Gaudy Gaudi

Ah, today was gaudy! And not in a bad way whatsoever, a very Gaudi way.

This morning we started out at the supermarket again buying more food (since it's much cheaper than eating out) and we headed off to see La Sagrada Familia, which is this amazing cathedral designed by Gaudi which was started in 1882 and still isn't even close the being finished. It was amazing walking through it and then going down underneath the building to see the museum which includes all of the mock-ups and shows Gaudi's inspiration from nature for the designs within the architecture. (Wikipedia has a decent webpage if you'd like to know more.) On the way there, because we walked, we even saw a few of Gaudi's casas, which looked like they were made of peanut brittle, caramel, and candy - very whimsical and storybookish.

Then, in the afternoon, we met up with another IES-er who was supposed to be in Barcelona with us but arrived a little late. This time we decided to take the metro over to Park Guell since we walked for an hour over to La Sagrada Familia - or at least that's what the guidebook had told us. Turns out from the metro stop, it's about a mile hike straight up a hill to get to the park. And guess who was carrying the backpack with all the water and food? I suppose I shouldn't complain because Jess had been carrying it all morning, but man, that hill was steep. The whole time all I could think of was the runners from Kenya who train in the mountains.

Then finally, we had lunch and wandered around the park for a few hours (which was soo cool!), saw some street (park?) performers, and headed back to the hostel. We ended up going out for dinner to a Mexican restaurant called La Negra Rose and all had delicious burritos.