Today we went into the city and as is the apparent want of all tourists, our priority was to see the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familji, or to those of us that are commoners, the church that Gaudi built. Or more accurately the one that is being built.
This church is HUGE! And in its completed form it is going to be even more impressive. The first idea for the church was conceived in 1874, the foundation stone was laid in 1882, in 1883 Gaudi was hired as the chief architect, Gaudi died in 1926 having seen the completion of one of the facades and spending 43 years of his life on this project, here we are in 2009 and it is still in progress, and it is due for completion in 2030. The amazing thing is that this building is being completed faithful to Gaudi’s design and yet even today it looks Ultra-modern, leading-edge design. Incredible after so long. There are 300 workmen working on this project every day. In Gaudi’s words, “This will be the church of harmonious light” and when you look up towards the ceiling past the stained glass window, there is no doubt that this will be an incredible sight when it is completed. I imagine that there is going to be quite a party on opening day, 156 years since conception. That’s quite a long gestation period.
After leaving the church we headed to the water front by a roundabout means. Along the way we passed quite a few other examples of Gaudi’s work, many covered in the colour mosaic tiles for which he is known. They gave the impression of being like the Kawakawa toilets on speed, the Kawakawa toilets through the eyes of Hunter S Thompson a la ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, like a ‘Wacked out’ hall of mirrors. Very weird and very cool at the same time. Perhaps the inspiration for Dali.
Another sight that we were treated to that isn’t exactly what you will see in the tourist brochures, guys so drunk in the middle of the afternoon that they were comatose. We saw two guys fall off a park bench on top of each other, onto the concrete without waking up. Everything that you read about this city warns you that you need to watch out for pickpockets and we were told this at our accommodation when we checked in too. Their advise leave everything that you can, behind. They often get visitors who lose wallets and passports. We haven’t seen anything like this, but we have seen enough in our travels so far, to be careful.
Down by the water front there the usual buskers that you would expect in a crowd like that, but this had a different feel to what we saw in Germany, the busking style here is very … Spanish, and very cool. It seems like the whole family gets involved, from the youngest to the oldest, and the audience gets up and dancing from the very young to the very old as well.
Whilst enjoying a very nice dinner later in the day we heard a lot of screaming, shouting, drumming, and fireworks out on the street. Whatever the celebration was we thought that it would be well finished by the time we got out there, but half an hour later it was still going strong. There was the feeling of a fiesta in the air. Wheeling dragons of various sizes down the streets, loaded up with exploding fireworks, showers of fireworks everywhere, drummers beating up a frenzy, whistles, yelling, cheering. The whole street was just a complete commotion. If this was NZ, the Health and Safety department would have a field day, there would be enough infringement notices handed out to destroy a small forest. But no one seemed to get hurt, but rather to relish in the celebration. There’s no bubble wrapped kids here. We did manage to gather that this was the one of the parades for their annual La Merce Festival, Barcelona’s main festival. And by coincidence we managed to witness it.
We finished the day by returning to the waterfront and being privileged to a free open air concert. We have no idea who they were, or what they were singing about for that matter, but if it’s free we’ll take it. And it was kinda cool.
This church is HUGE! And in its completed form it is going to be even more impressive. The first idea for the church was conceived in 1874, the foundation stone was laid in 1882, in 1883 Gaudi was hired as the chief architect, Gaudi died in 1926 having seen the completion of one of the facades and spending 43 years of his life on this project, here we are in 2009 and it is still in progress, and it is due for completion in 2030. The amazing thing is that this building is being completed faithful to Gaudi’s design and yet even today it looks Ultra-modern, leading-edge design. Incredible after so long. There are 300 workmen working on this project every day. In Gaudi’s words, “This will be the church of harmonious light” and when you look up towards the ceiling past the stained glass window, there is no doubt that this will be an incredible sight when it is completed. I imagine that there is going to be quite a party on opening day, 156 years since conception. That’s quite a long gestation period.
After leaving the church we headed to the water front by a roundabout means. Along the way we passed quite a few other examples of Gaudi’s work, many covered in the colour mosaic tiles for which he is known. They gave the impression of being like the Kawakawa toilets on speed, the Kawakawa toilets through the eyes of Hunter S Thompson a la ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, like a ‘Wacked out’ hall of mirrors. Very weird and very cool at the same time. Perhaps the inspiration for Dali.
Another sight that we were treated to that isn’t exactly what you will see in the tourist brochures, guys so drunk in the middle of the afternoon that they were comatose. We saw two guys fall off a park bench on top of each other, onto the concrete without waking up. Everything that you read about this city warns you that you need to watch out for pickpockets and we were told this at our accommodation when we checked in too. Their advise leave everything that you can, behind. They often get visitors who lose wallets and passports. We haven’t seen anything like this, but we have seen enough in our travels so far, to be careful.
Down by the water front there the usual buskers that you would expect in a crowd like that, but this had a different feel to what we saw in Germany, the busking style here is very … Spanish, and very cool. It seems like the whole family gets involved, from the youngest to the oldest, and the audience gets up and dancing from the very young to the very old as well.
Whilst enjoying a very nice dinner later in the day we heard a lot of screaming, shouting, drumming, and fireworks out on the street. Whatever the celebration was we thought that it would be well finished by the time we got out there, but half an hour later it was still going strong. There was the feeling of a fiesta in the air. Wheeling dragons of various sizes down the streets, loaded up with exploding fireworks, showers of fireworks everywhere, drummers beating up a frenzy, whistles, yelling, cheering. The whole street was just a complete commotion. If this was NZ, the Health and Safety department would have a field day, there would be enough infringement notices handed out to destroy a small forest. But no one seemed to get hurt, but rather to relish in the celebration. There’s no bubble wrapped kids here. We did manage to gather that this was the one of the parades for their annual La Merce Festival, Barcelona’s main festival. And by coincidence we managed to witness it.
We finished the day by returning to the waterfront and being privileged to a free open air concert. We have no idea who they were, or what they were singing about for that matter, but if it’s free we’ll take it. And it was kinda cool.
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