Mount Juic Gardens

On the way up Mount Juic or the Mountain of the Jew (didn't get the story behind the name) there are beautiful gardens. Here are the steps with lily ponds that cascade down the slope. Quite the serene spot.

Guell Park

Guell Park is the park up in the hills of Barcelona that Gaudi designed.  It is a breathtaking blend of nature and the man made.  There is a surreal feeling of being in the blended wilderness while in this park.  Most of the Park has beautiful trails that overlook the city.  Above is a section of the worlds largest bench.  It is made of tile and there are beautiful mosaics all along it.  There is a dirt plaza surrounded by the bench where people can mingle and perform.

Here is a close up of the tiled bench.  It looks really uncomfortable, but on the contrary its comparable to the comfort of an Eames chair.  I later learned at the Gaudi museum that Gaudi studied the human body and designed this bench to match the curve of the spine.

Here is a hall that looks like a wave crashing over into the pillars of the left.  All of the curves and round features gave a very easy flowing feel through the park.

In somewhat of a juxtaposition there is a hall of pillars under the plaza of dirt that is surrounded by the bench.  Each of the pillars acts as a hollow funnel of rainwater from the plaza down to the fountains below.

The wave hall that you saw before has many pillars, the outside of each has some type of pattern or sculpture on the out facing side.  Each and every one is unique, this one looks like Aunt Jemima.  Unfortunately there was no syrup to be found.

Here is a whole series of pillars, click on the photo to see the patterns and sculptures close up.

Notice the swirling spiraled pillars in the top peer of this out look.  It is incredible how organic Gaudi was able to make stone work look.

Here is the famous mosaic lizard fountain that is fed by reclaimed rain water from the dirt plaza.

Along the main staircase the walls are covered with tiles of beautiful mosaic patterns.  Below the lizard is this fountain that reminds the visitors of the importance and beauty of nature.

At the lower entrance of the park the gates are flanked by two houses that are of the late nineteenth century gingerbread style.  One houses the gift shop and the other houses the park offices.  Guell Park is a must for anyone visiting Barcelona.

Huge City

Click on this picture to make it bigger, you can see a lot of what I have written about and you can see about one third of the city.  The right of the two main streets you can see is Las Ramblas, where the market is as well as a fun place to walk with lots of people.  On the left is the water utilities building.  In the middle center is La Sagrada Familia.  Further in the back you can see the two largest buildings in spain that are along the water front.  This picture was taken from high up in Guell Park.

Brilliant

We were in Barcelona at the end of october and it was in the high seventies.  I cannot imagine the heat in the summer.  Since Barcelona is very hilly the city has been nice enough to provide escalators for the weary masses to make the pilgrimage up to Guell Park to see more of Gaudi's brilliance.

Its Gaudy not Gaudy

So this is la Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi's greatest works.  Its a massive church that has been under construction for about 150 years and will continue to be under construction for a while longer.  Once completed there will be about fourteen spires with the largest being a little taller then the empire state building.  Gaudi was a master of blending art and nature, his design is a brand of art nouveau.  As you can see above, the at a little under half the final height the front facade is very impressive, even with all the cranes and construction about.

Along the front their are little look out balconies that really put the massive size of this project into perspective.

Here is the main theme of the front facade, the tree of life. (or a Christmas tree?)  From this branch there is a network of intertwining branches that run down the front of the church, there are lots of animals and lifelike people in scenes of merryment.  All very nature oriented and organically carved into the stone.

Along the side of the church which is much more sober than the main front the spires are toped by baskets full of fruits.  Good for family sangria (get it, get it?)

Here is the opposite facade of La Sagrada Familia.  It is the complete opposite of its more famous other half.  This side is much more sober, somber and straight laced.  It shows scenes from the later part of Jesus' life.  

Here you can see that the nature is gone, the lines are more straight and its entirely inorganic.

The one nice thing about this facade is that all of the figures are cubist sculpture which is pretty neat.  There is an interesting juxtaposition between the flow of the capes and the boxy figures.

Here is cubist Jesus that hangs at the top of the cubist side of La Sagrada Familia.

Utilities Buildings in Barcelona

This gleaming glass structure is the natural gas company in Barcelona.  It almost looks like a glacier made out of glass, I love all the different angles used.  It would be incredible to see the view from one of the offices above.

Another great utilities building is the water utility building.  Its shaped like a giant cucumber and at night it has a crazy lighting system that makes it glow red and blue in different patterns.  The coolest thing about it is that the whole lighting system uses an absurdly efficient hydro dynamic power system, To light the whole outside of the building it takes as much power as it does to run a refrigerator.

Barcelona Medical School

This beautiful building, called the wheel off cheese by the locals is the medical school of Barcelona.  The hospital is directly to the left, so its sort of a medical complex.  The wood slat exterior is neat looking and it also provides some wind and sun protection on all of the balconies around the building.

Day at the Beach

On the first day in Barcelona we did the best thing we could have done, we took advantage of the balmy weather and spent the afternoon at the beach. The beach in Barcelona is beautiful, completely fake but beautiful. Barcelona didn't have any beaches until the 92 olympics when they decided, a beach would be a nice place for people to spend time. The Mediterranean is incredibly blue.

