Is This Spain? (Barcelona: Part Tres)

After I awoke the next morning and had breakfast the next morning I went to the Museu Picasso. Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, but spent many of his formative years (before joining the Parisian art scene) in Barcelona. He produced most of his early artworks here, which were far from the cubist, surrealist, and abstract paintings he would later produce. Picasso returned to Barcelona many times in his life and painted scenes of the city. The museum housed many of his early works as well as his later cubist copy of Velazquez's Las Meninas. The museum itself was housed in a medieval palace. Here is the courtyard:

After the museum, I went down some side streets and came across a restaurant called Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats), which Picasso and Ramon Casas used to frequent:

I ate at a restaurant next door called Set de Gòtic. It had an old-style interior with columns and candelabras on the walls. The owner sat at a table near me and spoke to his employees about their schedules while an old man drank a beer and smoked a cigarette while reading a newspaper. I ordered a fuet sandwich. Fuet is a thin and savory sausage from Catalonia which you can find throughout Spain, but this was the best I've had.

Down Passeig de Gràcia, I took some pictures of the fourth of the great modernisme apartment buildings, Casa Amatller, which is next to Casa Batlló and was built by Josep Puig i Cadafalch in 1900:

I also walked past Fundació Antoni Tàpies, which is dedicated to the contemporary Catalan artist who designed the structure atop this building:

On my way to Sagrada Família I saw this college:

Sagrada Família was probably the most impressive unfinished building I have ever seen.

It was begun in 1882 and could be finished sometime around 2026. Gaudí never planned on seeing the building's completion and the project went through many setbacks following his death, namely the Civil War and the economic turmoil which followed. Today, construction of the church is financed by the tickets visitors buy to tour the interior and Japanese investors. When it is complete, there will be a giant central spire, towering over the others, with a four-armed cross which can be seen in Gaudí's other works. This facade of the church was not designed by Gaudí, but by a later architect and is known as the Passion Facade:

As you can probably tell from the pictures of this side of the church, there are so many details, you are overwhelmed. The other side, designed by Gaudí himself, is even more spectacular. Before visiting it, I took the tour of the unfinished interior:

Here is the amazing Nativity Facade, designed by Gaudí, complete with various creatures:

In an adjacent building, now used as a Sunday school, Gaudí's original office is left as it was when he died in 1926:

After Sagrada Família, I decided to go to a hospital. That may sound strange, but this is a work of modernisme architecture built by Lluís Domènech i Montaner between 1901 and 1930. The hospital is called Hospital de Sant Pau. Domènech i Montaner believed that nature and beauty would expediate the healing process and placed many open spaces on the hospital grounds. The sound of tropical birds sounded from everywhere in the otherwise silent campus:

I left Hospital de Sant Pau and headed to the area of Montjuïc, a hill in the southwest of the city. Atop the hill is the Palau Nacional, which was built for the 1929 World's Fair and now houses the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya:

From the top of the hill, there was this great view of Barcelona:

Behind the Palau Nacional were many structures built for the 1992 Olympics. The most iconic of these structures is the Montjuïc telecommunications tower built by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava:

There was also this lucky cat:

Also on the hill was the Museu de Joan Miró. It was closed and I later learned that Woody Allen was having a private tour of the collection while I was standing outside, looking at the schedule and taking pictures of this Miró sculpture:

I took a funicular back down the hill, then took the metro back to the area of my hostel where I saw this:

This is one of the paintings of Pez (which means "fish") a Barcelonan artist who's graffiti is all over town and is sought by art collectors. Not far from here is the Palau de la Música, built by Domènech i Montaner in 1908. Since it's crowded around other buildings it's difficult to photograph:

The Arc de Triomf was about a ten minute walk from here. It was built in 1888 as the entrance to the Universal Exposition:

The pathway which leads from the Arc de Triomf to the Parc de la Ciutadella offered some great night shots:

On my way to see the skyscraper Torre Agbar's illuminations, I came across this great, but confusing color-shifting window display:

After a long walk:

I finally got to Torre Agbar:

On my return I saw another Pez painting:

and back in the Medieval district, near my hostel, I came across this:

the remains of a Roman wall, among which was later built the Medieval palace of the Catalan king. This statue of Ramon Berenguer III, one of the Counts of Barcelona stood outside:

