Tuesday in Barcelona

1992 Olympic Plaza + communications tower

Chris later in a bar café

When Chris and I went down to the sea the other day, we thought that we were at the site of the 1992 Olympic village, and while the some sports were done there, the main campus and Olympic stadiums were built on Mont Juic in the center of town.  Barcelona has a natural high hill where the fine arts museum is located and where there has always been a park.  For the Olympics, the sports arenas were built there as well as a really cool communications tower which became a sculpture landmark.  It needs a good coat of paint, but is yet another example of Spain's great sense of modernist design.  Tuesday, we went there and took it all in.

The entrance to the market of St. Josef along Avenida La Rambla

After Olympic park, we took a taxi down to La Rambla, the famous tourist street which starts with an obelisk and statue of Christopher Columbus at the Mediterranean Sea and runs through the old Gothic quarter into the city.  Yikes!  I thought Florida was a tourist trap!

Stone roof of the cathedral

We hot-footed it over to the old cathedral (started around 1300), paid the six euros to get inside and saw an amazing structure.  Then, without realizing that it was part of the entrance fee, we took an elevator up to the roof, scurried up a scaffolding staircase and catwalk, and walked across the ridge of the nave!  Wow.  I've always thought it would be great to be able to go up into the bell tower of one of those old cathedrals, but we actually got to walk down the ridge of the roof!  The slopes of the roof weren't slate or tile shingles as I had imagined, but were stone blocks, laid in a running-bond pattern like the side of a wall would be.  Huh.  No wonder the ceiling inside has black mold on it.  The vaults direct rain water into valleys, which pass through openings in the walls, carry the water down stair-stepped troughs, over to gargoyles, who then drop the water onto the street below.   It was how I had imagined it would all look, but to actually see it!  Wow!  I can now die.

Barcelona has a lot of Art Nouveau buildings as well

The view up there was spectacular too.  We could see the construction of the Sagrada Familia in the distance, the Mediterranean Sea, the Olympic village, and the whole layout of the city.  And all because Chris said "oh look, they have an elevator that goes up to the roof".  After a while, I get kind of cathedraled-out, so told Chris that if he didn't want to see this one it was okay with me.  But I'm so glad we decided to go in.  Both interior and rooftop were spectacular.  But the photos from the rooftop don't come close to showing how great the views were, so I've left them out.

Torre Ágbar at night

After a long day of sightseeing, we went and had drinks and some dinner.  Being the alcohol light-weight that I am, I was smashed on one (very large) gin and tonic, so we stumbled around a while and decided to hop a cab to a great beach bar that we were told about.  The cab driver told us that the Torre Ágbar (the torpedo shaped building that I mentioned in an earlier post) was only lit up on the weekends, and since we're leaving on Thursday, we wouldn't see it lit up at night.  Bummer. When we got to the bar, it was closed, so we hopped another cab and went home.  But on the way, we drove by the Torre Ágbar and it was illuminated, so I got to see it up close at night and snapped a photo.  And the photo is not touched-up; it really looks like this.  What a fortuitous faux pas that trip turned out to be!  And the end of a great day.

P.S.  While the name Ágbar sounds kind of arabic, Héctor told me that the name comes from the words "Agua" and "Barcelona", and thus is the building for the water works company of Barcelona.

Barcelona Saturday

East face of the building

West face of the building

The last time I was at the the church of La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family) was in the late 1980s with Mom.  Designed by Antoní Gaudí and started in 1882, the building is still under construction.  When Mom and I were there, some of the towers were completed, but the church itself wasn't really even begun; just some of the foundation work.  In the past 20+ years, they have come a long way to completing the nave of the church and most of the exterior.  It is now expected to be completed in 2041.  A huge difference between the last time I was there and this time, is that now there are throngs of people waiting in line to pay 13 euros to tour the place.  As I remember, Mom and just walked right into the towers and I'm not sure that we paid anything to get in.  But when she and I went, construction had just resumed after years of nothing much happening there. The security guard told us this time that the wait would be about forty minutes, so we decided to come another day, get there early, and hopefully not have to wait such a long time.  

Chris patiently waiting for me ...

But while we were there we walked completely around it and took some photos from the outside.  The building is stunning.  It is essentially Art Nouveau, but has deep roots in Gothic architecture.  A lot of it looks like a dripped sand castle on the beach.  It has essentially gothic form, but like someone left it in the oven too long and it melted ...

Afterward, we went looking for the 38 story torpedo-shaped skyscraper called Torre Ágbar.  It is part of the new technology district of Barcelona and opened in 2005. Chris and I went during the daytime, but at night it is illuminated in purplish-blue light and really quite an amazing sculpture.  When we got close to it, we realized that it has a shell around the entire structure which stands off about five feet, made of both clear and frosted glass louvered panels.  When illuminated from behind at night, those panels give it an ethereal glow.  We plan to make the trip back at night time while we're here.  It's quite an amazing building.

Chris with the Mediterranean Sea behind him

We then hopped on a modern streetcar and took it down to the 1992 Olympic Village area for some drinks at a beach bar on the Mediterranean Sea.  Very modern and vogue, it felt more like Miami Beach than what we generally find on the West coast of Florida, that is, Hooters tiki bars serving buffalo wings and pitchers of beer.

We also saw some more great modern architecture along the waterfront.  Barcelona is quite an amazing city ... more to come.