barcelona photos

I have a lot of pictures. I'll get all my spring break stuff up eventually, I promise, but it's going to take a while. For starters, here's some Barcelona. Did you know they speak Catalan there? I didn't. They all speak Castellano too, but due to a history of separatist movements and a big dose of nationalism, speaking primarily Catalan is a big point of pride.

We stayed in a cheap hotel in the Gothic Quarter, near Las Ramblas and not far from the waterfront. Skye's friend Caitlin showed us around a bit and we ate a lot of falafel. I don't really have the energy to go into detail about all of this, so I'm just going to put up the pictures. Barcelona was fun, but we were there for the only four days of bad weather they've had all year.

Out the window of our hotel, looking down towards Las Ramblas:



The entrance to the market off Las Ramblas (fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, entire baby pigs in refrigerated cases, fresh fruit juice, candied pineapples, expensive chocolates, candy in the shape of a fried egg):



The market:



Skye and our fruit juices:



Because the weather was nasty and we couldn't go to the beach, we saw a looooot of Gaudi architecture. This is the interior of the Sagrada Familia, which is not yet completed. A cathedral Gaudi-style:



This is all Sagrada Familia and a view of Barcelona from the top of one of the towers.











Las Ramblas:



Facade of a Gaudi house, La Pedrera:



Roof of said Gaudi house (or properly, apartment building):



Interior courtyard:



And mosaic on a ceiling:



Facade of La Pedrera:



Tapas! Definitely one of the best things about Barcelona:



Parc Guell (Gaudi-designed); the iguana is very famous, apparently. I rather liked him.





A house in Parc Guell, where Gaudi lived for a while but which he did not design:



These tiles are all over Barcelona's streets; they're mockups of tiles Gaudi put in the children's bedroom of at least one apartment in La Pedrera.



The rest of this is Parc Guell and a view of Barcelona towards the Mediterranean.













The beach, overcast:



The waterfront:



The Gaudi house we didn't make it to, Casa Batllo -- we tried, but couldn't find it. I saw it out the window of the airport shuttle the day I was leaving, in a totally obvious location that we just completely missed.



So there! Barcelona. It was cool. But I definitely heard more English, German and Italian than Spanish. Also Catalan -- I am unclear as to why there are so many American students studying Spanish there, since it's definitely a secondary language. Even all the signs and menus are in Catalan.