Barcelona - Stunning Architecture, Human Towers, & Modern Art

Barcelona was a fascinating place to visit. It's a city with unusual charm, and what probably charmed us the most was the architecture. One name stands out for architecture in this city - Antonio Gaudi. Gaudi designed and built numerous buildings during the last 1800's and early 1900's. Below are a couple of houses that he designed (notice the trademark curvy lines. His designs almost looks unreal or like a fantasy world or gingerbread house).







Above all his greatest work was large church called "The Sagrada Familia" or "Holy Family." This church is fascinating for many reasons, first of all that it was started in 1882 by Gaudi himself, but it is not yet finished and probably won't be until at least 2026! Gaudi designed the church and built the basic structure and one gate or facade to the church. Since his death in 1930, other architects and builders have carried on the plans and added on their own unique twists. So it was fun visiting a living, evolving work of art in the form of a huge building.



Below are pictures and videos of of 1) the church from above 2) the Nativity Facade (designed by Gaudi) 3) the Passion Facade (designed by several architects, including Josep Maria Subirachs).

Most Unusual Cathedral Ever - 1 from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

Most Unusual Cathedral Ever - 2 from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

Finally, we visited one of our favorite parks ever: Gaudi's Park Guell. It was trademark Gaudi, and there was something magic about being there - starting with the ginger-bread architechture and ending with guitar playing minstrells sereneding us as the sun set over Barcelona. Wow.













Other than sitting, watching, and talking to people, our favorite thing about traveling has been the wonderful surprises. We arrived in Barcelona on the perfect day - the last day of the city´s annual festival. To our surprise, Barcelona and the territory within which it sits - Cataluna, are very different from the rest of Spain (and proud of it!). In fact they were having meetings while we were there to push for their independence from Spain. They speak their own language, called Catalan, which is more similar to French in some ways than Spanish.


The festival that we happened upon celebretated the region's unique Catalan identity. During this festival there were many free concerts and performances throughout the city. The tourbook we used recommended going to the cathedral to watch traditional dancing called Sardana. We came across not one dance, but a whole competition from all over Catalonia and of all age groups. Each group of people would hold hands, do some fancy footwork, and spin around for 15 minutes at a time.

In the next plaza over we found more dancing, but this time only one group at a time. It reminded us of square dancing.

Traditional Dancing in Barcelona from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

The next plaza we came to held yet another amazing spectacle, called a Castell (Catalan for castle). They´re pyramids made of human beings!. Different communities have teams, called peñas. Team members climbing up other team members to form the next level. The goal is to form nine levels of three people. We saw lots of successful groups and only one tumbling tower, which received a loud collective gasp from the crowd as a little 6 year old with a helmet tumbled down from 50 feet in the air. Luckily they've been doing this sort of thing since the 18th century and the kid wasn't hurt.

Human towers from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

There were lots of people in the historical center for all of the festivities. We decided to go relax and take a nap in the park. We arrived to the park, and there were lots of people there too. We found a spot in the grass and had a brief siesta. We woke up to some music. There were theatre and dance troupes performing around the park.

The first we saw was quite surreal with semi-traditional American music and dancers on a single stilt. It seemed quite Mary Poppins-esque. Check this out!

Mary Poppins in Barcelona from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

Then there was a troupe of dancing yellow jackets. The video is kind of hard to make out, but seeing yellow jackets hopping about was scary, weird and entertaining all at the same time.

Dancing Yellow Jackets from Chad Carson on Vimeo.

After Barcelona we headed back to Madrid for a day or so, where we visited with one of Kari's old friends. The next day we took a flight back to the U.S., where we'd spend a short time in preparation for the next leg of our adventure - Peru and South America.


Stay tuned ...

Tranquility on the Rocky Coast of Spain- Cadaques

For our last bit of time in Spain we headed up the Mediterranean coast to Barcelona and Cadaques. Cadaques, which is less than an hour from France, was made famous for being the town where famous Spanish painter Salvador Dali made his home. It is a small town that used to be primarily a fishing village but now is a relaxing holiday destination. It is one of the picture perfect villages on the Mediterranean Coast that you see in vacation magazines. The houses are painted white and the doors and windows are blue.

Cadaques was a rejuvinating place where we spent most of our time reading, talking and sitting on overlooks watching the bay at different times of the day... noon, sunset and night time.

We rented a small apartment tucked into a small street.

Here's the kitchen corner nook with Chad hard at work.
Here's Kari relaxing on the sofa. Upstairs was a small loft with a bed.

