El tercero dìa
Antoni Plàcid Guillem Gaudí i Cornet is a source of tremendous Spanish pride, and for good reason. He was a famous art nouveau architect who lived from the late 19th to early 20th century. His work is extremely distinct and one of the most important components of Barcelona for tourists and locals alike. So we decided to hit up Gaudi’s crown jewel: la Sagrada Familia.
We took a metro to what on the map appeared to be a close by stop, but turned out to be a good 1,3 kilometers away. Coming out of the metro I got my first taste of Gaudi. The building looked like it could house the alien hive from Contra III: tan, smooth and curvy with all sorts of odd shapes and colors thrown in to the mix. For a vague hint of this style check out Archetypus cafè in Edgewater.
La Sagrada Familia itself was somewhat disappointing. The outside was awesome, the style we’d seen in the first building taken to an all new extreme and applied to a church, which meant incorporating religious iconography. Huge, elaborate, curvy columns supported the curvy steeples, on which were located crosses composed of ovals rather than rectangles. Promising, but when we paid the exorbitant fee of 8 euro we entered to find almost all of it was under construction. That’s not to say that the scaffolding, running at least 20 feet deep, 40 feet wide, and all the way to the ceiling, wasn’t without its own charm. It formed a sort of spider web of orange steel, but it wasn’t what we paid 8 euro to see.
Next door to the church but still on the grounds was a little building dedicated to explaining some of the intricacies of the architecture. It showed some of the techniques Gaudi deployed that gave his columns and other parts of the buildings the curvy (and I hate to be so repetitive), organic feel that they’re famous for.
Once we managed to pry ourselves away from the air conditioning we made our way over to the most important destination of all: the beach. It was about a fifteen minute walk from the hostel: first past the Ramblas, then a monument to Colòn (Columbus), then along the highway past a modern art piece composed of stacked blocks colored in pastels (some with stripes and dots as well), then finally past a dock filled with hundreds of boats until you get on to a straightaway for the beach.
The sand is actually sand and not rocks (for the first time so far), the water is greenish blue, brackish, dirty and cold. It reminded me of family trips to the Jersey shore from back in the day. And after picking a cool pair of Danish girls to sit next to, I partook in the same classic activities as I once did on the Jersey shore: swimming around, doing handstands in the water, and trying to resist the push of breaking waves.
Just chilling on the beach with our new friends I enjoyed ice cold beer vended by locals who carouse the beach with coolers. If you don’t take any shit, it’s a euro a beer. If you’re hungry, other vendors sell samosas and potato chips at the same price. More upscale vendors sell massages and drugs.
We rode home on the back of our Danish friends’ rented bikes and all agreed to meet up later for drinks at the Nevermind bar.
Nevermind was recommended to us by the owner of our hostel and was supposed to be a pretty hip punk bar with good music, extreme sports videos projected on the walls, and “the best mojitos in Barcelona.” All of the above turned out to be true and we had a great time. It was even better when at the end of the night we left and had forgotten to pay for any of our drinks.
The night ended on Las Ramblas around four in the morning when the girls gave us a ride on the back of their bikes back to our hostel then headed back to theirs.
