La Pedrera

We tried to go to Park Guell and they were full again, so we have a game plan for next time.  If you go before 8am, admission is free, so we're going to try for that on Tuesday.  In the meantime, we ended up going to Casa Mila AKA La Pedrera.  It's one of Gaudi's commissions (of course) and it was incredible.
Let's backtrack a bit.  After we got shunned from Guell, we moped down the street and saw The Gaudi 4D Experience.  Ohhhhh, what's that??  Let's find out!

They had a little museum and interactive games and a 4-D movie all about Gaudi.

This is a model of the main building in Park Guell:

Oh my Gaudi!

Yea, I really said that.  Lame.  Then we paid 9 Euro each to go into The 4-D Experience (way overpriced, since the movie was 5 minutes):

I'll admit, it was pretty cool though.  

We kept walking down the hill and saw this guy floating above the ground:

I saw a couple guys doing this in Rome and I just can't figure it out.  

We cabbed it back to our neighborhood and got some grub.  I had grilled octopus (yum!):

Aaron had a fried potato/meat ball and patatas bravas (potatoes with mayo and spicy sauce):

Not impressive, but you can't win 'em all!

We paid $21 Euro each (so expensive!) to go inside Casa Mila AKA La Pedrera.  Can I just say, I think it's really shitty for a city to charge so much money for educational things like museums.  Not only is it a real turn-off, but it really prevents people on a tight budget from being able to see what the city has to offer.  Every museum and Gaudi house is about 20 Euro/person, making it so ridiculously expensive to see everything.  I think it's so rude!  Change your attitude Barcelona, if you want people to visit your city!

That being said, La Pedrera was great.  The 20 Euro got us a "free" audio guide, which was nice (it helped that the woman's voice reminded me of Julie Andrews).  La Pedrera is an apartment complex commissioned by Pere Mila (hence the formal name Casa Mila) and constucted by Antoni Gaudi from 1906-1910.  It was the last civil work designed by Gaudi.  It's nicknamed La Pedrera, meaning "The Quarry" because the facade looks like an open quarry apparently.  It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site for it's exceptional universal value.  The rooftop, the attic and 4th floor apartment are part of the exhibit, but the other 3 floors are still residential apartments.  Wouldn't it suck to live in a museum?  Okay, now that I've built it up enough, let's see if it lives up to the hype (and the 21 Euros).

Here it is from the outside:

Then we just about cashed in our life savings to get tickets:

We're in!

Here's the courtyard in the middle of the building:

It was beautiful, but hard to get a good snap because the lighting wasn't cooperating.  

We took an elevator to the rooftop, which is where we started our self-guided tour.  Can I just say, AMAZING!

WOW!  Whimsy.

View of the city:

La Sagrada Familia in the distance:

Looking down into the courtyard:

Then we went down one floor into the attic, which was a museum dedicated to Gaudi:

The attic was made up of these brick arches, of varying heights, making the roof kinda wavy as well.

One method he used to design was to build models upside down with chains and look at them in the mirror (right side up).  Upside down:

In the mirror:

Interesting.

They had a bunch of models of his other works, such as Parc Guell:

La Sagrada Familia:

and Casa Batllo:

All of which we plan on visiting at some point (all of which are about 20 Euro/person.  I know I just can't let it go!  It's madness!).

Then we walked down to the fourth floor, which was a model of an apartment from the early 1900's.

Balcony:

Ceiling:

It was quite beautiful, especially all the little details, which is what Gaudi did best.  

That was the end of the tour.  We walked back down to the ground floor, passing a bunch of residential apartments on the way.  

That's Casa Mila AKA La Pedrera.  I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as we did.  Aaron especially loved it. Gaudi had amazing design ideas and was a brilliant architect, especially focusing on the tiniest of details.  We can't wait to see more of his work.  Speaking of which, tomorrow we go to La Sagrada Familia, which is supposed to be the number one attraction in Barcelona.  It's a Roman Catholic Church designed by Gaudi (of course) and it's still in construction after more than 100 years!  It's going to be epic (and expensive), so I'll be taking a lot of pictures!