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Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Sorry for the silly spacing of the last post, guys. I'll fix it when I can.
What's been going on lately? An epic quest to get into Gaudi's amazing church, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia.
We popped by in the lag afternoon two days ago, but we perceived the line as being very long, so we decided to go first thing the next morning, yesterday, theoretically before the rush. So, we took a dew pictures of the still super-cool exterior through the fence and left to do other things.
For some reason, though, we were under the impression that it opened at 10:00am, so after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we did the 25 minute walk or so to the church only to have our jaws almost literally drop in shock at how ridiculously long the lines were. They were almost three times as long as the day before's, and growing exponentially as tour bus after tour bus disgorged hundreds of tourists. We wiped a few tears of disappointment from our faces and then double-checked the opening time: 9:00am. Woe! We would endeavor again! We took a few more pictures before we left once more. All was not lost, though, as we still had a very lovely day walking trough the citadel park, checking out the aquarium and doing some shopping.
(I love little stalls selling antiques, especially in Europe, where the antiques are beyond just vintage and are actually OLD. I kind of regret not asking for the price of a cute little astrolabe ring sold near the statue of Christopher Columbus, but oh well.)
Anyway, so Ian's alarm didn't go off properly in the morning, so we woke up later than we wanted to. I had half a mind to just grab an apple and book it to the church (for the architecture, I swear! As I will soon explain!), but Ian and the others sat down foe a leisurely breakfast and mocked my anxieties. :/
Sure enough, when we got there is morning at 9:15, the line was growing fast. We were determined to go in this time, though, so we waited. It ended up being only about 25 minutes in line, but still! I firmly believe that if we'd gotten there even ten minutes earlier it would have saved us like 15 minutes of that wait.
But oh man, when we finally got in? SO COOL. Okay, if you've never heard of the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family?), google image it now.
The architect who masterminded this church from 1885 until his death in 1926 (trolly collision... Though the autocorrect on my iPod wanted to "correct" trolly with "frilly" which is NOT what happened.) Now, Gaudi's style is pretty... eccentric. My father hates it, but I find it too FASCINATING to be ugly. He's all about natural shapes and forms. Most of his buildings look very organic and/or like they're melting or a hallucination.
His buildings are epic, and scattered around Barcelona. Some of you on my mailing list will likely get postcards with photos of some of these crazy buildings on them. :)
I'm definitely going to do a picture post when I return with explanations of the crazy aspects & details of the architecture. The museum in it's basement, which had scale models of the various stages the church's design in it (becoming progressively less conservative and more eccentric as the years passed) taught me a lot. :)
I'll try to work in a few photos of other buildings by the man too. They have a habit of popping up sometimes in the city when you turn a streetcorner. You can't miss them.
Sorry for the silly spacing of the last post, guys. I'll fix it when I can.
What's been going on lately? An epic quest to get into Gaudi's amazing church, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia.
We popped by in the lag afternoon two days ago, but we perceived the line as being very long, so we decided to go first thing the next morning, yesterday, theoretically before the rush. So, we took a dew pictures of the still super-cool exterior through the fence and left to do other things.
For some reason, though, we were under the impression that it opened at 10:00am, so after a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we did the 25 minute walk or so to the church only to have our jaws almost literally drop in shock at how ridiculously long the lines were. They were almost three times as long as the day before's, and growing exponentially as tour bus after tour bus disgorged hundreds of tourists. We wiped a few tears of disappointment from our faces and then double-checked the opening time: 9:00am. Woe! We would endeavor again! We took a few more pictures before we left once more. All was not lost, though, as we still had a very lovely day walking trough the citadel park, checking out the aquarium and doing some shopping.
(I love little stalls selling antiques, especially in Europe, where the antiques are beyond just vintage and are actually OLD. I kind of regret not asking for the price of a cute little astrolabe ring sold near the statue of Christopher Columbus, but oh well.)
Anyway, so Ian's alarm didn't go off properly in the morning, so we woke up later than we wanted to. I had half a mind to just grab an apple and book it to the church (for the architecture, I swear! As I will soon explain!), but Ian and the others sat down foe a leisurely breakfast and mocked my anxieties. :/
Sure enough, when we got there is morning at 9:15, the line was growing fast. We were determined to go in this time, though, so we waited. It ended up being only about 25 minutes in line, but still! I firmly believe that if we'd gotten there even ten minutes earlier it would have saved us like 15 minutes of that wait.
But oh man, when we finally got in? SO COOL. Okay, if you've never heard of the Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family?), google image it now.
The architect who masterminded this church from 1885 until his death in 1926 (trolly collision... Though the autocorrect on my iPod wanted to "correct" trolly with "frilly" which is NOT what happened.) Now, Gaudi's style is pretty... eccentric. My father hates it, but I find it too FASCINATING to be ugly. He's all about natural shapes and forms. Most of his buildings look very organic and/or like they're melting or a hallucination.
His buildings are epic, and scattered around Barcelona. Some of you on my mailing list will likely get postcards with photos of some of these crazy buildings on them. :)
I'm definitely going to do a picture post when I return with explanations of the crazy aspects & details of the architecture. The museum in it's basement, which had scale models of the various stages the church's design in it (becoming progressively less conservative and more eccentric as the years passed) taught me a lot. :)
I'll try to work in a few photos of other buildings by the man too. They have a habit of popping up sometimes in the city when you turn a streetcorner. You can't miss them.