After the game week booked it to our meeting spot for our bus tour of the city. It ended up that only 6 people ended up coming on that tour. It's sad for the rest of them because they missed out. We took the bus all the way around the city up to Montjuic (catalan for Jewish Mountain), where the Jewish quarter used to be. There's a huge palace up there that now serves as a musuem that we're going to try to visit later. Our guide told us that during the summer they have an outdoor movie festival where they project a movie onto the side of the palace and people just sit around and have picnics and drink wine and watch films. That's definitely on my list of things to do while I'm here. They also have a fountain show on weekends at night time that's supposed to be really pretty. Montjuic is also where the Olympic village was built for the 1992 games. They've made it into a huge workout center now, but there's a lot of art and very beautiful buildings up there that were made specifically for the Olympic games.
After Montjuic we drove by the beach and Barceloneta (what used to be a small fisherman's village). It's really pricey now and uppity, but it's very beautiful. Barceloneta is supposed to have excellent seafood restaurants. We drove through the city some, past the Sagrada Familia, and up to Parc Guell. Parc Guell is a park constructed by Gaudi and is absolutely breathtaking. It's got a whole bunch of cool structural characteristics and every detail is planned out. There's a snaking bench that was specifically designed to clump people together so that people could start converstaions, there's small domes covering the ceiling of the open air auditorium area so that a person's voice could be heard no matter where you were seated, there's a sand covered open area that is mean to filter water and then collect it into a reservoir underneath so that if people built houses in the park they wouldn't be dependent on the old city of Barcelona's water supply. It's just really cool and decorative. We only got a short time in it then, but it's about a 10 minute walk from my house so I'll be going back. :)
After the tour Matt and one of the ISA guys, Luke, walked me home. Luke lives in the same neighborhood I do so he was pointing out good places to go eat or good plazas to sit in to watch people. We had some delicious fish for dinner and I went to bed very content!
Thursday morning, my first class was cancelled so I went to the beach until 2:00. I got a bit of tan, and actually I got an awkward tan line on my face from my sunglasses. There were a lot of people on the beach for it being a Thursday, actually. In our second class we watched Vicky, Christina, Barcelona. That's literally all we did...watch a movie. I'm hoping that this class will continue like this, because it's just fun and really chill. I was glad we watched that movie, because I've been wanting to see it for awhile! If any of you haven't seen it yet, you should. It's pretty good.
After class, Matt, Tara, Dana and I made our way up to La Pedrera because we had a tour again. La Pedrera was amazing. It's on of Gaudi's most famous buildings. It's all curved on the outside with beautiful balconies. It was designed for the Mila family so it's official name is Casa Mila, but it's nickname is La Pedrera which means quarry in English because it just looks like carved stone. We got to go up to the rooftop and look out over the whole city. Even the chimneys are designed and sculpted. He wanted to make art that was "complete" so he designed everything from the roof to floor including furniture, doorways, handles on things, everything. Gaudi was all about functionality too so he made everything with a purpose. The windows on the bottom floors are bigger than the ones on the top because they needed more light to get in since the top gets more naturally. He did this so that it required less energy to heat in the summer. He also painted them darker so that they would absorb heat that way. He is just a genius. We also got to see one of the floors as it would have been when he designed it for the family, and it was awesome. After La Pedrera we walked to Casa Batllo which is like 10 minutes away and just looked from the outside. Inside it's supposed to have all of the stuff that Gaudi originally made for it, but it's very very expensive to go inside.
Dinner on Thursday was mushroom stew with meatballs and shrimp in it. It was delicious! I think my host mom is finally starting to get an idea for what kinds of foods I do and don't like. She was appalled that I didn't like tomatoes, but I've actually had bread rubbed with tomato (not slices) with cheese for a sandwich and it was really good.
No comments:
Post a Comment