Where in the World is Sharon Daugherty2: Lunch and Park Guell

We took the metro to Placa Catalunya where we could catch the bus to Park Guell. We decided to get a bite of lunch first and went looking for El National, a place recommended by our tour guide from the Gothic Quarter. We never expected to see this place, which was down a short little side street. It was so neat. Lots of little tapas bars and restaurants to choose from in a really great building and atmosphere.

entryway

Inside what looked like moving bicycle wheels

free standing bars

Obviously a fish restaurant (which we did not pick)

and the one we did. Think its name was Paradera or something like that. Good salads and bread pizzas. Very good. Neat place, we will come back here.

and now we are off to catch the bus about a twenty to thirty minute ride

PARK GUELL

Park Guell was designed by Antoni Gaudi

Gaudi initially had envisaged it as a park or garden city specially made by the aristocrat Eusebi Guell, who had bought a widespread rural estate located in Turo del Carmel in 1895 with the purpose of creating a garden city like those you find in England.

Gaudi planned and directed the construction of the park from 1900 to 1914 for Eusebi Guell for a residential park intended for sixty single- family residences.

The project, however, was unsuccessful and the park became city property in 1923. Though never fully completed, it still remains one of Gaudi's most colorful and playful works.

Mostly it was unsuccessful because the wealthy residents did not want to live so far from city center.

It's a playground for the mind: visual jokes, like columns that simulate palm-tree trunks, rubble-surfaced arches that grow out of the ground, quilts of ceramic tiles.

Gaudi lived in this house until shortly before his death. It is now the Gaudi House Museum with period furniture.

The centrepiece is the intended covered market, a majestic forest of fluted columns. Its roof forms a vast terrace with a view of the city.

It's surrounded by an undulating continuous bench, the back of which forms a balustrade, its entire surface encrusted with ceramic shards of all colours, some randomly arranged, some in patterns.

Flowers even in February

Porters Lodge and part of the convex wall bordering the stairs up to the covered market

One of Gaudi's more modest dwellings

As you head up the stairs towards the covered market room

there is a fountain in the form of a snake's head above the shield of Catalonia

the colorful dragon or salamander (everybody wants their picture here, so we could hardly get just a picture of the dragon)

Ceiling of the market room

this resembled an octopus

headed up to the terrace covering the market room

This really looks like the inside of a breaking wave,

The washer woman

The terrace is surrounded by an undulating continuous bench, the back of which forms a balustrade, its entire surface encrusted with ceramic shards of all colours, some randomly arranged, some in patterns.

The seat is unusually comfortable for a stone bench: Gaudi had a workman drop his pants and sit in soft plaster to record the correct anatomical curve - foreshadowing the science of ergonomics by half a century.

The lions heads are for drainage (you can see the hole in the back of this bench where water drains through to the other side and then out the lios mouth.

As you can see, the park is on a hill with commanding views

The stone balls represent the beads of a rosary.

Gaudi who was very religious, used to walk here daily praying the rosary

The other girls decided to walk straight up the stairs to some of the gardens. I just kept meandering along this path and noticed this bright yellow bush. I found a much less steep walkway going up (some of us are smarter than others).

Still don't know what the bush is, but really beautiful

Wandered on up the path and passed this gate; some gentleman who spoke no english wanted to take my picture. Didn't understand a word, but he somehow communicated that it was such a lovely view

and I should have my picture. Voila!