Nowhere is this principle embodied more forcefully than in the architecture of Antoni Gaudi and his contemporaries. Today we walked from the Plaza de Catalunya at the center of the city up the Passeig de Gracia, a glittery shopping street (Manolo Blahnik, Tiffany, etc., etc.) where much of the Modernista architecture is found. We stood for a good while directly across the street from the Casa Batllo, which is far more impressive than its pictures would lead one to believe. At the same time, it occupies the street rather quietly, modestly overwhelming everything that surrounds it.
A few blocks away we are astounded by the facade of the prize-winning apartment building design of Toyo Ito, which pays homage to Gaudi's Casa Mila across the street.
Casa Mila simply blew me away. As we stood in front of it and listened to Arleen's commentary on the structure and Gaudi's inspiration, the beautiful city of Montserrat and its mountains, we could almost hear the conversation between the Gaudi original and the Ito response. I believe this design and construction has touched me most of all in this adventure, and that wouldn't be possible without the careful layering of instruction from our gifted teacher.
At this point we were instructed to set off on our own until we meet to travel to Valencia on Monday. We have so many things left on our list, and we set right to work.
First, a glimpse inside El Nacional, a former textile mill that has been converted to a restaurant mecca. We agreed that it might be the most beautiful setting for multiple restaurants in the world. My pictures will hardly do it justice!
Then on to lunch, at a small restaurant specializing in Basque tapas.
After lunch, a trip up the escalators of El Corte Ingles, Spain's largest department store, to the ninth floor restaurant/bar/cafeteria where the view of the Plaza de Catalunya is simply spectacular. From this height we could see Montjuic and the sea.
Mike and I decided to do the Las Ramblas walk from Plaza de Catalunya to the Rambla del Flors, which is where we began our walk down Las Ramblas to the sea last week. The difference in the crowd from last week was marked: it had increased by about a factor of ten. We decided that the farther into June we get, the more crowded the city will become. We are very grateful that we arrived on June 3, when there was more room and fewer people! We did take the opportunity on this walk to duck into the famous La Boqueria, the enormous market and major tourist attraction. Never have we seen so much food being photographed, purchased, and eaten by so many people!
Then - back to the hotel for a bit of a rest before venturing out again around 7:00 p.m. to meet friends for dinner. We returned to a favorite plaza, the Placa Reial. Here we dined at mariscCo, a fascinating place that once was a natural history and science workshop. It was a gathering place for artists of the late 19th and early 20th century, and smack in the middle of the current indoor dining room is a life-sized statute of a rhinoceros with Salvador Dali atop. It seems that Dali and his colleagues would visit this workshop and they dissected a number of large animals, including a rhino. Hence the Dali connection!
Luckily this restaurant has beautiful and delicious food in addition to its rather odd theme.
(Above - An early evening view of the Placa Reial. Note lamppost designed very early in his career by Antoni Gaudi.)
We are planning a little later start tomorrow, and hope to spend the day at Montjuic. So far the weather has cooperated - it is sunny and cool, with a breeze. Fingers crossed that it continues!
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