18 June

Barcelona. Today was Gaudi Day. We visited the Casa Milà, Sagrada Família, and Park Guell today. Andy's pedometer read 7.94 miles at the end of the day. Andy would like to emphasize that it was uphill both ways.

We started with an incredible breakfast at the hotel buffet. The buffet has everything from freshly squeezed orange juice, espresso, water, yoghurt, varieties of jamon (ham), cheese, boiled or fried eggs, cereals, varieties of bread and rolls, fruit smoothies, and more. It's possible to have some regional specialties including the Catalan sausages with white beans. Another regional item is toast that is rubbed with horizontally sliced tomato, garlic, a splash of olive oil and a bit of salt. The buffet also has anchovy filets that would also be eaten with olive oil on a slice of bread. I've found a couple of new food items that I like. One of them is basically potato hashbrowns. They appear to be baked and are thicker than what we have at home. I also like a fruit called piel de sapo, or 'toad skin'. It tastes like a watermelon, but is much sweeter. The skin is green with streaks of yellow and the fruit is white.

We started at the Casa Mila. It was designed by Antoni Gaudi as a private home for the Mila family. The Milas lived on what we would call the second floor and they rented the other floors to other well heeled families. The building was the first in Barcelona with an elevator, but it took 15 minutes to go from the bottom to the top of the building, so many people took the stairs instead. Gaudi was 100 years ahead of his time in the design of his buildings. He took inspiration from shapes found in nature and gave careful thought to things like working with the natural environment for lighting and air cooling. He did such things as tiling rooms (in another house) with lighter tiles for the walls of lower floors and gradually going darker on upper floors and adding extra windows to the lower floors in order to have an even amount of light on each floor. We get the term "gaudy" from Gaudi because of the over-decoration of his buildings and the use of vulgar materials in construction that the rich found too common.

We viewed the Casa Batlló from the outside on the way to Sagrada Familia. Sagrada Familia is a cathedral that Gaudi started working on but did not complete. He left plans for the overall design, but left elements such as the design of the stained glass and sculptures of the facade for future generations to design and create.

The cathedral is designed for the modern age. Gaudi designed a new kind of column that supports the weight of the roof without the need for the flying buttresses that are used in Gothic cathedrals. His columns look like tree trunks that have knobs and branch off. The knobs have large images that represent the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) at the crossing of the transept and the nave. Those columns eventually rise to form spires above the roof. Once completed, the cathedral will have 18 spires. The other columns have jewel-like decorations that look a bit like electric pearls. I really like how the cathedral is built for the modern age and makes use of modern materials, colors, electricity, and equipment.