More Gaudi and Some Time At The Beach!

Because yesterday’s lack of planning and late start led to a very rushed visit to the Sagrada Familia before closing, we decided we would go out together again today, but with much more of a plan, especially since it was Jill and Micah’s last full day here before departing to London.

Over some takeout pizza and wine last night, we made a plan to start today by using up the combo-ticket we had purchased at the Sagrada-Familia and going to see the Gaudí House-Museum in the morning, which we found out on Google is located in Parc Güell - a garden complex designed by Gaudi and originally intended to be an elite housing site.  However, only two houses were ever completed, neither designed by Gaudi.  One of the two completed houses was purchased by Gaudi in 1906, after unsuccessfully being put up for sale as a showhome in 1904.  Gaudi and his family lived there from 1906-1926.  In 1963, the “Association of Gaudi’s Friends” purchased it and converted it into a museum.

Following the advice of the guy who worked at the hostel, we took the metro to get to Parc Güell and found our way to the park quite easily, though finding the museum took a crazy amount of effort!  The park is huge and Paul had this mistaken impression that Gaudi’s house is white and at the top of the hill so we climbed to the top via a long set of stairs, but found no museum and no white house.  Then we tried to find a way down on the left side, but were turned around by some kind of security guard who seemed to be telling us that this path was closed so we had to walk back down the stairs.  We finally ran into some other Americans on our way down who told us the museum is to the left when we got to the bottom of the stairs.  Turns out it’s a pink house and is actually named “Torre Rosa” 

After a brief tour (the house is quite small and just exhibits some interesting furniture Gaudi designed) we headed off to grab some lunch then head to the beach.  We decided that, unlike yesterday, we would just pick a place to eat quickly while on our way to the metro station and went into the first restaurant we saw that had a decent “Menu del Dia.”  This worked out much better than yesterday’s lunch and we all found the food to taste much better today, although the entree sizes were a bit small.  Paul got some roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and I got some mixed seafood in a tasty broth.  There were only two types of dessert on the menu so we decided to try one of each and ended up getting a banana bread pudding and an interesting minty lime drink.  Ultimately, I ate both desserts because Paul’s not a big fan of bread pudding and he thought the drink tasted kinda funky but I found it refreshing

We headed to the beach with the intention of catching a cable car up to Montjuic (a hill southeast of the city center that has a number of sights and attractions, most notably the Olympic Ring from when they hosted the Olympics in 1992), but when we found our way to the to the cable cars, we found out that the main cable car station was closed and we would have to catch the cable car from the second station.  Since none of us knew where that was and we were tired from walking around the park, we decided to head to the beach and lie around for the rest of the afternoon.

Although we’re all tired from two days of a lot of walking and sightseeing, these last two days have been the most enjoyable of the trip so far!  We will probably meet up with Jill and Micah again tomorrow before they head off to London and check out some of the city center.  In my opinion, Barcelona is definately better than Madrid!