Barcelona: Sunday

Sunday was our last day in Barcelona. We started the day with another run (really really enjoying the dry, snow/ice-free streets), this time up to the Parc de Montjuic, which is an old fortress that was converted to a city park and used as the venue for the Olympics in 1992. We had fantastic views of the city:

 

Water!

 

Sunlight!!

And the Mediterranean:

 

Water!

 

Sunlight!!

Martin particularly enjoyed checking out the weaponry at the old fortress at the top of the hill. 

 

Trust him he's an engineer.

After our (again accidentally awesomely long) run, we headed to Park Guell, the other major Gaudi feature in the city. It was originally intended to be a sort of gated community, but the project was abandoned while it was still a park. It's a fairly big park on a hill, with Gaudi's nature-inspired architecture forming paths, bridges, and terraces.

 

The main entrance.

 

Some of the decorative medallions on the ceiling of the main forum.

 

Sitting on the cool benches around the main terrace.

After our adventure in Park Guell, we took the subway back to the city proper and walked around the Gótica district and grabbed lunch there. We were planning to go to the Picasso museum (which is free after 3pm on Sundays), but there was a really big line. Added to that, the neighborhood where it's located is really cool and needed more exploring, so we decided that was the way to go. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the area, before collecting our bags and heading to the airport. Once we got there, we promptly fell asleep waiting for our plane. When we got back to Zürich, it was still snowing.

Love Katie

Barcelona: Saturday

You guys. I found my favorite church. Well...the interior. But first:

Saturday morning started with a run along the (Mediterranean!) waterfront in Barcelona. It was a beautiful day, sunny even though it was chilly. I don't run with my phone so I didn't take any pictures, but here's one of the waterfront area where we were running:

 

Water! At the time, there were even surfers!

There was a great running path right above the beach, and we saw lots of other runners--even running groups and beach-fitness classes! I'm a huge nerd about that stuff; it always makes me really happy to see active people in a city, it makes it seem more liveable. Plus we had a great longer run unintentionally!

After having breakfast at the market from the day before, we hopped on the subway to go to La Sagrada Familia, the famous unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi. There was a line to get tickets, but once we got inside it was totally amazing! Gaudi wanted to design the ultimate church, and the result (so far) is incredible. 

 

Here's the outside, which is still under construction. But it's not my favorite part...

The stained glass is used to create colorful light and to convey theological points (Gaudi was really serious about this church). Each of the four sides of the church conveys a different theological point or story, from the celebration/birth of Christ:

 

Up close you can see the statues and detailing in the masonry.  

 

And from further away you get the larger picture. Look at the way the stained glass colors the pillars! I can't get over that!

To His passion and ascension. This picture isn't very good, but you can make out the transition from reds and oranges at the bottom to the white pane at the top, which symbolizes the ascension. On the left and right are green and blue panes, indicating earth and water for very important reasons that I can't quite remember. 

 

Sorry for the picture quality, this is the first one I took and I was busy looking everywhere at once...

As you walk towards the altar end of the church, the panes of stained glass are colored to create changes over the course of the day. It was about 2pm, so the light was coming in from the left of the altar. I absolutely loved the way the light from the glass colored the inside of the church. 

  

This picture is unaltered, which I can't believe. Look how each portico is a different color!

 

This is the one that shows red in the picture above. You can see how, at different times of day, it would show different colors even within the same windows. You can also see the really cool broken-glass effect they used. It's not pictures, it's just color and shape. 

 

Here we're looking at the window behind the altar from the red windows. You can see how the windows color the columns.

 As you walk towards the back of the church, there are areas where the stained glass isn't finished yet. As much as I'm determined to go back when it's finished to see how it turned out, I'm really glad I got to see it now too. The green window on this section is finished, but the windows beyond are just plain glass. 

 

The reflection from the completed window and that of the plain windows.

 

And the windows themselves. Look how cool the geometry of the ceiling is!

 

Straight-on of the green window.

Finally, on the altar end of the church, there are windows left intentionally colorless, but still with the abstract broken-glass shapes. Gaudi didn't want people to be distracted by the glass while they're trying to worship, and also something about purity etc. The glass artist did a really good job making the glass beautiful even without color, and I totally didn't get good pictures of it...

 

Look how pretty!! 

As much as the light was probably my favorite part of the church, Gaudi also paid attention to the acoustics of the church. He used hyperbolas to shape the ceiling, making it so that the church resonates without echoing. That's especially important since the choir loft is designed for 10,000 singers! Plus it looks really cool.

 

See? Awesome!

After the church, we explored the area around it and got lunch (at 4 in the afternoon, we're getting super Spanish), then walked along a major street, shopping a little bit (the shopping there is SO GOOD, have I mentioned?), until we saw two of Gaudi's other famous works: Casa Milá and Casa Batlló. The first one wasn't our favorite, but Casa Batlló was super cool: very colorful and interestingly shaped. It's so cool to see something like that just on a major street!

 

I'm glad they light it up, it was starting to get dark!

On the way home, we saw fliers for a Spanish Guitar concert that started soon, so we ran home, had a quick dinner of bread, olives, and salami while changing clothes, and went to the concert. It was really amazing--one of those things that makes you think, "I should learn to play guitar!" even though I don't really stand a chance of ever getting that good--and it was in a 14th-century church, which added to the cool. After that, we did a little wandering and headed home.

Up next: Sunday!

Love Katie  

Barcelona: Friday

We went to Barcelona this weekend! We found a cheap flight, so we flew down Thursday evening after work and stayed until Sunday night. We had so much fun! It was especially nice to be in about 55-degree weather (10C) because Zurich looks like this:

 

Beautiful...but it does make indoors more inviting than out.

