Day 56: gaudi

  We conduct our own Gaudi walking tour. He has five famous buildings in Barcelona and each of them are fantastic. His style is very unique and quirky. He was always interested in nature and so took parts of nature and used the ideas in his artworks.  Our first stop was a fountain he created which was a pretty magnificent fountain- it was just huge and had a bridge to walk over it.  The second was his most famous piece- sigrada famiglia. It is a church but unlike any church I've ever seen. The theme is that of a jungle. Outside it has 16 towers with flower-style crosses on the top. Inside there are pillars resembling trees and the roof is like the tree tops spanning out above you. There are magnificent staircases and railings and windows that allow natural light to illuminate the building. The style is so quirky it doesn't even feel like a church- the stained glass windows make it way too colorful. And gaudi himself is buried in this church. We saw his tomb. The remarkable thing is the basilica is not finished. It has been in the making now since the 1800s and it isn't expected to finish until half way through the next century! The idea is to make it as similar to gaudi's original plans as possible. It would be good to see it when there's no scaffolding that's for sure. Our third stop was a house that he created. Again the nature-ideas bring this quirky style building. He's pretty fantastic.  And then an apartment block which was also wacky and amazing.  That night I cooked up some croquettes (fuoi gra flavour) and pizza with fresh produce from the market- one of the bases was a 5 cheeses pizza base!! Yep I went there.