Barcelona to Valencia 9/4/2008

Today we left Barcelona, (bummer), en route to Valencia, (neat). We took a train. We checked in to our hostel which was a much farther walk from the train station than Kelly would have liked. We were in a large room with several bunk beds and we shared it with lots of people, including one girl from Georgia (the state) who was studying abroad in Valencia. We left the hostel and found a neat bridge and walked through a long park in the middle of the city.

Pretty much the only reason we went to Valencia, other than to break up the train ride to Madrid, was to see the Center for Arts and Sciences. It is a campus of five buildings designed by Santiago Caltrava (see Barthelona 9/1/2008). The five buildings are an opera house, an IMAX theatre, a science museum, an aquarium/SeaWorld type building, and an arboretum/parking deck. As with all his buildingds, Calatrava is able to do some amazing things with the help of some pretty extreme engineering.

We walked around outside for a while and took pictures and tried to decide which buildings we wanted to see most. We ended up buying tickets to go in the science museum that evening, and to see an IMAX show the next morning. The museum was pretty neat. A lot of the exhibits were aimed toward children and because of my superior intellect and maturity, it was hard for me to enjoy. But there was a totally cool one about comic books. It had all kinds of cool heroes like Spiderman, Wolverine, Daredevil, and I even got a picture of me with the HULK! Totally rad! In contrast, I did find the other exhibits to be much more mundane and juvenile.

After checking out the museum, we hung out outside taking pictures until sunset. We then walked back and got a cheap dinner and indulged in some ice cream before heading to bed early for the evening.

Barcelona 9/3/2008

We slept a little late today and then walked around aimlessly toward the water. We ended up at the entrance to the zoo, home of Snowflake the albino gorilla, but we decided to walk around some more instead. There was a nice park that we strolled through for a while and then we headed toward the water. Frank O. Gehry (best architect EVER) designed a sculpture that looked like a giant goldfish overlooking a public beach. We hadn’t originally planned to stay at the beach, but it was really hot and sunny and the water looked like it would be fun. At least that’s what I told Kelly. I really wanted to go to see all the BOOBIES!!!!! So, we ran back to the hostel and changed clothes and brought our towels. Of course when we arrived, clouds had rolled in and it was hardly sunny anymore. We tried to get in the water once, but neither of us made it past our knees because it was so cold.

So, after becoming even more tan and more beautiful than we already were to begin with (hard to believe, but true), we left the beach. Next we went to the Contemporary Art Museum designed by Richard Meier. The art in the museum was disappointing, but the building itself was pretty cool. We have studied several examples of Richard Meier buildings throughout our schooling, so it was neat to finally see one in person. Outside of the museum, there were at least 69,000 skateboarders in the plazas on both sides. There was also a large group of Spanish high/middle schoolers that were freestyle rapping to that new “hip & hop” music that the young people listen to these days. It was amusing.

It was our last night in Barcelona so we decided to go back to Tapa Tapa because we enjoyed it so much the first night. We got different food and it was very good again. Also, Win had gotten a recipe for sangria when he had been there a year ago, yet lost it afterwards because he’s a big idiot. So, we traded an ink pen for a copy of the recipe to give to him.

Barthelona 9/2/2008

We started the day by heading to Sagrada Familia. This is one of the most popular things to see in Barcelona and it’s architecture!!! The night before was like Christmas Eve for Kelly and me and we woke up at 4:30AM because we were so freaking excited.

Sagrada Familia is also by Antoni Gaudi. Construction began in 1882, and it still isn’t finished yet. Gaudi became the architect and created this really ornate and detailed design heavily influenced by Christian symbolism, geometry, and nature. Then he died. Eighty years later it’s still being built. I relate the design to a ‘tall tale’ because Gaudi died in 1926 and all of his drawings were lost in 1940, so since then the design has been passed down from generation to generation through word of mouth.

There were a whole bunch of people all around it. The four towers that you see on the façade are part of a total of 18 towers that will be built, two that are almost twice as tall as the existing towers. We walked around the interior perimeter of the church because the rest was filled with scaffolding. It was interesting looking around at the modern construction equipment all around, yet the project began 125 years ago.

After Sagrada Familia, we went to Parc Guell, which is a big park that has great views of the city. There were lots of people all over, and we walked around a while. There is a sculpture of a multicolored lizard (Drac) which 69,000 people absolutely had to have their picture taken with so that back home everyone would believe them when they said they went to Barcelona.

We took a little nap before heading back to Barcelona Pavilion to sketch like good architecture students are supposed to do. While we were there, several VW concept cars were being photographed with the Pavilion in the background. So in a few months when you see a VW ad in a magazine, look closely at the background and you’ll probably see an extremely attractive male nonchalantly grabbing his crotch. We ate a cheap dinner to save room for our pitcher of sangria before calling it a night.