De domingo

Well, I slept in a bit, and got a late start.  But I really wanted to go to la Sagrad Familia, which meant I was walking down Traversera de Gracia forever, plus the Cathedral line was frickin long. So, I didn’t get inside until mid-afternoon.  La Sagrada Famila was…phenomenal.  It was huge!  The first thing you saw was the enormous (side) entrance, literally all done up for over 500 feet with carvings and sculptures and spiraling and intricate designs and alcoves with more carvings inside—it was something else.  I don't really know to even describe it!

At first, I just waked around the building.  Gaudí (him again!) worked on this giant thing for years, in fact, he died working on it.  It still isn’t finished—and they think that it won’t be done for 25+ years!

The whole place is created to look like a forest, with columns and branches to look like trees.  The guy loves natural stuff, and everything, though carved from stone or marble, still had a natural feel.  Or so the museum said, anyway.  There were the stained glass windows too, which were a magnificent array of colors, and I do realllly like colors….

And then there were the towers.  That was the best part! I took the nativity lift, all the up to one of the super tall towers.  You come out of the little door, onto a narrow bridge.  You look down, and you realize just how frickin high up you actually are!  I’m not one to be afraid of heights, but I’ll admit, I felt, um, queasy, just a bit, as I stood there at the top with the four or five other people and surveyed the view around me.  And looked down.  They always say, don't look down cause then you’ll fall down.  I looked anyway, and well, I’m still here!  I also had an overwhelming desire to chuck something off the tower, but I’ve heard that from great heights, even a lightly tossed penny can turn into a mini torpedo! So, I resisted. 

From the top, you could see more fruit imagery, and you could tell that this guy really did like nature.  Barcelona could do with more green space—are isn’t a lot of grassy or wild areas—so I guess he was improvising!

Then, you get to walk down the nightmare-ish tower steps.  I say nightmare-ish because the interconnecting tunnels in the towers remind me of a narrow labyrinth with the possibility off falling out of a window and falling 400 +feet, and its just creepy.  If they didn’t put little running man signs (the exit sign) everywhere, I’d be sure to get lost!  And I’m pretty sure that that will happen in one of my dreams soon enough, and I’ll wake up drenched in sweat, panicked as I try to find a way out. 

Parc Guell was odd, I’d say.  It reminded me of anchient ruins meet a once-grand out-of-the-away square made of mosaics.  At first, it was designed to be a gated community (like we have today), but the idea was too modern and it failed (all rich people wanted to be right in town, amidst everything) and so it later became a public park.  It was decorated with columns that looked like upside-down termit mounds (yet they still looked really cool), with the center section lined with multicolored benches similar to some other details of Gaudí’s works. 

Then I walked home, but I started to get a little turned around because the blocks were uneven and I missed my street and turned at the wrong one, and ended up taking the longest possible route back to the house.  Oops.   At least I’m back now, snuggled into bed, jotting this down!  I think I’ll finish this and post in the morning though.  Hah!  Another difference between normal teaching and teaching non-natives—never explain what you’re doing (like I just did) because it will just confuse them. And on that note….

(Too bad it took me a week to actually post this…)