We got chorizo sandwiches at the local shop.

This was the view looking up as I was laying on the beach. As you can see in the picture above, the beach was not very crowded so the waves put me right to sleep for a couple of hours, it was very relaxing.

Part of setting up these beaches for the 92 olympics was the inclusion of art all along the beach. This is a shimmering bronze fish. Behind it there are the two largest buildings in Barcelona. The one on the left is The Arts hotel, one of the most expensive, it also has a casino. On the right is a office building.

This is a interesting off centered piece along the beach.

At the end of the harbor they capped the wave breakers off with a pile of huge concrete blocks. it gave a really cool effect of blending manmade and natural elements.

Market in Barcelona

The fresh food market in Barcelona is made up of hundreds of little stalls that have all different kinds of food.  Its right in the middle of Las Ramblas and its covered almost European railroad station style.  The meat stalls like the one above, have multitudes of chorizos, legs of iberian ham (cured legs of ham similar to prosciutto), and tons of sliced salamis.

The fruit juice stalls have one euro containers of pure deliciosity.  They mix all different fruits together.  My favorites were pineapple-coconut and mango-coconut.

Tons of fresh fruit, yummy figs.

Beautiful fresh seafood, most of which I had not scene in a good three months, a very welcome sight.

Stands devoted to salt cured and oil cured fishes.

All sorts of cheeses on display ay the cheese stalls.  I had a nice and smokey, smoked (surprise) Iberian cheese.

Some of the stalls only sold a single type of mushroom.

An eggery using ostrich eggs as price signs.

They even have chocolate shops!

Many of the stall spaces are taken up by these small petit restaurants that have bar seating all around.

I had to splurge on a slice of the iberian ham in the middle.  At 149 euros a kilo, a slice ran about four euros and was well worth it.  It was a melt in your mouth mix of muscle and fat that was salty and delectable.  The market is a must check out for anyone going to Barcelona.

Dunkin'Cofee

Apparently in non obese countries like Spain, the stress is on the coffee not the doughnuts! 

Absurdly Cool Italian Loft Furniture

This Italian furniture company Tumideispa makes these incredible sets of loft furniture.  Their other furniture is neat too but the loft sets blow me away.  The set above, Compisizione  559, is my favorite.  Bed, work space and walk in closet, doesn't get any better than that.  The best part of these sets is that most if not all have lofted work spaces, lots of them also have an elevated walkway as well.  The storage space that these units allocate is astronomical.  It has now become my plan to have one of these one day, or at least to build my own based on the same principles.  In my mind, I'm seeing a complex tree house type of network connected by bridges and swings in a warehouse loft on the west side, each room can have a different theme and crazy lighting!  But alas, something tells me this will be an unrealized plan for a very long time.

Election Night Fun

Given the vast importance of this past election, mixed with the zealotry of crazy liberal NYU students and the fact that this was most of our first presidential elections the NYU bubble in Prague was full of election spirit.  We were notified of two bars that were going to stay open all night to show the election.  The first was The Globe, a British ex-pats bar that was packed solid the entire night.  The second one was the not-as-packed, but still crowded "sportbar."  I went to this one, it had a big projection screen in the back as you can see above.  Wolf Blitzer was at least nine feet tall.  Aside from the crowd of NYU students there were four obnoxious Czech students in there Palin 2012 and overall red uniforms, as well as a single old member of the green party who was screaming something about Nader, I think.  It was actually a lot of fun to watch in this way, every time a new set of polls would close, the whole room started counting down and there were screams of joy with each state that voted for Obama and ominous boos for McCain.  I was pretty blown away by the lead that Obama had, I was very worried that McCain would have been right on his heals the entire night.  By around 3:30 (Czech time) and my third beer I headed back to my dorm to learn that Obama had both Pennsylvania and Ohio!  Then I was just a matter of staying up till Florida was secured, but no need, he was announced as President.  I have to say that the people in charge of Obama's campaign are brilliant.  For the web integration alone they are brilliant.  They did more for Obama and voting than P-diddy ever did.  The website was a beautiful display of ease, form, and function.  And its good to know, now that the campaign is over Obama will continue with this strategy,  he just started up his new website from the election on.  It was a pretty unique experience spending this election in Prague.  I can safely say that in the travel I have been doing that Obama is the best thing that ever could have happened for our overseas relations, it practically erases all the bad reputation we gained under W.  In my Modern Dissent class we were discussing some of the potential outcomes of this election.  Our professor, who was a leader of the Velvet Revolution, and one of the worlds best journalists, was telling us that his contacts (high ups in Arabic nations)  feel that Obama's election is Osama's death sentence.  They feel that America showing that they can democratically elect a minority will pull the power out from under the extremists and will actually promote democracy as a system that works and is fair.  Either way I do not envy Obama, he will surely have the most difficult presidency yet.  He must be perfect and make all the right moves, there is too much riding on his shoulders to do otherwise.