Kyle Hepp

August 9, 2011

Before I go any further, I want to ask you all for some feedback — what can I do to make travel posts more interesting to you? When I did the annual survey for this blog, people wanted more travel posts. But travel posts don’t get many comments. So I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong and how I can fix that! Please tell me what sort of things you’d rather see. I really appreciate any and all info that I can use to make these posts better!

Leave a comment or email me please!

So on to this post about Barcelona.

I was thinking.

What makes Barcelona so damn special? Why does EVERYBODY love it (myself included)?

Why did visiting this city breath new life into me and inspire me, while Paris didn’t do it for me. How do some places creep into who we are and make us want to go back again and again and again (Patagonia) while others are fun, but they just don’t totally suck us into their vortex (Buenos Aires)? By the way, go back to that Patagonia post and look at those photos. They took my breath away thinking again about how beautiful it is there.

I adored Barcelona with all my heart and soul. And sure, there’s a lot of cool stuff to see and do there and Gaudi is amazing so visiting La Sagrada Familia was absolutely one of the highlights of my travels to anywhere — but one artist can’t be the only draw.

Is it the people? I don’t think so. Everybody we encountered was extremely pleasant but we didn’t run into the kind of over the top, crazy niceness people everywhere like we did in Oslo, for example. Well except for Mar. She’s over the top crazy nice to us because she loves my family and we love her

So then I thought, could it be the food? Because, yeah, food can totally make or break a destination for a foodie travel *cough, my friend Emily, cough.* But since I’m such a picky eater, good food isn’t usually such a big base of my liking or disliking a place.

Then I wondered — is it me?

Did I simply arrive in Barcelona with a state of mind ready to love it? I was so happy to be on vacation, after working so hard, to be there with my favorite husband in the world, in the sunshine after several chillier destinations — could that be it? But that doesn’t explain why every single other person I’ve ever talked to who has been there also loves it.

My last theory is that it’s such an artistic city. But the beauty is so diverse — cool architecture, awesome murals, interesting graffiti, weird statues, pretty gardens, etc. — that Barcelona inspires a wide variety of people. And then diverse people come back and bring with them more diverse ideas and make more diverse art and the cycle of awesomeness continues. Just a thought.

On to La Pedrera, also known as Casa Milá. This is another famous building made by Gaudi. It doesn’t have a straight line in it anywhere.

One floor has a whole apartment on display, the attic is a little museum about the building, and the roof is open for those who pay to go in — but the rest of the building is private residences. I can’t even imagine how much it must cost to own a place there. You’re living inside an actual work of art — can you imagine?!

The building was designed so that each apartment has light coming in from both sides — the inner courtyard as well as the outside windows from the street. As a photographer, I have a serious appreciation for Gaudi making good light a priority in all his architectural designs.

The rooftop is another planet. He took all the shafts that normally come out of a roof and turned them into ghoulish looking, monstrous…I don’t even know what to call them. Monstrous thingys.

Some of them look so evil — I think that Gaudi must have been a seriously disturbed genius.

Hey! Look who’s wearing pants! Hammer pants, at that!

They say Gaudi used nature as inspiration for all his works. If I recall correctly he used the vertebrae of a snake as inspiration for this building. You can see all the curves far more prominently in the attic.

This is a mirror showing how Gaudi used Parabolic curves in La Sagrada Familia. In case you don’t remember your elementary school education, like me, let me explain. When you hold a string on two ends and it falls in the middle, the result is a parabolic curve. So there were these chains hung from the ceiling so show the church’s design, and in the mirror reflected below, you can see how the Sagrada Familia came out.

This is inside the apartment that’s on display.

The doorknobs were all molded straight from a person grabbed some pliable substance.

And this. THIS. Let me tell you about this. I saw this collar in the window of the gift shop below and though, “Must. Have. I want this to be my souvenir from Barcelona.” I always buy myself one item of clothing as a souvenir from everywhere we go. To me, fashion is one of the most representative things of a new place and I love that I can buy something from Spain or France or wherever, and where it regularly and remember my trip every time someone says, “That’s cute, where did you get it?”

So anyways. I looked at this. I thought it might be expensive. But I figured I’d splurge if necessary, that it is beautiful enough that it’d be worth it.

We went in.

Any guesses as to how much it cost?

Waait for it. Waaaaaaait for it.

950 Euros!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boo. Too much of a splurge. But isn’t it amazing?

After buying a scarf for Seba’s mom from the gift shop we wandered down the street a ways to get something to eat. We were hungry but didn’t want to eat right near there because obviously those restaurants KNOW that the Casa Pedrera is full of tourists and they charge accordingly. So we found a nice spot with outdoor seating and patatas bravas — our only two criteria.

Patatas bravas are potatoes with a spicy sauce on top, and this place had garlic aoli served on them as well. YUM. My mouth is watering thinking about how good they were.

Seba was a happy camper that day.

Man, I miss Barcelona. I would move there in a heartbeat.

If you’re looking for a late deal on holidays find more information here.