Gaudi and Goodbye
Saturday, November 25, 2011Barcelona, Spain
Interested in a Music and Markets Tour? We'd love to hear from you!
Next on the itinerary: New Year's Jazz in Italy
Our last day in Barcelona, and we'll fill it with Modernista sights of Gaudi et al. On our way to view a lesser-known early Gaudi commission, we're once again drawn in by a market, along with the entire neighborhood, it seems. There's a holiday charity event going on, as locals bring in donations for those in need, and a youth
jazz band entertains the shoppers.Displays of fresh vegetables decked with strings of dried peppers and intriguing shellfish - such as percebes, a type of barnacle that's harvested by brave rock scramblers as the surf crashes around them, and those razor clams we enjoyed a few nights ago.
We metro to the Gracia district and ascend to streetlevel, where we're greeted with an impressive Modernista building with artful dragonfly grilles on the sinuous windows.
Gaudi's Moorish- influenced wonder, a private home, is very different from his later works - more straight lines here, a surprise from the man who declared that God makes curved lines, straight lines are man's idea.
It's fascinating to note how every detail is an essential part of the whole - from the bougainvillea - laden balconies to the fence design to the tilework.
Fanciful Park Guell is a few minutes walk uphill, with its Hansel and Gretel inspired houses at the entrance
and the fabulous terrace lined with curving benches strewn with intricate designs of broken tiles (a Gaudi technique - trencadis - he instructed his workers to pick up every stray piece of broken ceramic they could find wherever they walked).
We laugh to see a Coca-Cola vending machine in trencadis- creative and pinpointed marketing for sure!
Next stop, Barcelona's iconic Sagrada Familia. One day we'll see it without construction cranes, but for now work continues, as it has for over a century. The goal of completion is the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death, 2026.
Time to pack for our early flight home tomorrow, and then one more seaside dinner and a stroll along the beach, where the W gleams across the surf... Hasta la vista, Barcelona!
Labels: Barcelona, Gaudi, Modernista, Park guell, Sagrada Familia
posted by Anne and Kirk @ 10:27 AM
1 Comments:
That's a great picture of the serpentine wall at Parc Güell. We had a lot of loungers on the benches.
Looking forward to your report on the Jazz Festival and activities in Orvieto. Tried to convince my husband to go, but, maybe another year.
Buon Natale
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