We didn't quite have views of the bay, though we were quite close.

We did have a small artist colony workshop below our apartment.

We had some great food, both at home and out on the town. We ate lots of Spanish cheese and of course sampled the local wines. Here's a fantastic salad dinner Chad prepared for us.

Quite festive!Chad was inspired by the airs of Salvador Dali in Cadaques!

For another meal, we ate a Paella mixta in a local restaurant. It's similar to the paella in Valencia in that it has seafood, but it's with brown rice not a saffron.

YUM!!!

The owner of the restaurant made it clear that he's not Spanish but rather, Catalan.

The autonomous community of Catalan is currently asking for its independence. Who knows if it will ever happen, but there is quite a sense of pride in Cataluna. In fact, the signs are mostly in Catalan, and some children don't even learn Spanish in school!

We went on a hike one day to the Cap d'Creus, a lighthouse overlooking the sea.

Here's Kari setting out:

Here's Chad inspecting the trail:

The terrain was interesting- a mix of cacti (ouch!!), olive trees and scrub brush.

There were also many beautiful views of Spain's Costa Brava and the Mediterranean along the way.

Along the trail, we passed Dali's house, which is tucked into a bay in Cadaques.Salvador Dali was originally from Figueres, which is less than an hour from Cadaques. Later in his life, the town donated the delapidated town theater to him, which he turned in to a musuem for many of his works. It was a great museum with too many photos to takes. Here's a picture of one of the sculptures in the patio of the museum.

After our visit to Figueres and Cadaques, we took a bus south to Barcelona for a couple of days.

Valencia- Tom and Nancy's Final Port

Our journey with Nancy and Tom came to a close with a visit to Valencia on Spain's eastern coast. We happily returned the rental car after one of Chad's greatest navigational successes... returning the car to the train station in a big city with no map and no signage.


Just a few steps from the station is the main plaza. It´s different and more modern than the other cities we visited. This is the view of the plaza from our hotel window... Not bad!!

The buildings everywhere were beautiful, even this market, though the goods here weren´t quite as entertaining as those in Salamanca.

Yet another impressive building...

Valencia is famous for its paella, so we were sure not to miss any. We headed to the beach to some of the world´s best paella restaurants.

Paella can be made of many different sorts of ingredients. Rice is the base ingredient, and it can include different types of meat, such as sausage and chicken, or seafood (clams, shrimp, octopus, you name it!) and also some veggies such as peppers and peas. We decided to try two different types... chicken for Chad and Nancy and seafood for Kari and Tom.

After the delicious paella lunch, we walked over to the docks to look at the sailboats.

The boats were beautiful.

Between the boats and the paella, we were blown away- literally!!

It was one windy day!

We had lots of fun out on the town with Tom and Nancy. They were such fantastic traveling partners throughout the whole trip. I´m not just saying that because they´re my in-laws. Since we´ve traveled a bit more now, we´ve found that it can be hard to travel with certain people, but it was so easy and lots of fun exploring new places with Nancy and Tom.

Here we our on our last excursion together :(-- to the train station in Valencia. The station itself is quite beautiful, and it´s decorated with fruits, including oranges, since Valencian oranges are also famous.

Nancy and Tom caught the AVE fast train to Madrid to catch a flight back to Atlanta, and the next day Chad and I took a bus up the coast to Barcelona and Cadaques for some more exploring.

Arab Echos & Fortresses, Firey Flamenco, WOW - Granada

Arrival:
We arrived in Granada with no trouble thanks to Chad's great driving and Nancy's exceptional navigational skills. Granada is one of the most populur places to visit in Spain. It has a sultry, mysterious feel to it, compared with some of the charming, stately cities in other parts of Spain. There is more of a gypsy, alternative feel to Granada, and its known for it's artists, for its passionate flamenco dancers, and for being the last Moorish (Arabic) strong hold in the battles between Christian and Islamic rulers in Spain. The crowning symbol of this era of Moorish rule in Spain is the Alhambra or "Red Fortress", which is an imposing palace-fortress-town perched atop a large terrace above the rest of the town.

Finding a Place to Stay:
When arriving in a new town, our first challenge is to find a place to stay. After walking around a while with our backpacks, we found a nice hostel that had two pleasant rooms. It's always a testy occasion when we pick a hotel, because in the past Chad's desire to get a "deal" has led to some edgy or unclean rooms. But this time Chad helped find a decent place with rooms for 40 Euros (about $60 per night), right near the center of all the attractions in Granada. As we found later it wasn't in fact perfect: Chad and Kari's shower door was missing, but with a few yoga maneuvers and sharp aim of the shower, you could avoid soaking the floor completely.

