Q is for Quitessential, Quixotic Quonxtruction

Travel date: May 13, 2014
City: Barcelona, Spain
Bottles of wine consumed: no less than four
Author: Nick John

Ok, I made that third word up, but spending this much time around the Catalan language does that to you. Banks dispense caixa and people eat xocolate. You basically just take the spanish words you sort of know, replace any "sh" sound with an "x", and lisp your way through the rest. It's fun.

Today we toured a building constructed by architect Antoni Gaudi (who also designed the massive cathedral Sagrada Familia). This building typifies the modernista movement of architecture. The roof looks like a flowing wave of water and the chimneys are all whimsically twisted and stylized phalluses. The interiors of some of the apartments were on display, and the floor just beneath the rooftop was converted to a museum to show how the building was designed. Like his cathedral, this building is heavily influenced by elements of nature, so the interiors feel very organic and flowing. He used a series of parabolas, hyperbolas, and catenaries to construct the wavy rooftops and support the weight of , leaving the interior of the top floor feeling like the innards of some giant space creature.

Also today we toured the ancient ruins of the city at the Barcelona History Museum. We walked through the excavation of the early settlers and learned about how they made wine and garum (pressed fish entrails, a delicacy of ancient people who had yet to invent A1 to put on everything).

We finished out the night at a killer tapas restaurant called La Pepita. Nick mistranslated the name, but in the end, the little crackers-filled-with-delicious-fillings was pretty damn delightful. We also found a rival for our leading contender of "the world's best olives", and we might have had a glass or six of Rioja to accompany our dinner.

We even got to draw on the walls!