Tuesday, June 24, 2014

June 24, 2014 -- Barcelona

Today I walked from the "youth" hostel to Parc Güel, a public park that was designed by Barcelona's famous architect Gaudi. You may have heard of the Church of the Sacred Family (Temple a la Sagrada Familia) whose construction began in1882 and which is expected to take 30 more years to complete. That is one of Gaudi's works.

I last visited Parc Güel with my daughter Inge decades ago when she was a teenager (I might meet a disasterous end if I revealed how old she is now). Then the entire park was free, but now there is a charge and long lines of tourists at the most desirable parts of it. There are also notices around the park supposedly posted by its neighbors in Catalán, Spanish, and English protesting the admission charges and the fact that the City has paved over areas of the park that were previously green.

The following picture is a "selfie" showing the City of Barcelona below. The gray is not smog. It was a cloudy and slightly foggy day, a perfect background for a foggy old man.
 


Barcelona has thousands of interesting buildings, many of them old apartment buildings. Even someone as artistically ignorant as I can appreciate them. The following photo shows one of the several buildings that caught my attention as I walked  to the park and back.


A strange substance started falling from the sky as I walked home. Being an unsophisticated yokel from Phoenix, I had no idea what it was until I asked a passer-by. He said it's called rain.

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