Beaches, Benches, & Barcelona #HogsAbroad

So we meet again dear friends and family.

This past weekend was spent in the breathtaking international city of Barcelona. Turns out my entire study abroad has been one extensive and ongoing history lesson, but this is wayyyy more fun than I remember it being in school.

If there is one name you must recognize in this city, it is Antoni Gaudí. Gaudí, Gaudí, Gaudí. This is the identity of the man who made Barcelona a place worth visiting. He was a modernist architect who is famous for his works inspired by nature, and almost all of the best sights in Barcelona are his creations.

Our first major sight over the weekend was Casa Batlló, a house designed by Gaudí for the Batlló family. This house features very few straight lines in its architecture, and is said to be modeled after the sea.

 

The next stop on Friday night was the Montjüic, the hill on which the 1992 Olympics were held. Fun fact, the Olympics were what made Barcelona a destination city, it was when they inserted all of their beaches and Spain spent over $850 million for the event which played a huge role in the economic crisis they had in the mid 90’s. We hiked to the top and hopped on a cable car to get an aerial view of the city. This hike included about 100 flights of stairs and we were pooped by the end so we decided that this was a good point to call it a night.

Saturday morning started bright and early with an amazing breakfast at our hotel (this is important because all Spaniards eat for breakfast is a slice of toast and coffee so I hadn’t had scrambled eggs or anything actually nutritious to start my day in weeks). We then proceeded to see more of Gaudí’s works, including Parc Güell and the Sagrada Familia.

Every city has its icons. Rome has the colosseum, Paris the Eiffel tower, etc. Well, if you only have one day in Barcelona, these are the two places you MUST see. Was anyone curious about the wording of my title??? I’ve been trying to keep it creative :)) and this one was inspired by the bench in Parc Güell (and the Cheetah girls were there, how cool??). This park was originally supposed to be a neighborhood. Gaudí was hired to modernize it and he wanted to get the citizens more in touch with nature and so he tried to build a residential area within a park. Unfortunately, the location was very poor and nobody wanted to live here because it was so far from the city center and so only one house was sold in the area. It was made into a park, and this famous bench was designed with back support to make it especially comfortable for spectators. Also, the tile work is very typical of Gaudí in the way that they must all be broken to fit the curves of the architecture.

Am I a cheetah girl yet???

The next big thing we saw was the Sagrada Familia. Now, I have visited about a thousand cathedrals/basilicas/places of worship in the three weeks that I’ve been in Europe, but this was by far my favorite sight and quite possibly the neatest landmark I’ve seen so far.

This picture captures the effect of pollution in the city- the darker parts are what Gaudí was able to complete
before his death and the lighter ones were done after

The Sagrada Familia was constructed to be a temple for the Holy Family. When the project was passed on to Gaudí it quickly became so massive that he knew he would not finish it in his lifetime so he spent years drawing up plans and teaching his students so that they could continue. It has been in the works well over 100 years (since 1882 to be exact), and is projected to be finished in the year 2026 to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Gaudí’s death.

The basilica is constructed to commemorate the 3 most important part’s of Jesus’s life: his birth, death, and eternal life. There are 3 façades with towers, the Nativity, the Passion, and the Glory façade which is yet to be finished. There are 18 towers in the plans, 12 for the apostles, 3 for the holy family, and then the 3 for the façades. This is just a minor example of the intricacy that he used to design the basilica, every curve and structure was carefully thought out to commemorate something of the Christian faith and I could analyze it for hours. To sum things up, we were completely awestruck when we went inside and no amount of photos could do it justice.

While nothing could top this sight, there was still days worth of things left to do in Barcelona. One thing that we were set upon doing was seeing the magic fountain at the bottom of the Montjüic. This fountain puts on a light and water show every night at dusk, but the whole time I could not stop thinking about whether they were really wasting that much water or if it was all reused. Either way, the dancing fountain was a neat way to end our day.

Sunday morning we completed a walking tour of the Gothic and Born quarters of Barcelona. The Gothic quarter was built literally on top of Roman ruins and some of the buildings are simply continuations of what the Romans left behind. During this tour we got to go inside the cathedral of Barcelona, dedicated to Saint Eulalia. Important note: during our visit to Toledo, our guide was adamant that we understood the difference between a cathedral and a basilica. They are both similar in appearance and construction, but the only difference is that a the cathedral holds a special seat for the bishop.
Anyway, this cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona. She was a martyr who was killed at the age of 13 when Christians  were being prosecuted by the Romans because she asked why they hated Christians so much. Since she was 13 years old they decided to torture her in 13 different ways included rolling her down the street in a barrel filled with knives and burning her nipples to name a few. I think that dedication was very well deserved.

We were given some free time after this tour to explore the port and Las Ramblas, but I spent a majority of the time grabbing lunch with Sophia and Rachel who I was soooo excited to see again! We had a hard time getting in touch throughout the day so we didn’t really get to do anything in Barcelona together, but I did get my rosaries that I left with them in Rome which are now blessed by the pope.

Sorry for another excessively long post, but the weekends just keep getting better!!!  While we were super-tourists in Barcelona, I loved it so much more than the last time I visited and it is easy to see why it is quickly moving to the top of the list on the most visited European cities. You absolutely cannot come to Spain without a weekend here. I only have 2 more weekends left in Europe and then I will leave back to Arkansas. I have many many mixed emotions about this, so like I always choose to do, I’ll just wait to deal with them until I absolutely have to.

One more fun thing, my roommates/soulmates/best friends for ever are arriving in Valencia in TWO DAYS and we are taking on yet another super tourist and super duper fun European city next weekend!

See y’all soon!
Best,
Kassandra
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Read more from Kassandra at https://salazarinspain.wordpress.com/
Take a look at http://studiesabroad.com/programs/country/spain/city/valencia/duration/17 for more information about the ISA Valencia, Spain: Hispanic Studies Honors Program.