Back in Valencia for two days

Good Morning, good morning. I just returned from a long and windy weekend in Barcelona. I was informed that it has also been windy back home so I guess you are sending your weather my way. In any case, I enjoyed Barcelona. My group and I had the opportunity to see the Sagrada Familia, a Gaudi work, which is quite stunning. It is loaded with symbolism and typical Gaudi elements, that is themes pertaining to nature and a lack of lineas rectas (straight lines). A catalan artist, inspired by Gaudi, is carrying out a renovation on the building, which is not likely to be finished anytime soon. However, even with the construction, it is certainly worth seeing. Anywhere you venture in Barcelona, you are bound to come across a building, or two, or three that is "Gaudi-esque." For instance, we also went to the Pedrera, the construction of which was financed by the Mila family and yet again designed by Gaudi. It was only a block away from our hotel and pretty cool inside. The very wealthy Mila family used to live on the double floor and the rest of the building could be rented out to other rich people. There is also a room which contains some replicas or plans rather of la sagrada familia and the Pedrera itself, so you can kind of get into the mind of Gaudi as he worked to carefully design each piece. Another one of his designs was el parque guell. Again, this was intended for rich people, and further a colony of rich people, but because it is located a good distance from the center of the city, there were no takers. With that being said, The town hall bought the land and the buildings already constructed in 1922 and turned it into a park, so we too, not just the rich, can enjoy it. I liken it to a Dr. Seuss land as you will see in the pictures I send out. The buildings are decorated with colorful mosaics that for some reason conjure up that image. One of the museums that I enjoyed was that of Picasso. I like his work because it appears to be simple yet he himself is so talented. The Picasso museum is dedicated to the works he created in his youth. He created a replica of Velasquez's Las Meninas which is pretty cool. I also enjoyed the site of the 92' Olympics. From Montjuic we walked up the hill where the marathoners ran up at the end of their race and into the stadium to see the track. This, however is not the largest stadium in Barcelona, as that title goes to the futbol stadium, but nonetheless symbolic and fascinating. I was only 4 or 5 when the 1992 Olympics were held but apparently a paraolympiad shot an arrow from afar to the torch in order to ignite it, which is pretty impressive, and I am sure many of you can still picture it. We also saw more museums, of course, but nothing else that really caught my attention. There were a few rather amusing moments in Barcelona however. Beginning with the most innocent, a few people and myself took the metro to the futbol stadium on Sunday to get a glance at it and on the way, a man sat down next to my friend and tried to sell her the tissue in his hand. Hey, you must earn a living but perhaps there are more enticing ways. Secondly, we had been advised that Barcelona is known for their theives so many of us wear the very stylish beltbags haha, and do not keep anything valuable in our backpacks. On the metro to one of the museums, a girl in our group was standing against the wall so not only did she feel this man going into her bag, but she caught him in the act. She only had a bag of cookies in her bag, however, and the theif decided to let them be; smart man. Finally, while at the parque guell, we had some free time to explore so a friend and I went to climb up this path in order to see over the city. Well on our descent, i heard a chirping noise and hoping to see a real bird, as opposed to the pigeons that are everywhere here, I foolishly looked in that direction and saw this older man who was not wearing any clothes. Perhaps he is part of the attraction haha because he was spotted by another group to. We leave for a five day stint in Andalucia on Wednesday, which I have heard is a rather painful eleven hour bus ride. Nonetheless, my dad loaded me up with his ipod before I left Annandale so as long as I keep that charged I should be good to go. I was feeling especially verbose today so I apologize for the rant. I wish everyone a happy Monday and a great week!!