Europe Day 15: Barcelona

Today became a day of exploring the different magnificent works of the architect, engineer and artist, Antoni Gaudi. We started with his most famous work, Sagrada Familia. Starting with a wow once we stepped out of the metro, our appreciation definitely grew as we learnt more about the thought Gaudi put into every fine detail of the church. It is no wonder that this has been taking over 100 years to build. With columns representing trees and the roof behaving like leaves letting some, but not too much light shine in, we were all amazed how so many of his ideas stem from observations in nature. He also incorporated ideas from geometry and calculus, from parabolas to waves from straight lines. Words cannot describe what a mind-blowing sight this was! I would definitely recommend visiting this site when is completed, projected to be in 2040. After some lunch, our next destination was planned to be Parc Guell, but we were hit with a thunderstorm, so we decided to metro to La pedrera, hoping that it will be all indoors. We arrived when the storm turned into drizzling rain but were warned that the roof may be closed if it rains any harder. We later find out the roof is the most outstanding part of the mansion, but we decided to take the chance and rushed upstairs to see this sight! And again, Gaudi was able to surprise us with whimsical designs for staircases and chimneys which made many “still-life” enthusiasts (i.e. Aimes) very happy. With more time to spare before Spanish dinner time, we decided to head to Parc Guell to see the salamander that Romo has been wanting to see since we arrived in Barcelona. It was nice to see familiar faces when we bumped into the group of 3 who we believe are from Singapore who we kept bumping into during our crazy wait at the train station 2 days ago.After walking around park to finish our Gaudi journey, we found a local bus to take with the help of some friendly pharmacists! We walked around Barri Gothic in search for a good restaurant to eat. We found a cute one with very cute menus presented on wine bottles. The food was very good for a good price. The only drawbacks were the poor service and the fact we had to scream over a loud group in the restaurant. Despite the noise and craziness, we still managed to have quite an extensive heart to heart and reflection about our trip till this point.