a restaurant which Win had recommended us from his stay in Barcelona called Tapa Tapa. It was our first taste of tapas, which comes in smaller portions and is meant to be eaten family style so that you can order a wide range of foods. More importantly than the tapas was the sangria, also recommended by Win, which we loved. That night we made the goal of drinking a pitcher of sangria every night we were in Spain.

The food was delish, and afterward we walked down Passieg de Garcia, which is full of shopping (my FAVORITE!). Kelly got some girl stuff but I was way too manly to buy anything. From there we walked down La Ramblas, which was full of street performers dressed up as tons of different things, from cowboys to angels to flowers. We walked all the way till we came to the waterfront and we ate some ice cream on one of the piers before calling it a day.