My Parents Visit Spain: Part Dos

After our day in Segovia, I took my parents to see Toledo, the capital of the province of Castile-La Mancha, which I went to back in October. We left by train from Atocha and took a thirty-minute ride south of the city. When we stepped off the platform we were met with wonderfully warm weather. I had forgotton how beautiful the interior of the Mudejar-style train station was:

We got off a bus at Plaza Zocodóver, then walked up to the Alcázar. We stopped in some shops and looked at the Toledan crafts (swords and damascene). We returned to Plaza Zocodóver and looked at the shops selling marzipan. Here is the plaza:

We walked from here to a lookout point where you could see the river and the Alcázar in opposing directions:

This statue stood in front of the Alcázar:

The Alcázar was built in the 16th century atop the ruins of a Muslim fortress. It served as a military fort through much of its subsequent history and is most famous for its role in the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, Franco's Nationalist forces were besieged in the fortress. The Republicans held the son of the colonel commanding the troops inside the Alcázar and demanded the Nationalist officer surrender or his son would be killed. The colonel supposedly told his son to pray and to die like a hero as he refused to surrender. Some accounts claim the Republicans shot the colonel's son immediately after this while others claim he died later as a prisoner of war. Nontheless, the attempt at the siege failed and the building sustained heavy damage, being restored soon after.

After leaving the area of the Alcázar, we walked down some winding streets on our way to Toledo Cathedral (built from 1226-1493).

We finally emerged upon the Cathedral and spent some time in the plaza in front of it, taking pictures:

We went inside the Cathedral and saw some of its famous paintings including some by the famous Toledan resident, El Greco, along with Caravaggio, Raphael, and Rembrandt. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the streets of Toledo, passing the house of El Greco and arriving in the old Jewish quarter. One of the things Toledo is most famous for is the flourishing culture in the early middle ages in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in peace for several hundred years. Beside the former synagogue stood this statue of Samuel HaLevi, a Jewish poet, theologian, and warrior from southern Spain who lived in the early 1000s:

We passed through some neighborhoods with horseshoe-arch doorways inspired by Arabic design. Not far from here I dropped my camera and the focus broke on it. My parents bought me a new camera as my birthday gift after this, for which I am extremely thankful. We left Toledo and returned to Madrid where we ate at a little bar near Museo Reina Sofia. I ordered octopus in marinara.

The next day I had to work, but met my parents after school and we went to Madrid. We spent most of the afternoon walking through Parque Retiro. I tried out the new camera here:

We admired the crystal palace and the pond in the park.

The next day I got off work and met Mom and Dad at the train station near my apartment. We went to lunch at a tapas bar I had never tried before which was away from the city center, past the Cathedral. We then walked around town some more before I left for tutoring. After that I met up with them at Plaza Cervantes and we took the train into Madrid. We visited the Prado and got to see most of the main exhibits: Goya, El Graco, Velazquez, and Bosch. After the museum closed, I took them to Malasaña, where we walked around the nightlife and ate at a tapas bar, which was very good. I ordered migas, breadcrumbs, sausage, ham, and potatoes fried together. After dinner, we visited the Belgian bakery nearby where Dad and I got a coffee.

The next day I met Mom and Dad at the train station after work and I took them in to see the apartment. We went to Madrid to see the Harley shop in the AZCA district. We got some pictures of Plaza Castellana from here:

After this we took the metro to Plaza de España and took pictures of the monument to Spain's Siglo de Oro (Golden Century) the 1600s, when Spain's economy was falling, but its cultural accomplishments thriving. The monument shows figures representing the Empire on one side and Cervantes and his fictional creations on the other.

We walked from here to the Egyptian Temple of Debod and took pictures as the sun set:
After the temple, we walked to the gardens of the Palacio Real and took pictures of the garden and palace grounds:

We then walked into the center of Madrid, heading to Plaza Mayor where we were going to eat at Museo de Jamon again. On the way there, we ran into Cody along with Nicole and Lindsay (friends of ours who were also visiting that week). They were leaving an Irish pub, celebrating St. Patrick's Day. We all stood outside Plaza Mayor and talked for a long while, noting how strange it was for us to bump into one another. We parted after this and Mom, Dad, and I went to eat. This was their last night in Spain and I was very sad to see them go. It was a lot of fun being with them and showing them the things I had been doing and seeing the past months.