Exploring Gaudi

Sunday morning was our final day of touring Barcelona, but included what many would consider the highlight of any trip to the city:  The Familia Sagrada (“Sacred Family”) Cathedral.  This visit would be followed up with a tour of Park Gϋell.  Both of these sites were designed by the pride of Barcelona: Antoni Gaudí. 

Today’s tour was another one that would be a large organized group tour with 20-30 of my coworkers.  Aimee and I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed towards our tour bus.  As we made our way through the city towards the cathedral, there were a few moments that when looking out the bus windows the streets would align with the massive structure in the distance and we could see a brief unobstructed view of it towering over all of Barcelona.  



Familia Sagrada

Construction on the Familia Sagrada began in 1882, however it is still under active construction today and is not expected to be fully completed until 2032.  As we approached the building and could see the incredible ornate details around the entire outside and inside of the building it was not difficult to see how the building could take a century and a half to complete.  In response to the ambitious, long-term undertaking, Gaudi once responded “My client is not in a hurry.”  Construction continued throughout the rest of Gaudi’s life, and well beyond, delayed by periods of war and unrest in the area, which resulted in halts to construction and damage that needed to be repaired at times.  Today Gaudi is buried in a crypt within the cathedral.

While Gaudi was not assigned to the project until a year after it’s groundbreaking, the near finished complex is comprised of many signature characteristics of his works, including non-linear structural forms and an eclectic mix of gothic design with modern, almost cartoonish features.  At the tops of the many classic gothic looking spires, are colorful designs that transition from geometric shapes to arcs and circles with what look like massive cotton balls of various sizes and asymmetrical shapes.  Many of the outside walls are adorned with 3 dimensional words that are written in fonts that look like they could have been found spray painted on a New York subway wall.  Upon first looking at each of the different sections of the cathedral, the initial impression is one of traditional gothic architecture, however the longer you assess the design, the details, and the angles, the more you begin to notice the more peculiar aspects of the design.  There are very few straight lines.  Vertical support columns are not actually vertical, they are at slight angles, and they branch out like trees at the top.  Finishing touches break away from gothic shapes to the downright trippy.

One of the more fascinating items that we were shown on our tour was an upside “model” of the cathedral, where Gaudi, in the absence of Computer Assisted Design, utilized sandbags tied to multiple tethers in order to determine the angles required to appropriately distribute the weight loads of the building across its support columns.  He then used the resulting angles to design the columns throughout the building.   In recent decades much of the design and construction has accelerated due to the advent of computer driven engineering and design, eliminating the need for such primitive (though impressive) approaches.

 

While Aimee’s distaste for the style of Gaudi’s work overshadowed her admiration of the architectural aspects, both of us walked away incredibly impressed at this magnificent piece of work.

 

Park Gϋell

After the cathedral we continued on to another of Gaudi’s most famous works, Park Gϋell.  As compared to the cathedral, Park Gϋell avoids most all attempts at classical architecture and to the American visitor comes off as something straight out of a Doctor Seuss guided tour into Whoville.  Ceramic mosaics covered many of the structures with colorfully flowing and naturally curving shapes in every direction.  We spent about an hour or so wandering through the park enjoying the fun, though somewhat psychedelic design of the space.



Ryan and Aimee in the Park



Mayor of Whoville's house?

After our Gaudi focused morning tour, we had a group lunch at Can Travi Nau on the edges of Barcelona that was in a traditional old Catalan house.  Each room had several large round tables and was furnished like an old country home, and our group was led to one where we were served some more of the local fare.  At the end of the meal however we were introduced to a traditional wine pitcher called a porron filled with moscatel wine.  Our waiters brought this out and illustrated to us how to drink out of it by lifting it over the head and about 6-12 inches from your face, tilting back your head, and aiming the spout towards your mouth to allow the jet of wine to pour directly into your mouth.   Each table was then given a porron with the challenge for each person to pour and swallow simultaneously with the goal of finishing the entire pitcher in a single pour.  As each person failed, we continued to pass the porron around the table, until it was finally empty.

 

Porron

Don't Spill!

 

On the ride back to the hotel, our tour guide continued to tell us a bit more about current events in Barcelona.  There was an upcoming referendum for Catalonian independence from Spain.  She had indicated that this was something that had been building for a long time, and that there were strong indications that this referendum would pass. She discussed some of the many strong cultural differences between Barcelona and Spain, not the least of which is the language difference (Catalan vs. Spanish).  She drew our attention to the many Catalonian flags hung from windows throughout the city, 90% of which seemed to indicate support for independence. It looked clear that there were some interesting times ahead for the region.

After arriving back to our hotel, Aimee and I freshened up and grabbed a taxi to find dinner near Barcelona’s oldest brewery (Moritz) a few miles away. After checking it out, we ended up changing our mind and landed in a nondescript Irish pub down the street, and enjoyed a bit of a break from the Spanish food, which we both decided after several days in Spain wasn’t our favorite style. 



After dinner we began slowly walking in the direction of our hotel, debating weather to get a cab.  The weather was a bit warmer than the previous few days, and most importantly dry so we ultimately walked at a leisurely pace the 2-3 miles back to our hotel enjoying the city around us.

Exhausted at this point, we gathered up our belongings and repacked our luggage, as we had a very early departure in the morning.
 

DEPARTURE:

The next morning most of our large group (except those that had extended their stay for personal travel) met several coach busses that took an exceptionally tired and worn out group of people back to the airport.  On top of a hectic schedule for the previous four days, we had only begun to recover from our initial jet lag.  After arriving at the airport however, the group was met with the unfortunate news of a flight cancellation impacting most of the 70+ individuals on the trip.  Flights were very quickly re-booked, but scattered many of us to varying connections throughout the US in order to get us back in a reasonable time.  For Aimee and I, our new flights resulted in only minimal changes to our final arrival time in Nashville.

When we finally arrived in Nashville, we returned grateful for the experience and with some great memories, but decided that though we didn’t dislike it, Barcelona probably wasn’t at the top of the list of places we’d return to in the near future.