Saturday, February 26, 2000
Barcelona, Spain
You can click on any picture to see it larger
Port Vell and Las Ramblas
Well guess where we started the day...
After the birds we walked the few blocks up the street to the Manzana de la Dicordia (Block of Discord). The name comes from three houses remodled between 1898 and 1906. The discord comes each house was designed by one of the three leading modernista architects.
This one is Casa Batlló and was designed by none other than Gaudí himself. How about that? The facade is sprinkled with bits of blue, mauve and green tile and studded with wave-shaped window frames and balconies. The roof is blue uneven tiles with a solitary tower (the tower represents St George and the dragon).
This house is Casa Amatller and was designed by Puig i Cadafalch. It has Gothic window frames and s stepped gable borrowed from urban architecture of the Netherlands. The entrance hall and the staircse are lit by stained glass. It is next door to Casa Batlló (I couldn't get the third house which was on the other side of the Gaudí, and on the corner, but it's called Casa Lleo Morera).
Then we walked the other way, down Las Ramblas towards Port Vell. This is a statue of Christopher Columbus at the end of Las Ramblas. It was built in 1888 for the Universal Exhibition. Barcelona's claim to fame with Columbus is that he gave the delighted Catholic Monarchs a report of his first discoveries in the Americs. By the way, Columbus died in 1506 penniless and forgotten.
We headed across the wave shaped footbridge, Rambla de Mar, and went shopping for awhile at Maremàgnum (This is where L'Aquarium is also) which sits over the Mediterranean Sea. They have shops, places to eat, a multi-plex theater, the Aquarium and lots of space to sit on the docks over the water.
The middle of the wave bridge rotates to let boats in and out of the marina. There are warning gates (like for trains) and guards to keep pedestrains off of the part that rotates. It's really cool.
After spending a couple of hours shopping, looking around and eating we came back across the bridge and sat on some stairs to decide where to go next. Mackenzie started talking with this kid and they hung out looking at the fish and seagulls. When I called her and said it was time to go, she said "ok mom, let me just end my conversation with this kid, ok?" I waited about five minutes as they continued playing and talking and finally said we had to go. She said good-bye to her new friend and we were off. He's from England and that's about all she knows about him. They mostly talked about the fish.
We decided to head over to Montjuïc (Jewish Mountain). It's one of the two hills in Barcelona. There is a huge park, the Miro Museum, the Poble Espanyol, the Olympic Stadium (1992 Olympics), the Museum of Catalan Art and La Font Màgica. In the summer the fountains are illuminated and they do light shows. In the winter however, nothing. This is the view from below part of the fountains, they go all the way down the hill in terraces, but they were setting up for an exhibition so a lot of them were obstructed from the bottom, but it's quite impressive. On the left is the view overlooking the city from Montjuïc.
This is the Plaça d'Espanya and it was urbanised in 1929, the year of the Universal Exhibition held in Barcelona. It's at the bottom of the hill from the fountains, so if you are here, you can look straight up the street, up the hill and see all the fountains and the museum at the top. In the centre of the square is a large fountain designed by the architect Josep Maria Jujol, a collaborator of Antoni Gaudí, ornamented with sculptures in marble and bronze by Miquel Blay.
We took the Metro back to the end of Las Ramblas to walk back up the busy street with the vendors selling crafts, flowers, fruit, souveniers, and everything and the street acts with statues, people playing pianos, and doing art.
Mackenzie's favorite are the street statues. I gave her some change so she could toss some in the baskets of the ones that she liked.
This guy in the green was hilarious. He had the red frame and when you dropped money in, would hold it up around his face and make a face so you could take a picture. There was quite a crowd after awhile and he also would make fun and tease people in the crowd, but no matter what he was doing, if you dropped a coin, he's flip up the frame and change his look. Once three kids right after the other put money in and he switched around like nothing. Mackenzie walked away right after tossing the money in, so I ended up with more of her in the picture.
After hanging out looking at stuff along Las Ramblas we finally headed back to the hotel to pack.
We left Sunday morning...
but not without feeding the birds first.