Wait, wasn't I just in Barcelona? Yes, you are correct. Somehow, Barcelona got the honor of being visited twice on this trip! Before my mom and I jetted off to Italy, I wanted her to see a little more of Spain than just Toledo, and frankly, Madrid wasn't going to cut it (except for el Museo del Prado, that was great!). So we spent our first weekend of the tour in Barcelona, and I was able to show my mom some of the cool stuff I saw the first time, and I got to see a bunch of new things. My favorites: the inside of Gaudí's Sagrada Familia, a day-trip to Montserrat, and a tour of the beautiful Gran Teatro de Liceu (the opera house!).
When I was in Barcelona a few weeks ago, we went to as many free things as possible… this meant just seeing the outside of all the Gaudí buildings. But this trip we decided to splurge and go inside of la Sagrada Familia. And it was absolutely stunning. How could someone possibly come up with that design?? Well, we also saw the small exhibit about how Gaudí was inspired by nature, and that made it pretty clear. And awesome.
 |
| "The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.” -Antoní Gaudí |
We also got to take a trip out to the Benedictine retreat of Montserrat, a trip that Paige and I missed out on the first time. It was a good 1 1/2 hours away by train, and it was very cool to see those crazy jagged peaks as we approached! Then we took the cable car up (good thing I’m a cable car pro now), and enjoyed that fresh mountain air for a few hours. We walked around, marveling at the view, and went inside the Basilica. Unfortunately we just missed out on the famous Montserrat boys choir by a few minutes.
 |
| View from Montserrat |
While planning our trip we almost stayed in Barcelona one more day, so we could go see one of our favorite tenors, Juan Diego Florez, in an opera at the teatro de Liceu. But we didn’t want to lose too much time in Italy, so we decided to leave a day earlier (and go see JDF sometime at the Met in New York!). Instead, on our last day before we left for Rome, we went to the Liceu and took a tour of the beautiful opera house! We were the only people who showed up, so we got a private tour and our guide was hilarious and fantastic. We couldn’t take pictures in the auditorium itself, which is a shame because it was one of the most gorgeous theaters I have ever seen.
 |
| Gran Teatro de Liceu |
And since I'm sharing these travels with my mom (and my dad has been pressuring her to keep her own blog!), here's a recap from my special guest blogger, Jolene Steinhorst on her experience so far:
Ah, Espana…did I miss the Toledo section? That was perhaps the closest I’ll get to time travel. I was amazed at every turn in the twisting, narrow, cobblestoned streets, and spent a lot of time with my mouth agape at the beauty of the buildings. I was sad with Hannah as she said farewell to her city, street by street, this view, that little plaza…so lovely. In Madrid the Prado was fantastic, thanks to the collecting savvy of generations of Spanish monarchs, so far Titian wins. Until we reach Michelangelo territory, then we’ll see…
Barcelona, I love this city. It has good transportation, happy people, and we stayed in a super-cool modern hotel with the best breakfast in all of Spain. It’s amazing to see years’ worth of art history lectures come to life, such as at the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s masterpiece. The Picasso Museum was also interesting, with many works from his early years. The Opera House was stunning, although we did not run into Juan Diego Flores in the hallway as I had hoped…
No comments:
Post a Comment