Aventura 1: La Sagrada Familia

Aventuras for me are those little surprises, or big ones, that you weren't expecting during your day.  Not what you have planned, but what you didn't have planned, what went wrong, what mistakes you made, what came of that, what surprises you encountered.  And I want to set up this blog just recounting all the adventures that I find.

And man, did I found amazing surprises today visiting La Sagrada Familia.  If surprise=aventura for me, then I found so many adventures.  This church, designed mostly by Antoni Gaudí, is _______ <-- (insert word here akin to amazing, incredible, speechless, crazy, amazing, amazing, amazing.) I really don't have words to describe it, once I have pictures of it, I'll put it up.  For now, here's just a picture I found on the internet!

But there are surprises everywhere.  You can look at this church, in one small spot, for ten minutes and still find new things where ever you are looking.  When I was looking up, in one ceiling, I saw these beautiful sculptures and stones, then little rocks coming out, than mosaics hiding behind the sculptures.  The stained class - first it's just amazing colors, than maybe a fish, or is that a landscape? What are those letters in the stained glass that I didn't notice before?

Gaudí loved nature - and so much of this building and his work is based off of nature.  A turtle is holding up one of the columns that holds up pretty much the entire entrance on his shell.  Honey-comb shaped windows.  Columns inside that split off like tree branches so it feels like you are in a bosque (forest).  Huge clam shells every 10 feet or so, held up like a bath or bowl on the wall.  Gold mosaic rays coming from the windows on the ceiling.  And the ceilings - the ceilings are incredible here.  It makes me want to design my house making the ceilings the main part - because people don't look up enough!

I loved best how Gaudí took these crazy turns in architecture and art that no one had before.  His uniqueness and colorfulness and individuality and personality and everything isn't curbed one bit.  It's really inspiring.

And also really cool - this church, yes, is most famous for Gaudí, but there's been a great collaboration of architects and artists working on this! From the person who first designed the entrance, to Gaudí, to Subirachs who designed these really cool cubist sculptures, to the stone masons who actually create all this artwork, to the construction workers who held put together the church.




I'm so happy I'm here for ten weeks.  Because I get to return here whenever I want to find more aventuras!