Barcelona

Olympic Park at night

Saturday, March 24, 2012 -- 10:50PM

Barcelona is easily my favorite city that I have ever been to. It is wonderfully gridded and organized really well. At one end you have the beach, which is one of the best in the world. On the end you have some mountains cornering the city into this remote corner on the water. The architecture is great, the people are great, the night life is great, etc. We stayed a youth hostel so the room was 5 bunk beds, so all 9 of our guys were stuffed into one room with one toilet, one sink, and two showers. It was interesting, but not too bad.


We had a late start due to traveling so we started with Mies van der Rohe's German Pavilion, maybe one of my favorite pieces of architecture. Spaces defined by shifting planes at perfect proportions. The materials are fantastic and a little water to top it all off. After some intense sketching we set off up the hill some more to a Joan Miro museum. As the sun was setting we made our way to the 1992 Olympic park. We entered some odd fake village walls that Barcelona built for entertainment. There are a bunch of shops and restaurants inside the walls gate and it is apparently all just made for fun. We had dinner here and I ate snails and ox tail. They were pretty crazy, but absolutely delicious.

German Pavilion -- Mies

The next day we walked around and saw some markets designed by famous architects. Then we finally made it to the beach! We were only able to walk around the beach for a little bit before heading back to see more architecture. Next was Santa Maria Del Mar a church made completely of stone blocks. Very refreshing structurally from the stuff we had seen in Italy. On our way to Parc Guell by Gaudi I stopped into a shop and then lost the group. Luckily Jess waited behind for me and we navigated our way to the area up the mountain a bit. When we got there we couldn't find our group so we toured around the Parc and then eventually just decided to stop looking for our group and got some beers to drink while sitting out in the parc. We watched these two 10 year old boys destroy these two 20 yr old guys in soccer. It was awesome. We finally met up with some of the others in our group and walked down to Barcenoleta (The area near the beach/port) and watched the sunset over some drinks. We had tapas and then went out to the Dow Jones bar, a bar themed after the stock market. Certain drinks fluctuated price based on how many of them were getting bought. The market would crash like once an hour and everything would go down a Euro. It was pretty awesome.

Parc Guell -- Gaudi

Our last group day in Barcelona began with Torre Agbar by Jean Nouvel. Around this area were a bunch of buildings with double facades to protect from the solar gain. It was like an Environmental Building System block of buildings. We then went to the Cam Framis Museum which was a really nice restoration of two old buildings connecting them with a contemporary design. Then it was finally time for the infamous Sagrada Familia by Gaudi. This cathedral has been on and off construction since the 80s. Inspired by parabolic forms and spanish style, this cathedral is absolutely gorgeous. It is such an old design but the construction is still going on so all the finishings seem so new. Should be done in the next 20 years and I really hope to be able to return. We climbed one of the towers which was over 20 stories high. It was pretty alarming since the stairs and corridors were very small and there were gaping holes in the walls. We then walked down the street to another Gaudi project called La Pedrera. More crazy forms but in the program of a residents. It had a cool Dr. Seuss like roof terrace that we spent a decent amount of time on. We had Paella for dinner. That night we went clubbing at Razmatazz. It was insane. 7 different rooms on different levels with separate DJs and dance floors. So much fun. We didn't get in til 5ish, and that was leaving early for these people.

Cam Framis Museum

Sagrada Familia -- Gaudi

La Pedrera -- Gaudi

Spring Break officially started and Bobby, Rick and I spent our first day seeing more of Barcelona because our flight to London wasn't until 9PM. We started with a Herzog & de Meuron convention center down by the beach. We walked along the beach for a long time. Saw some surfers which was legit. We walked all the down until we made it the Frank Gehry Fish in front of the SOM tower. We took the subway to Las Ramblas for lunch and shopped around for a bit. Then we headed up towards Gardens and Olympic park again. We kinda got lost walking around this neighborhood and ended up in some soccer field where there was an adult game going on. Some random old dude started yelling at us in spanish so we just left and finally found our way up to the gardens. We got to see the Olympic Park in the sunlight this time. We headed back to the hostel to prepare for the rest of our trips to London, Stuttgart, & Munich. Those posts will come soon.

Herzog & de Meuron

Fish -- Frank Gehry

Olympic Park in the day