So we found a cheap flight and left after work on Thursday night. We arrived in Barcelona at about 10 in the evening, found the apartment where we were staying, dropped off our stuff and had a late dinner of tapas and paella just to feel extra Spanish. The next day, we were ready for a full day of exploring! I went for a quick run (and saw rowers on the water!), then we started wandering.

 

The street where we stayed.

 

Martin with Plaza Reial, right by our apartment and off of Las Ramblas, which is the main tourist/shopping street.

First stop: The market off of Las Ramblas! I completely love markets, so Martin and I went there for breakfast and exploring. 

 

The market from the outside. Not pictured: me jumping up and down.

 

The market had all kinds of stalls, including traditional Spanish butchers/meat curers...

 

...stalls selling amazing, beautiful fruit that is definitely not available in Switzerland right now!...

 

...a few less appetizing stalls that look a bit more like science class than dinnertime...

 

...more produce...

 

...chocolate...

 

...and candy! I love markets.

After the market, we explored the neighborhood on one side of Las Ramblas called El Raval. It's the more hiptster/student area, with a university, thrift stores, and lots of little coffee shops.  

 

At a garden in the area.

 

Artist/student/hipster quarters always have the best street art.

We made our way down towards the sea (that's the Mediterranean sea, which I will never get used to! It's just such a storied place that I never really think I can be this close to it!), where we explored the harbor/port area for a little while. No rowers this time, sadly. 

 

Martin near the port.

 

One of the official buildings, maybe customs. More importantly: palm trees! I'm home! I didn't realize I missed them until I saw them again, I almost tried to take one home. Maybe I can get an office plant.

 

Fancy yachts in the harbor. It's always fun to pick which one we'd have if we ever got the chance. And decided that was what we wanted to spend money on...well it's still fun.

After the port, we worked our way back up through El Barri Gotic on the other side of Las Ramblas. This is an older neighborhood, still artistic but more on the wine bars and restaurants side of that coin. This area has been settled since Roman times, which was super cool! We also got lunch at an amazing cafe (at the Spanish-appropriate time of 2 or 3 in the afternoon); one great thing about Spain is that almost every restaurant has a Menu del Dia (please forgive the lack of appropriate accents), which is a lunch special with about three options each for a starter, entree, and dessert. It comes with all three courses, drinks, and bread/olives for 5-15 Euro, depending on how fancy you're feeling. It's great!

 

Martin with a remnant of a Roman aqueduct that they just built into a new wall. Cool!

 

This is the Gothic cathedral of Barcelona. We'll see another cathedral later that's much less traditional, but this one is beautiful.

 

Across the plaza is an art school with some exterior decoration done by Picasso, who live here! Apparently this particular decoration was super-unpopular at the time it was made.

 

Inside the cathedral.

 

Writing postcards outside the church.

After seeing that neighborhood and the cathedral, we walked some of the shopping streets (I was on a hunt for a particular pair of shoes, but I really want to come back here someday with a bunch of girls--the shopping is amazing!), stopped in at our apartment, and went out for a tapas dinner in an awesome old restaurant. We stopped in a few bars on the way home, and made it to bed at a fairly reasonable hour considering dinner was after 10pm. 

Next up: Saturday's adventures!

Love Katie   

Working and Skiing in Zermatt

From Sunday to Wednesday this week, I was at a workshop in Zermatt, Switzerland, which is the location of the Matterhorn! I was nervous about the workshop and about skiing again for the first time (every season I'm convinced that I'm so out of practice I'll hurt myself), but it turned out to be a great experience. Every day we would get up early and work for a few hours, then ski all day and work again in the evening. The weather, especially on Monday and Wednesday, was absolutely amazing, and Zermatt is a very beautiful place.

  

Matterhorn!

 

Me and the Matterhorn!

The city itself is a tiny town in a valley. There are no cars allowed, but there are electric taxis and buses. Still, the city is so small that you can easily walk anywhere in town, even in ski boots (if you must, nobody likes walking in ski boots)!

 

This one's from Tuesday so the weather isn't as good, but you can see Zermatt in the bottom of the valley.

  

From Monday, so better weather! This time you can see just a bit of the city way in the bottom left.

 It was very cool to see the Matterhorn everywhere we looked, it's a really well-known mountain, but it's even more impressive in person. I took lots of pictures.

 

Mountain! Beautiful weather!

 

The Matterhorn hanging out with some other mountains.

 

No Matterhorn in this picture, but look how beautiful the whole area is! 

To get from the city to the slopes, you can take any of an assortment of buses, gondolas, and cog trains. Each combination takes you to a different part of the mountain (including the Italian part if you want to ski in a different country, but the international ticket is extra-expensive so I didn't go that route), so it's important to study the map every morning to make sure you don't spend the whole day on lifts and gondolas instead of skiing.

 

One of the cog trains that takes you up. Since normal trains don't do steep inclines very well, they use that toothy part in the middle and a corresponding gear-thing under the train to pull us up.

One cool thing about skiing here that I'd never encountered before is that you can actually ski all the way off the mountain and back down to town. On the first and third days we were on the same side of the mountain where the route out was icy and not very fun, so we skied halfway down and met the train. On Tuesday, though, we were in a different place and we actually got to ski all the way down from the top of the mountain to the bottom in one hour-long run that took us within walking distance of our hotel!

  

Last view of the Matterhorn on the way off the slopes.

 It was especially fun because, as you're working your way down the mountain, you actually ski through little towns and villages, which was totally new to me! In the last few hundred meters of the run, there are lots of ski bars where people from town can hike up or skiers can stop on the way down. We did stop in for a quick aprés-ski (which made me feel very fancy), before heading in for our afternoon work. I can attest to the fine quality of the hot chocolate here in Switzerland. 

  

Parting shot of the Matterhorn being patriotic.

Love,
Katie