a lot of things

Okay. So I've seen a lot of really interesting sights since I last updated: La Sagrada Familia, El Torre Agbar, the sea (!), and a whole lot of windy old streets lined with beautiful buildings.

I'll give brief summaries of each thing; there are tons of pictures here that I won't post, but which anyone can browse if they so desire.

Last Saturday (the 17th) I went to see La Sagrada Familia, Gaudí's last project which is STILL not finished (it's been under construction for over 110 years). A lot of the work on the Sagrada Familia since Gaudí's death has been designed by other artists/architects. So while it's not all Gaudí, it is still impressive. Here are a few pictures:


The nativity facade. The angle is all weird because the building is MASSIVE and I am short.


The passion facade. Like a good deal of the rest of the cathedral, it's still under construction. The sharp, linear figures in the scenes aren't of Gaudí's design, and the artist who created them has received a lot of criticism because they are so unlike true human forms, in a way.


In Spanish, "La Sagrada Familia" means "the Holy Family." On a bunch of the corners of the building are the names of the members of the family.

After circling the Sagrada Familia for a while (I didn't go inside that visit; I'm waiting until it's free) I decided to go on a walking tour of El Born. The route was planned out by a guidebook my dad gave me, and turned out to be really cool.

One of the coolest things I passed was the Santa María del Mar. Its doors were open, so the classmate I was with and I went inside to take a look.







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On Sunday, I took another guided walk from the same guidebook but this time through El Poblenou. I saw El Torre Agbar up close, and in my wanderings I had some delicious lemon ice cream and eventually found a beautiful park next to the sea. Here are some pictures from that walk:


Torre Agbar.


La Rambla del Poblenou


Nom nom nom. Delicious lemon ice cream from El Tío Che, an apparently famous ice cream and turrón shop. It's pretty cool that it's warm enough here (sometimes) to eat ice cream.


A path in the pretty park I found near the sea.


View of the sea from the park.

That's it for now. More pictures can be found at the link above. This weekend I'm taking a bus to Madrid with some friends from the program. I'm excited to see some more of Spain, especially since the regional differences here are apparently quite clear.