Took a few snapshots of the train ride.
After our gorgeous sunrise (we woke up at 5 am to leave by 6:30am train) we were able to sit and enjoy the eastern coast of Spain, that overlooked a bunch of quaint towns and ocean views and finally managed to arrive at our Hotel.
It was pretty nice (had air conditioning, AND normal showers)! We dropped off our bags then headed for immense touring. Literally from 11am until 7pm, no stops other than a 1 hr lunch. All walking. (15 min=1 mile, so you do the math) Lots of walking basically, but lots of good photos and stories too!
I don't have time to talk about all of the cool things with Gaudi tonight, but this should get it started. He was an amazing avant-garde architect who was so ahead of his time and took the simplest inspirations and made them uniquely artistic.
The park (initially designed to be an upscale neighborhood) that we visited, he designed to blend with the existing landscape. It was quite a trek up the long hill to the park, but so worth it! It was busy, but seeing the mosaics and locations I've seen only in movies was so amazing. :)
That was the entry to the park. Then we went to explore the main temple area, which was a meeting place to the whole neighborhood he designed.
They were just incredible, check out the detail on the mosiacs! Please, for my future bathroom, I'd love to have this tile design on my floor. Incréible!
Next, we went out on the balcony part overlooking the city, we got to see a flamenco dancer in action, which was pretty neat.
Our guide for Barcelona, Roda, told us the dancer was not very good, but it was definitely cool to watch for a few minutes of free entertainment. This week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, we have flamenco lessons so that should be really fun!
Next is a picture of our guide, Roda, with all the cameras! It was really funny because someone would ask for a photo and everyone would chime in, "me too! me too!" so she would just take them all like a trooper and snap snap away! She was really nice, an art student from the University of Barcelona and I learned a lot from her about Gaudi this weekend and some things from the Picasso Museum (no cameras allowed there unfortunately).
That was at a different place in the city, but I can't possibly list all the places we went in this post tonight, we really did trek all over town. Managed to get a few nice souvenirs too--proud of my spanish haggling skills with the Indian guy at the Spanish store selling things that say Barcelona but are made in China (haha).
But this last photo is of me and Emily at my favorite place so far, an apartment complex designed by Gaudi. Almost all the architectural symbolism is inspired by ocean elements, and I have lots of details for each so look for a more detailed report soon. Smiles from Valencia! Buenos noches a todos!!!!
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