September 12, 2019

September 12, 2019

We started the day with a Barcelona city tour. We first drove up nearby Montjuic hill for scenic views of Barcelona, The north slope was the site of the 1929 World’s Fair and many of the structures from that time remain. Some venues of the 1992 Olympics were also held here.

Our guide then gave us an outside tour of La Sagrada Familia. Surprisingly there was little repeat from our docent last night. If the church is completed as planned in 1926, it will transform the area. We glimpsed a little of that with a view of La Sagrada Familia reflected in a pond.

We then drove through the Eixemple area with its many Art Nouveau buildings. When Barcelona expanded with the Industrial Revolution, the area north of the Old City was designed and laid out on a plan similar to Washington DC.

Next we drove through the waterfront district. This part of Barcelona went through significant renewal from industrial wasteland to Olympic athlete residences. Interestingly Barcelona purposely left little traces of the old infrastructure as symbols. Behind our hotel are three tall brick smokestacks from a former electricity generating station.

Finished with the city tour, our little group had lunch at a Tapas restaurant across from our hotel and then took the Metro to Casa Mila, another Antoni Gaudi designed structure. This apartment building is nicknamed La Predera (The Quarry) because the exterior looks like The Flintstones house. Instead of a timed ticket, we bought VIP passes a few weeks ago that lets us skip to the head of the line anytime for our audio guided tour.

It starts eight floors up, on the roof where we see an array of strange looking chimneys. The smaller ones resemble helmeted figures from Star Wars while larger ones are covered with colorful mosaic tiles.

The attic contains a museum on Gaudi construction techniques. He was innovative using new methods pioneered by Eiffel. Instead of load bearing walls he used an internal skeleton that gave him a freer hand with the exterior. He used that flexibility to add windows bringing natural lighting into interior spaces. He liked to look to nature for help solving architectural problems. That is why his structures look organic. His designs make many wonder if he was genius or madmen. He was likely both. We finished at an apartment furnished like when it opened in 1912. There are few straight lines and it is well lit by the sun shining in from the courtyard. Aimee and I both think that Gaudi reminds us of the Midwest’s Frank Lloyd Wright.

From Casa Mila, we rode the metro to the Old City. On the way, I felt a few tugs on my Velcro pocket. A woman tried to pickpocket me! Barcelona is reputed to be one of the worst cities for theft.

In the Old City we partook in a five-hour Cook and Taste class, This was right up Aimee’s alley. She had a smile on her face the entire time. The eight in our group took turns preparing parts of the menu. I mostly worked on the dessert, Creme Catalana, the Spanish lemon version of Creme Brulee. Aimee did the harder job of preparing the Seafood Paella, For starters we made Tomato Bread, Roasted Veggies on Flatbread, and Gazpacho soup flavored with beets and watermelon. Of course no proper Spanish chef cooks without a nearby glass of wine. Afterwards we sat down and ate our meal. We didn’t do too bad.