drinking coffee from a paper cup

The second day of Barcelona still consisted of our gang of four staying at the hobbit-sized Pension Miami - whose location was excellent - not premium - decor was charming, and size was miniature, run by friendly and considerate enough employees who dealt with us despite our despairing level of Spanish. 

A clean restaurant kitchen

Day 2 was a full day. We started off with breakfast at a Spanish McDonald's type place, all the while with me complaining about drinking coffee from a paper cup. "But it's clean," my wife insisted. "But you've never had to work fast food. Sometimes those places that look a little dirty on the outside are a lot cleaner than fast food. But anyways, there is no cleanliness in restaurants as it is, my friend Joseph has taught me that enough."

Next stop was Park Guell, which was an old Catalan noble family who had hired none other than Anthony Gaudi to design the property around his house. Gaudi built pavilions for events, a viaduct for walking, some statues, and some houses, including his own. Half the property - which is now a garden - was planned to be a subdivision of houses designed by the eccentric architect, but they never got around to starting the construction. After Franco took power, the place was turned into a park and Guell's home into a school, while Gaudi's house was turned into a museum.  

No fitness required!

Park Guell is easily reached from Placa Catalunya on the L3 metro line, getting off at the Vallcarca stop - don't listen to tourist guide books, they lie, the other stop has a lot of uphill walking. The metro in Barcelona - though the general plan of the metro is about as confusing as quantum mechanics - is fairly easy to use, since each station and line is fairly simple. Leaving the metro at Vallcarca, it's pretty easy to follow the signage to the Park. The signage takes one to a series of outdoor escalators that go right up the mountainside, making the ascent easy enough for even our fattest of friends.

At the top, one is confronted with going up the hill to the place of three crosses, or going downhill to the actual park. We decided to go up the hill, see the amazing overlook, then descend along the viaduct that winds down to the pavillions. The viaduct itself looks something like a mix between a prehistoric construction and the remnants of dinosaur fossils, built with crawling and sprawling vegetation in mind, perfectly moulded to the sides of the hill. The viaduct utilizes the Catenary arch that Gaudi was famous for perfecting, which only increases the appearance and feeling that your walking through a graveyard of giant lizards, especially with how the viaduct winds its way down the hill like the route a snake might take.

The view from the three crosses

On top of the viaduct

A "leaning" Catenary arch below a viaduct

The viaduct ends at the pavillion, where also is located the official entrance to the park. Tickets are 7 euros and can be purchased online, or about a 100 meter walk away from this spot. It's probably best to buy it online, and then you can also buy the Gaudi House and Sagrada Familia ticket bundle and hit all of this stuff without waiting, if you're your good with your timing. The tickets operate on a time band basis, meaning the park sells a certain amount of tickets for a certain period of time, so that the crowds are never too large and you never really have to wait in line, especially if you purchased your tickets previously online. It's actually quite a brilliant system.

The paid area of the park includes as I said, the pavilion, a walk around the school and the backside of the entrance. It's probably actually not worth the 7 euros, since most of that can be seen from the outside almost as easily, and you can take your Facebook picture in front of the gates without actually paying admission. Besides all that, the viaducts are really the most impressive Gaudi-designed part.

View of the pavilions from the free area

View of the pavilions from the paid area

The porter's house

From there, we took about a thirty minute walk to the Sagrada Familia, the great cathedral designed by Gaudi - a tour of Barcelona really is mostly just a tour of Gaudi's work, as the city itself was a canvass for the architect.

After one look at the line, we decided to look online for tickets, and found that the next available time bands wouldn't be until the next day around noon. This meant that even those people waiting in line for hours wouldn't be able to get in that day. So again, best to book online. At the moment, we decided not to go, since it was 15 euros just to walk around inside. 

Houses on the "Block of Discord", Casa Batllo and Casa Amatller

Instead we decided to go walk down the Passeig de Gracia and see the rest of Gaudi's buildings, in what they call the Block of Discord (in Catalan, Illa de la Discordia, or Bone of Discord), because of all the out of place buildings designed by various modernist architects of various ideas. Most of the buildings have a 5 or so euro charge to enter, where you get to see one or two rooms. At Casa Batllo though - the one designed by Gaudi - you can walk around most of the house, and though it's empty of the furniture (which Gaudi also designed), you at least get to see the basics of his interior design ideas. More on that later.

Last up for the day was the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, which looks far cooler on its pamphlet than it actually is - which is unfortunately all too often the case with touristic sites, the longer I travel, the more I wonder if I should just leave things in the grandeur of my imagination than being let down by the great weight of reality and universal insignificance. What I was imagining was that the shipyard-converted-to-museum would have a bunch of massive 17th century frigates on display that you could walk around on and pretend your a pirate or fighting with pirates - I'll here admit that my mind never matured past the age of 12. But as we started walking around the Drassanes in the south part of Raval, I realized that there weren't any buildings there large enough to contain my dreams.

Be sure to take a look inside!

Outside had a little wooden submarine reminiscent of the Beatles song. You can't go inside, but you can look in the windows and see what's going on inside. In the museum, there is a large royal barge, but you can't go on it, you can only admire the view of the body of the vessel from below. Then there's a large collection of various types of small fishing boats and a section about cruise liners and pirates that has some pictures and lots and lots of reading. It took me a really long time to get through this part, because I end up trying to read everything no matter how not actually interesting the information is - don't get me wrong, the section on defending Barcelona from the dreaded Berber pirate Barbarossa was actually quite awesome.  

Also included is a small shipping vessel that's sitting out in the marina near the marina shopping mall. You get to go inside and all, but if you've been on a boat before, it's not that terribly interesting, except to take pictures at the wheel. For all of that it's 7 euros. To me it's worth it, but then I'm a fan of history museums, from the life of quixotic writers to the maritime adventures of temporarily independant ports. But if you're only going to be excited by swinging on the ropes of the riggings - something I would have enjoyed a bit more - better to find a ropes' course somewhere. The past is dead, and reliving the past seems to be left to Renaissance Faires and Dungeons and Dragons.