Day 4 – Wednesday 2nd July – Art Appreciation 101

Today, we are sight seeing central. No more of this wussy “let’s go round a big city block” or “lets go down to the waterfront”. Today we bring out the serious walking shoes and head off for distant horizons. Actually, we’re taking the tube to see the Segrada Familia – Gaudi’s master piece that was first started in 1882, Gaudi took over as the principal architect in 1883, worked on it for the remainder of his life (being killed when hit by a tram in 1925 and lived within its confines for the last years of his life) and is not due to be completed until 2030 – almost 150 years after its commencement.

I’d expressed my doubts about Gaudi in my previous post, but today we were off to see what is his masterpiece, and more than his life times work. In order to make an early start, we’d set the alarm for 7am, but with not being used to the time zones yet, we were both up at 4:30, finishing off the blog to date, setting up flickr to hold all the holiday snaps, and formatting the blog to contain photos of what we’ve been up to.

Despite what I said yesterday, we did have the breakfast deal at the hotel this morning, in order to get an early start and get to the cathedral as early as possible to avoid all the bus tourists that flock to the site.

The building itself from the outside is still very much reminiscent of a Lord of the Rings set, but it does have a certain appeal and you do have to admire the attention to detail in both the design and the external decoration of the building, even if it isn’t to everybody’s taste. Inside is a different matter. Although it does still have some quite eccentric touches, the whole effect is much cleaner and less fussy that what is presented on the exterior. Anne and I took the lift to the top of one of the spires and then walked down the spiral stair case. Having now visited this monument to a man’s dream, I have to say that my attitude to his work has softened considerably and I’ve now come up with my 5 reasons to love Gaudis work, even if the aesthetic isn’t exactly to your liking.

1. Courage – it takes real guts to design something as out there as the Segrada Familia
2. Dedication – over 80 years after his death, work continues on the building. As I said before it isn’t due to be completed until 2030
3. Skill – it takes real craftsmen to build something like this. Encouraging their work ahead of the drive for efficiency has to be supported
4. Design – forget how long it will take, or how much it will cost. This is what we want and if it takes 200 years, that’s what it will take and that’s the result we will have at the end of it. Once the design is finalised, there is no compromise on budget or time.
5. Architecture and Engineering – it is an architectural and engineering marvel, as you learn on the tour when they discuss the detail that has been gone into determining what materials will be used in delivering the final result.

Having been through and over the Segrada Familia, we set off on a long walk towards the harbour, but more specifically to the Arch d’Tromph and the Parc Du Citadella. From there it was on to the Picasso Museum. I’ve never been a huge Picasso fan, as I’m a bit too literal to “get” all those funny angles and perspectives that go into his work. However, seeing as how Barcelona is his adopted home town, there is a museum in his honour and not wanting to underestimate my ability to completely “miss to point”, I was keen to go and see what all the fuss was all about.

For the second time in a day, my whole perspective of an artist was changed. The Museum is an awesome overview of all his work and makes you aware of all the amazing things that he created and the broad range of techniques and materials that he used in his work.
Our next stop was the Palau de la Musica Catalana, with its beautiful façade. We couldn’t go inside to see it’s amazing glass roof, but will hopefully make a return visit in the next couple of days before we leave Barcelona.

Having been on the go since 8:30 in the morning and the time now approaching 2:30, with the temperature in the mid 30’s we decided to sit down for a couple of hours of lunch and wine.

Dinner is Tapas again tonight and we’re going to try and find an internet café, so that we can get the cost of internet down to something less than 15 Euros per day