Gracias Barcelona

You’ve been a great place.

For the full panorama, click on the picture.

This will be the last post for the blog. Thanks for reading, I hope you’ve enjoyed the photos.

Dear Antoni Gaudi

Park Guell is beautiful. Thanks again – where did you find the time to put all this together while you were working on the church? Or Casa Batllo? Or Casa Mila?

Sincerely,

Happy Birthday, Alternative Creative Youth Home!

Last night we celebrated the second year of the Alternative Creative Youth Home. Most of the staff and some of the residents headed over to this funky little bar to grab a drink and celebrate!

As I mentioned before, the staff are really what makes this place great. Al (the guy crouched in front in the first photo) runs the place and is here all the time, hanging out with residents, finding cool events and activities, etc. The rest of the staff gives off this vibe too – you feel like part of a big family.

Congratulations, Alternative Creative Youth Home! May you have many more fantastic years.

Montjuic de Nit

There was about a 10 minute period after I settled into my hostel where started to panic slightly. “I have 5 days to fill! What am I going to do? I don’t know anybody! ” This ended about as quickly as it began. The people here are great. The staff of the hostel is incredibly fun, and considering that this is damn close to peak tourist season, the number of crazy, cool backpackers/suitcasers is astounding.

And then there was Montjuic de Nit.

Montjuic de Nit was a huge art festival that took place all over Montjuic, including the National Palace (also the National Museum as previously blogged), the fountain, and all of the gardens. Quite awesome. Quite.

The night began with the fountain in the spotlight – a waterworks show set to music. The water was lit in such a way that it seems as if the water was replaced with neon paint that changed color when it felt like it.

The evening continued with hip-hop,

graffiti,

and finished with lots of dancing that ended at around 4:30AM. I believe I have fully adjusted to Barcelona time.

New Digs

Parents and brother somewhere over the Western Europe right now. Checked out of the swankilicious CRAM and into the funky Alternative Creative Youth Home. I’m absolutely shocked I haven’t done the hostel thing before – this is right up my alley. I’m still getting used to Barcelona time (or maybe just European time? This is my first foray into Europe as an “adult”) – the beds at the hostel were full at noon and lunch seems to start at 4 and end at 7.

Markets

 A collection of images from markets in Barcelona.

A bar in the middle of El Mercat de St. Josef.

You say Paseo, I say Palau…

The National Catalonian Museum of Art dominated our time today. The museum is located inside the National Palace:

On the way there, I asked the cab driver to take us to to “El Palau Nacional.” He looked confused and said it didn’t exist anymore, and explained why (in Catalan, so your guess is as good as mine as to what on earth he said) Turns out he thought I said “paseo nacional,” which means national street. This would explain the confusion. Some additional guesses about wording and we were on our way…

The museum shows the works of Catalonian artists ranging from the first century to the current era. This includes frescoes peeled from the walls of Roman churches:

To early religious works:

To El Greco (one of my faves):

To a boatload of modern works:

Seeing a cultural slice of each of these eras shows how incredibly influential this area has been to art history. There was so much great stuff it was hard to keep up. Again, lots more in the Flickr stream to check out.

Hotel CRAM

Mom did really frickin’ well in picking a hotel. This place is mega-swanky, has small but very nice rooms, and is in a fantastic area. And apparently she got a really great deal. Go Mom.



It also turned out to be about 4 blocks from the hostel I’ll be staying in next week, and we booked completely independently. Great minds think alike.

Morning with Dad, Evening with Mom

Today we split up into pairs to check out different sights as we all have mentioned we were particularly interested in different attractions. This morning was the Picasso museum with my father. It was a very interesting set of exhibits showing the progression of Picasso’s life, with many of the practice paintings and studies he created. Unfortunately, there was no photography allowed. However, the building itself was ancient and had beautiful stonework.

Afterwards we ventured over to 4 Cats, the restaurant/bar that provided Picasso his first gallery show. It was an epicenter for the avantguarde in the area, and is now a nice restaurant we plan on going to before we leave.

After lunch, my mother and I visited the Barcelona Cathedral.

There are some more pretty cool pictures in my Flickr photostream. Actually, there are more pictures for all of the posts I’ve created if you’re interested in seeing more of any of the places I’ve blogged about.

Details

One thing that has yet to get old about Europe is the sheer about of content crammed into every square inch. Everything, big and small, has an extra level of thought and beauty you just don’t find in the US.

This is one of many “collection” posts I hope to create over the course of my trip. Let me know if there’s any theme you’d like to see for one of these – I’m more than happy to point my lens wherever you’d like