When wandering around the streets of Barcelona, near Sagrada Familia or the Arc de Triompf, you will come upon the church of Sant (St.) Joan (not a woman).
After seeing the style of Gaudi’s masterpiece, this church seems run of the mill but take a round of the place and discover it’s beauty and architecture for yourself.
The Sagrada Familia deserves its own post simply because of the history behind it and the fact that it’s still being built as I type this out.
To read more about the architect, Antoni Gaudi, click here. To know more about the basilica itself, click here.
For the rest, just keep scrolling to see some wide-angle images of the church.
The cries of Ole resound in the small room. The lights are dim but bright enough to shine on sheen of sweat on the faces and bodies of the dancers.
Suddenly a deep baritone growls out notes to a song you don’t understand but can feel all the way down to your toes.
The thudding off the heels, the snapping of the fingers and the flinging of the fringed shawl in a frenzy is enough to create a tempo that you are moving along to; even without knowing.
The sangria is forgotten, the fatigue of the day is parked for a while…and you just watch the fury that is the flamenco!
This was our last day in Barcelona. We decided to skip the beach in the less than balmy weather and spend the day in the Gothic Quarter instead. A good decision as it turned out.
Browsing through a flea market, listening to street musicians and having a perfect lunch in a quaint, hole-in-the-wall place in one of many warrens of the Gothic quartets was a leisurely way to see not just see the tourists but also see how the locals look at the likes of us.
Gaudi and Barcelona are synonymous and even without anyone going too deep into the psyche or temperament of the artist, you can’t help but concede, the man had style! A glimpse of his masterpiece Sagrada Familia…
When I visit a new place, I don’t just focus on the well-known or even the off-the-beaten track kind of locales and sights; I like to capture the every day lives of the people there.
Here are some glimpses of Barcelona, the way the locales live.
When Red and I moved houses to where we currently live, the clincher wasn’t just the community living but also the view we’d get from our floor. It’s neither too high up, too far down and definitely doable whenever the elevators are out.
But the view is something that’s been rather remarkable over the years. For urbanites, seeing concrete jungles and cars bustling along the roads are the norm. For us, apart from the usual view of a city life, we get to see peacocks every now and then. We get to see the cityscape change in front of our eyes whenever new ground is laid for another building. We get to see cricket matches galore and also interact with the feathered ones that seem to love the aircon units we’ve so thoughtfully put up on our balconies.
And while the changing landscape doesn’t always spell progress all around, what with cutting of the trees, noise pollution, air pollution, ground water depletion…you name it and it’s happening as I type this out; but it’s happening right in front of our eyes. It’s a sense of comfort to be able to see the evolution of this city.