Picture of street outside of our Hostel

Flamenco:
Since we missed the flamenco show in Sevilla, we made sure not to miss out in Granada. Walking all over each town was our favorite pasttime, and our first night in Granada was no exception. After several hours Tom Carson was understandably beginning to question our meandering throughout the medieval streets of Granada, when we finally found a restaurant that had a good flamenco show. The show had four musicians, one of which was did the "palmas" (hand clapping). The show and dinner was set inside of a courtyard, virtually hidden from the street entrance.

The second night in Granada was even better. We wondered up to the part of town that was traditionally inhabited by Gypsies (although it's become a bit of a stereotype more than an actual group, Gypsies were a nomadic culture of people in Europe, who among other things were known for their music and dancing. The origins of Flamenco have roots in the Gypsy culture). Among the hills we found very cool caves carved into the mountain that are now used as houses, restaurants, and flamenco stages. We picked one and were mesmerized by the show, up close and personal.

Hand clapping and the sound of the dancers' heels on the ground are a huge part of the percussion in flamenco dancing. Sometimes castanets (little hand clappers made of wood) are used too, but not in the shows we saw. If you've never seen a flamenco dancer before, it's really a spectacle. One dancer (male or female) dances at a time, and each one displayed their own unique attitude and passion, reflected in his or her face, the movement of his or her arms and the way the females use their dresses for punctuation. At one point in the dance there may be a pause, and then the dancers really move their legs rapidly (if you watched cartoons as a kid, it sort of looks like the road runner's blurred leggs when he's running).

The video below isn't ours, but it's very similar to what we saw:



Highlight of Trip: Visit to the Mighty Alhambra
For all four of us the most spectacular part of our entire trip was a nearly day-long visit to the impressive fortress/city - the Alhambra. We have never seen anything like it before. Physically you can't miss it from anywhere in Granada because it's strategically perched atop a hill terrace above the city.



We hiked up a big hill from our hostel:


This is a picture of Kari a.k.a. Vana White, posing in front of one of the Arab gates within Granada:


We were surprised to find that the Alhambra wasn't just a fortress and palace for the Moorish ruler; it also contained a town with thousands of people within its walls. In many respects the Arab scholars, engineers, craftsman, and architects were actually far ahead of their Christian counterparts during the so called "dark ages" of Europe.

Nothing displays their skill better than their harnessing of the power of water into beautiful fountains, relection pools, bathhouses, and small canals. In the Islamic mythology, water is a symbol of oppulance and wealth. Heaven is often portrayed filled with abundant water flowing into fountains and pools - much like the scene at the Alhambra. A river runs into Granada, and it was actually diverted through a large conduit by the Moors 5 miles before the Alhambra complex. The natural flow of the river was used to power fountains and to fill serene reflection pools:

The picture below shows one of the most elaborate fountains within the palace. As you can see in this picture (unfortunately not our picture, because the lions were being restored during our vist), the lions aren't spouting water like they should. We heard the story that the engineering of this water fountain was so complex and elaborate that when the Christian conquerors took over the palace in the late 1400's, they took apart the Lion fountains to see how they worked... and no one has ever been able to get them to work again to this day!

As we walked on a path within the Alhambra, water gently ran down either side of our path in man-made channels or gutters. These gutters would be diverted all over the complex, including into the palaces.


Occassionally we'd see a waterfall.


Once inside the walls of the Alhambra, we began by touring the Sultan's palace. We were blown away by the intricate stone-work. Islamic art was and is different than many other forms, because the artist typically doesn't portray human figures, an object of art frowned upon in the Koran. Instead, the stone work displays symbols, poetry in Arabic, scriptures from the Koran, and geometrical figures carved into stone. The pictures of course don't do the scenes justice, but here they are:

Outside of the palace were lush gardens, with fruit trees, vegetable gardens (in Moorish times, enough food to feed the city), varieties of flowers, and hedges trimed into the shapes of castles! We strolled through the gardens and had a picnic lunch.

The Moorish rulers also had a summer palace in the complex:

The entire Alhambra is shaped like a ship, and on the front of this ship was the military fortress, with tall towers providing views of Granada and the entire valley:


We were pleasantly exhausted after our Alhambra visit, and we snacked on tapas, drank some more wine, and prepared for our next (and final leg of the trip with Tom and Nancy) to the ocean front city of Valencia, home to the famous food: Paella.