Gaudi - Park Guell

On our first full day in Barcelona, we thought that visiting one of the most well known sights, architect Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished cathedral, Sagrada Familia, would be a good, dramatic place to start.  We took the bus there and after lunch in the park next door, we found ourselves in tour group hell.  It was too crowded, line too long, kids too crabby, so we decided to postpone until another day and head for Gaudi’s other masterpiece, Park Guell.  

Sagrada Familia 

Nik greets his first olive tree, in the Park Guell.

Park Guell (built between 1900-1914 and intended to be a suburban “garden city”) is up above the city, with great views all around.  The Metro took us to within a 15 minute walk of the park, and outdoor escalators made our trek up hill to the park bearable.  We are not used to this heat (high today 87) and humidity after cool Paris, but hopefully after a few days we will be acclimatized.  In preparation for our trip, we had looked at books about Barcelona architecture, and Henry was pretty interested.  I also showed him pictures from my visit here 20 years ago, which included pictures from Park Guell, so he was pretty excited to see the places that were in the pictures.   It took us a while to find the “tunnel” and the famous dragon that were in the pictures he had seen.  These were toward the end of our walk, but we saw plenty of interesting things along the way.  In the space below a bridge/walkway, there was a duo called Marambo playing some amazing mellow Spanish music on bass guitar, sax and bongos.  We bought their CD and will always associate their music with this inspiring place.  Gaudi lived for 20 years in one of the 5 houses built around the park  (there were supposed to be 60 houses).  His house is now a museum, but we knew we could not get away with dragging our kids there in their hot, sweaty, ice-cream deprived state.  

 Quite the view of Barcelona from Park Guell, with the Mediterranean beyond.

 N and M enjoy the music among the Gaudi columns.

View from the plaza looking down at one of Gaudi's "Hansel and Gretel" houses flanking the entrance to the park. 

 The "tunnel" looks the same as it did 20 years ago, though a lot busier today

 than when Margie and I visited on a cold November day.

The dragon, spouting water.  In case you are interested, the technique used by Gaudi is called trencadis, in which recycled, broken glazed ceramics (and sometimes old crockery and bottle bottoms) are put together like mosaic.  

Very colorful and interesting and distinctly Gaudi.

After ice cream on the way down from Park Guell, we hunted down our first Barcelona geocache.  Normally, I don’t have a lot of patience for geocaching, but when one leads us to a park with a café serving sangria and no other tourists in site, I love it!  Nik and I sat with our sangria while M and H checked out the playground and Sully rode his bike up and down some nearby ramps. 

 Spotted on the way to the geocache: excellent mosaic and strange street name.  Taxdirt?

 Sangria was so good!  Kids were playing soccer... er, football in the background.  

In the same park there was a game of cricket going on.  Nik and Henry especially enjoyed watching.

Madeleine poses near her favorite part of today - the park's playground.  We love the palm trees.

We decided to take the bus home, although Metro would have been faster.  We enjoy all there is to see from the bus that would be missed riding underground.  While riding the bus home, an elder senora sitting in front of me who apparently likes to gossip about other passengers who get off the bus, started telling me her thoughts on the woman who had just ridden one stop with her husband, two little daughters and newborn baby.   I didn’t understand a word of it, but I tried to nod and smile in agreement. 

By the time we got home, we were right on track for the Barcelona schedule, eating dinner at 10:30.   We may try out the siesta tomorrow afternoon and see how that goes.  It might be good to lay low in the afternoon heat rather than march our kids around.

Finally, a summary of the mishaps (Jones moves) of the day: 

1.  This morning Henry was having trouble turning on the water in the bathroom and ended up dislodging the glass shelf over the sink, which crashed to the ground in a million pieces.  He was fine (it was safety glass), and that’s what the security deposit is for!

2.  We reached Park Guell and were walking up a winding path with a lot of other people.  We stopped to check out the view, and Sully decides to throw a rock down the hill.  His timing was right on, and he hit a man in the hand who was walking on the path below.  Thankfully it was not a large rock, and it did not cause any injury.  Nik walked down to apologize to the man and make sure he was ok.

Buenas noches,

-E