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Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia is another of his work that has been declared World Heritage.

He dedicated 40 years of his life to the church, 15 years of which he spent solely for the project. The ironic thing is, he is such a great genius that God called him back before he was able to complete, in 1929.

This picture is the Nativity façade. My first impression of the pictures of the church (before I went), was… it’s butt ugly. It doesn’t look anything like a traditional Catholic basilica. It is asymmetrical, with excessive amount of objects obtruding from the exterior wall.

But when I finally saw it in person, its beauty took my breath away. First of all, it’s tall. The highest tower reaches roughly 200 meters, dwarfing all other buildings in Barcelona.

The details of sculptures can only be seen up close

We started the tour from the newer constructed side - the Passion Facade. Gaudi built it after recovered from illness. This side looks so modern that I thought it was built by other architects after he passed away. The faces of sculptures are very angular, unlikes most of Gaudi’s organic shapes in his works. Maybe within his own time, Gaudi has evolved into ultra-modernism that we see in the later 20th century?

More pics:

From Valencia, we took a 3-hour train ride to Barcelona. The most memorable sight, other than the Cathedral, street artist and massive varieties of shellfish in the market,

was one of Gaudi’s masterpiece, Casa Batllo. I’m not going to repeat who Gaudi is here, but I’d like to point out Casa Batllo is listed in the World Heritage along with 6 other works of his.Casa Batllo was built in 1877 and remodeled in 1905-07. It was orginally designed for a middle-class family. Throughout the building you can see Gaudi’s organic design. Very few straight lines and squares were present in the building, if any at all. He used round and irregular shapes inspired by natural objects (trees, for example), and carefully deployed the mosaics and stained glasses for decors.

<left>This room is quite interesting. He set 2 columns right in front of the door? It’s against Fung Shui wisdom. But it’s sure unique.

<down>In this other room on the roof, it’s completely empty except for a water fountain in the middle. The light underneath the fountain reflects the water image on the dome-shaped ceiling.

The rest of the Valencia trip isn’t worth much mentioning, except for the food. It’s widely known that Spaniards eat late, but I was still pretty shocked learning that the restaurants weren’t even open before 2pm for lunch, and 9/9:30pm for dinner. The pair of us usually wandered in front of restaurants an hour or 2 before opening, and rushed in the minute they unlocked the doors…

Day 1 at the Modern Art Museum:

The restaurant is called La Sucursal, rated 1 star by the Michelin guide (com’n, that’s really good!). The palate cleanser is really cute. One of the shot glasses contained cold foam, which tastes like fish, and warm soup at the bottom. I wonder if anyone knows how to make cold foam out of fish broth? Very interesting.

Day 2 at Westin:

Valencia is known as the home of Paella. So upon return, everyone asked me if I had the most fabulous paella. Umm, not really. I mean, it’s good, but not out of this world good. Take it with a grain of salt though, since I’m not a huge fan of rice. They do have squid ink paella, rice soaked with squid ink. It doesn’t look appetizing but imagine the rich flavor…. Too bad that dish requires advanced request, so we ordered something else with artichoke. I have no clue why i didn’t take a picture of the paella, but I did take a pic of the palate cleanser again. Spaniards seem to be big on this.

P.S.
Oh, the reason we dined at Westin was number one, they have squid ink paella; number 2, the waiters speak some english. By the end of day 2 we realized how difficult it can be to just point and order without the slightest idea what we are getting. We are adventurous but picky at the same time, like we want to avoid plain chicken breast or bland food like that.

And just like rumors said, it is cheaper to order wine in Spain than water. Well it depends on what kind of wine or water you order, but it is achievable. They have sommelier for water too.

Santiago Calatrava is the master mind behind the “city within the city” project. On the dried-up river bed, he designed the L’Hemesferic (Planetarium), the Principe Felipe Science Museum, the Oceanographic (Aquarium) and the Reina Sofia Arts Palace.

We took tons of photos on the exteriors of L’Hemesferic and Oceanographic.
A few photos inside the Oceanographic where we saw all sorts of funky Mediterranean sea creatures.

I liked the Oceanographic a lot. It’s Europe’s biggest marine park which is home to 500 species of fish and other sea creatures from every ocean of the world. It’s really new (built after 1998) so all the tanks are squeaky clean. I’ve never been able to take decent photos through fish tanks because they were never clean enough, until now.

The science museum is a let down, but the IMAX theater is pretty from the outside, especially at night.

After 10+ hours of flying, 3 hours on the train, we finally arrived at Valencia. Although we were exhausted, K thought it’s a good idea to use the subway system rather than a cab to get to the hotel. Just to be adventurous.

The first part of the metro ride was alright. It was late at night and only 1 other person waiting for the train, but we didn’t see any bums or druggies. But when we got to the transfer, we were shocked to learn that the final metro has left the station.

There we were, not quite in the middle of nowhere, but we had no idea where we were, and no number to call a cab. We thought about calling the hotel and ask them to call a cab for us, but then we looked up on the street sign, geez, the length of the street name is 5 times that in the US. God knows how we are going to communicate with the hotel, “uhhh, we are at the intersection of Carrer del Cirilo Amiros and Gran via del Marques de Turia, say what?” Note that few locals speak english, and those who speak are far from fluent.

As we stood on the sidewalk wondering what to do, we saw a cab pulling up and we ran after it for about half a block. An Asian couple were in the cab paying the fare, so we stood by the side waiting. Finally they got out and they asked us in English whether we wanted to take the cab or not. As they were asking the driver was just about to drive away. The lady slapped on the passenger side window for the driver to stop, yelling in Spanish that we need a ride, and we quickly slipped in to the cab fearing he’d drive away.

The driver turned around, “no Espanol?” “noh” “oh” We simply said Westin and hoping that was enough for him to understand and there’s only one in the city. Luckily both were true and we got to the hotel shortly after mid-night.