Barcelona

Super busy weekend in Barcelona! The weekend before this past one, that is. We (my group from school) took an overnight train there and back, something I'd never done before. Unfortunately this was not the type of train with beds, so sleeping was rather difficult. On the way there we were crammed together without a lot of space, but on the way back at least we had more room and reclining chairs. We arrived bright and early and went to Parc Güell, of Gaudí's design.

The most notable "art" in the park is the tilework everywhere, but the park as a whole is really the work of art. In the background of this photo you can kind of see the cave-like part, which is totally different from the tile part but all the same concept! Next we continued with the Gaudí theme by going to the Sagrada Familia, which turned out to be my favorite part of Barcelona. I was so impressed by his fusion of modern elements with the medieval concept of a gothic cathedral. My camera takes pretty awful pictures in anything less than ideal lighting, but this one turned out well:

Every inch of the place is covered in detailed and elaborate design of some kind, which makes everything fascinatingly beautiful. It's taken a ridiculously long time to build the whole thing, and it's not even close to being done yet. Going to see the completed version is officially on my bucket list! For the rest of the day on Friday we went to the beach, where the water was freezing (swam in it anyway) and surprisingly clear.

On Saturday we saw some more Gaudí, this time his apartment building called Casa Milà. We got to go on the rooftop terrace and through one of the apartments. Living there would be so incredible! Here's a picture of a tower on the roof:

This guy's imagination was really crazy. Next we went up to Montjuic, a large area higher up a hill/mountain. This area includes a fortress:

as well as the Miró Museum, a fountain, the National Museum of Catalonian Art, some gardens, the Olympic Stadium (Barcelona hosted in 1992), the Olympic Park:

and I imagine a whole bunch of other stuff that we did not come across.

On Sunday we did not do anything super picture-worthy, although we did go to the Picasso Museum. The entire weekend there was actually a big festival going on with tons of parades and concerts, making the whole city pretty crowded but with a really lively and fun atmosphere. It was cool to walk around and see the city celebrating. Other random cool things: staying in a hostel for the first time and the Catalan language. Caution, if linguistic rants bore you, please skip the next paragraph.

Many people think that Catalan is just a dialect of Spanish, but actually it is its own language and not comprehensible to native Spanish speakers. Of course they share a ton of vocabulary and they are both Romance languages so they have basically the same grammar, but nevertheless there are enough differences to make them quite distinct. Catalan actually shares a lot of attributes with French as well. I talked to a native French speaker there and he said reading it for him was pretty easy because it looks a lot like French. Everyone who grows up in Barcelona/the region of Catalonia speaks both Catalan and Spanish, but I think they prefer speaking Catalan as part of the whole regional pride thing. As if my nerdiness is not yet apparent, I bought a Catalan newspaper to try to decipher for fun. We'll see how that goes.

Well that was my three day weekend in Barcelona! We were able to cram in a lot of stuff in a short period of time so I think we hit all the highlights! I would love to go back for a longer stay eventually. One day....