Well, my bus from
I don't have an actual picture but this does a decent job encapsulating the experience (though it was nighttime and this person is much better-dressed than I was).
At 5:15 the bus station opened. Thank heavens! There was heating and chairs with some level of padding and a bathroom! Unfortunately, about five minutes after going inside I got a call from Ramya. She slept through the bus stop (the girl is the polar opposite of me, she can sleep anywhere/anytime) and she's now at the station across town. I have her passport, most of her money, and all the maps. Wonderful. How are we supposed to find each other? Ramya gets the brilliant idea to take pictures of maps from a guidebook in the train station, however, and we meet in a plaza that's central to both of us around 6:15 a.m.
This is a building called Torre Agbar (though locals call it "the suppository" due to its shape). One good thing about that debacle was that I got to see it lit up at night. Note: my picture turned out terribly because my camera can't take pictures at night, but this is a Google Images approximation.
Plus I got to see the sun rise in
After we met in the plaza, we stumbled to the hostel in the hopes that they would let us in early. No luck, we had to kill time until 2:00 p.m. We ate breakfast at a small cafe (back to sandwiches for every meal, alas) and then stopped at the nearby Boqueria Market. It was an open-air market like we've seen before in almost every country we've visited, but it definitely had some... unique.. items for sale.
One of the stores at the front of the market. Cute, normal, I'm digging it.
Looks like fruit at first sight, but it's definitely a wall of candy!
OH MY GOD. Yes, you are looking at brains in plastic containers, next to almost-intact goat heads. I'm guessing there's a sizable zombie population in
ARE THOSE TONGUES?! (Answer: yes.) Is there any part of the animal that these people don't consume?
Thoroughly freaked out, we left and decided to walk to the Block of Discord. The Block of Discord is so named because a bunch of 19th-century architects tried to out-weird and out-extravagance each other on this block. Result: interesting architecture and tons of tourists.
Gaudi's Casa Batllo. The pillars and railings on the windows are supposed to remind you of bones/skulls.
The interior of the house, which is almost as weird as the outside.
Casa Amatller, another one of the Block of Discord houses.
A picture of Casa Batllo from across the street. According to my guidebook, the roof is supposed to mimic a dragon's back (St. George, who fought a dragon, is Barcelona's patron saint).
This is Casa Mila, which is another Gaudi creation located a few blocks away. Both Ramya and I were a little disappointed with the outside, having expected something much weirder.
The colorful interior of Casa Mila.
Glorious, glorious sleep!
The Passion side of the cathedral, also known as "the less hideous side". It's currently used as the main entry for tourists, but once construction is finished it will be the side. The four towers represent four of the apostles, and eventually there will be twelve.
A close-up of the front of the Passion facade. Weird. Note the Creatures of the Black Lagoon on the bottom left (I assume they're supposed to be Roman soldiers?)
Me expressing my feelings about the Nativity Facade (namely confusion mixed with incredulity and disgust). I'll go out and say it: Gaudi, you may be considered a genius and all, but this side is almost impressively ugly.
They even have Catalunyan-flag-striped bread!
After browsing through the books for a while, we headed to the Cathedral of Barcelona. I feel bad for the cathedral, because though it's huge and very interesting it totally gets shown up by the weirdness of Sagrada Familia. It does have one important advantage: it's free.
The front of the cathedral, which was surprisingly bare compared to other Spanish cathedrals we've seen. Also Jesus is painted a rather disconcerting shade of gray. (I suppose they're following Barcelona's zombie theme?)
A statue of St. George praying after killing the dragon.
On the way to the park, we walked by a bunch of stores on La Rambla selling all sorts of pets: parakeets, bunnies, turtles, chipmunks, you name it. That area is actually called "Rambla of the Little Birds" because people have been selling animals here for centuries.
The Parliament building.
Along with regular park-type birds, there are a bunch of random green parrots. They're much smarter than the pigeons and continuously steal their food.
Why is there a giant woolly mammoth in the park? I don't know, but I like it.
A giant fountain in the park.
After leaving the park and eating lunch, it was late afternoon. We decided to climb the nearby
A partial view of the city, with Sagrada Familia in the middle.
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The main entrance of the stadium.
The area just in front of the stadium. I have nothing to say about this, but it looks cool.
We then sat down right in front of the museum to watch the Magic Fountains, the light-and-sound fountain show that happens every weekend from 7:00-9:00 p.m.
My best picture of the fountains. The music was super weird-- for example, it would play part of the Lord of the Rings theme song and then it would switch to Flight of the Valkyries and then onto some smooth-jazz-esque piece.
The next morning, we woke up early to go to church inside the Sagrada Familia. (Basically we wanted to say that we had been inside without paying 13 euro.) Unfortunately, we were running a little bit late there and got there about 25 minutes late. Masses in Sagrada Familia are super-short, though-- we sat down just in time for the last 30 seconds. Oh well.
Gaudi's surprisingly-normal tomb, located in the church below the church where they actually have church. Clarification: the place they hold mass is in a separate chapel underneath the tourist area.
After mass was over and we had taken lots of stealth pictures of the chapel, we headed out to visit Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (wow, that name is a mouthful). It was originally built as a hospital for the poor (shoot, I want to see the rich people's hospital) and is still a working hospital today.
Interesting fact: Gaudi died in this hospital. Despite his wealth he was a shabby dresser (like, my level or even worse), so when he was hit by a tram the taxi drivers initially refused to pick him up for fear that he couldn't pay. They eventually dumped him here, where people recognized him, but he refused to leave, saying "I belong among the poor."
We continued on from the hospital to Park Guell. (Hope you're not sick of Gaudi yet!) It was originally intended to be a 60-residence housing project (a proto-gated community) but "Gaudi was so ahead of his time" and it flopped completely. They turned it into a park after a few years, and it remains as such today.
The barely-legible sign on the outside of the park.
The entrance to the park. You can't really tell in this picture, but it was absolutely packed with people when we were there.
A close-up of one of the wavy benches throughout the park.
One of the buildings at the entrance of the park. It looks almost like a building you'd see in Candyland... I half-expected Lord Licorice to come prancing out.
After eating a picnic lunch of (what else?) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hiking up and down the park's trails, and taking absurd amounts of pictures, we decided to leave the park and head to the one place we still had yet to be: THE BEACH!
More modern art near the beach that I don't get in the slightest. Seriously, my motto for this trip could be "I don't understand it, but I like it."
After leaving the beach, it was around 6:30 p.m. We decided that we might as well go watch the Magic Fountains again. Ramya had the genius idea to buy another liter of ice cream, so we sat there for two hours watching the show and going into diabetic comas.
Liter of ice cream #2: no regrets!
We stayed up all night for the last time, which turned out to be the most fun sleepless night because for once I had (non-homeless) company. We took a bus to the airport at 3:45 a.m. and were back in Sevilla before 9:00. Our senora had even set out breakfast for us-- sugarless "Special Form" cereal never tasted so good.
Next post: Feria