Gaudí is Everywhere!

Today my class visited the three most prominent works of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. Gaudí was an interesting guy, and a lot of his work was way ahead of his time. You can read more about him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Gaud%C3%AD

1. Passieg de Gracia - a busy street with three buildings designed by Gaudí. This one takes the shape of waves in the ocean, and the balconies look like seaweed. 

This one also has a wave-like feel to it. The outside is covered in oddly shaped pieces of colorful stone, a trademark of Gaudí's style.

 2. La Sagrada Familia - an ENORMOUS basilica designed by Gaudí. This photo was my best attempt to capture the whole thing. The church stands way above any other buildings around. I would not have believe it if I hadn't seen it. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia

Gaudí died in 1926, before the church was finished. In fact, it still isn't finished. His design includes 18 huge pointy towers, and so far only 8 have been completed. Our tour guide said she thinks they will try to finish by 2026, which will mark the 100-year anniversary of Gaudí's death. I'll have to come back to see the finished product :) People have probably been saying that for a very long time...

My favorite part was the amazing stained glass work. It's hard to tell from this photo, but this stained glass is probably 50 meters high. The colors are phenomenal.

Here you can see the construction in action and you can get a sense of how monstrous this building is.

 This is a photo of a scaled model of the Sagrada Familia. The brown parts (that you can barely see on the left) are what has been built. The white parts (most of the model!) are the parts that haven't been built yet. This thing is going to be HUGE!

3. Park Guell - Gaudí designed two houses that look like gingerbread houses and a whole bunch of other structures built into the mountainside. At the top, you can see the whole city, all the way to the Mediterranean sea in the background. We ate our sandwiches at picnic tables in the park and soaked up the sun. It was a great excursion. You can read my earlier entry about Park Guell here: http://woodkelly.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/parc-guell.html

I am absolutely wiped out from walking around all day in the heat, but I'll have a little more about these awesome places tomorrow night.