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 ...
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