If you should visit Barcelona you will notice that although it is a fairly small city { you can walk across it in a few hours } but you will also notice that it has many distinct and separate parts.
The central areas are very clean and tidy, with stunningly beautiful buildings and shops offering just about anything you could want, to a huge brightly lit indoor market, one of the biggest so I'm told, to the dark and broken down areas where only the locals or more adventurous tourists dare to go.
It is not that Barcelona is a dangerous place, just that the same as in any city, if you go alone to certain parts with loads of bling bling and start looking at maps then you are almost asking to get mugged.
The beachfront is its own best and worst enemy as it attracts people from all walks of life so you have to keep one on your bag or clothes while the other eye on the stunning scenery and equally attractive bronze goddesses that like to hang out and play games like volleyball, tag and thwack ball. This last game is actually quite annoying as it is played with two wooden paddles and a hard rubber ball and you can hear the thwacking for miles down or up the beach.
The only other noise you can really hear is the flag cord whipping against its pole in the wind, and for the life of me I wanted to either make it extra tight or extra lose just to break up the rhythm of the beats.
But no matter where you go you, unless you go with your eyes closed or are chauffeur driven to and from your hotel to the airport you are unlikely to miss at least the works of the artistic genius that is Gaudi. This guys work is just about everywhere and I know that I have a passion for nice art and architecture but this guy has a style that really appeals to me and not just me, but millions of people who come to visit his work every year.
As I was only here for a little over 24 hours I could not possible see all his works, as each of his key buildings offer a guided audio tour lasting two hours or more, so I will just talk and show a little about arguably his greatest works, La Pedrera which is on the road Passeig de Gracia. He did two stunning houses here, the other an almost morbid skull and bones theme, but to me in the eerie twilight of the night they looked more like fish shells.
La Pedrera was designed to be a huge block of residential apartments, which might sound dull at first, but Gaudi has put his mark on just about every aspect of the building and from the second your eye catches sight of it you will be mesmerized. First off is that Gaudi had a great knowledge of space, architecture, stress lines and the ability to create space using struts and arches as much as simple supporting walls. The way modern open planned offices and airports are created is very much a more simplified version of his style.
The second key feature is that every room in the entire building has access to natural light thanks, from the kitchen and bathroom down to the maids bedroom, all thanks to the way he laid out the floor plan and the fact that he added light access corridors or shafts to go down through the building at various intervals.
The attic space and rooftop are works of art in themselves, and almost every postcard or tour map that I passed had at least one photo of his unique twisting smoke chimneys, or helmeted faces as I at first took them to be. And from the top down every colour, shape, size and texture was used to create an apartment that royalty would feel comfortable residing in, and his dedication went so far as to design and create hexagonal floor tiles and even ergonomic chairs at a time when such ideas were almost unheard of.
I wont say any more, as this my words will pail to nothing once you have seen the photos so I will pass and go on to the next part of my day, the trip to the Barcelona's Castle. To get here there is a long road where you can catch a taxi or bus, from another there is a steep face that has a zigzag winding path for the athletic or insane and also there is the Funicular which for a small fee of about EU $4 you can get a return ticket that takes you up the steep climb.
Although I did not plan on it, I managed to grab a private cable car going both ways, which gave the best panoramic views of the city from any point I chose, and I could even pause to pose for a photo or two. Reaching the top there is satisfying, however you chose to arrive, and the vistas, the museum and even the little cafe / restaurant at the top is all just part and parcel of a great mini trip on its own. I did not have enough time to fully explore the museum but I found time to grab a bite to eat and rest up a bit and make a send a few text messages home to say that I am fine and the weather is great, mainly cos back in the UK it was cloudy and raining hard, haha.
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