Barcelona

I travelled to Barcelona a couple of weekends ago with Eriko. Barcelona was one of the cities that I really wanted to visit in Spain so I was really excited. Sagrada Familia was definitely the most shocking, but I am going to talk about Park Guell, which I visited on my last day. We were actually very upset in the beginning, because as we started walking uphill to arrive at the park, the weather started to change and it started raining. Although we were prepared because we bought an umbrella in advance at El Corte Ingles in Alicante, it was not what we wanted our park day to be: in the rain, with our cameras, trying to take a picture of the whole city, which was just gloomy.

But, as we walked through the winding roads trying to not get ourselves wet, the weather started to change again. I really felt like the Berkeley weather was following us all the way in Spain.

What was memorable about the Park was that because it is an outdoor environment, the activities that took place were different compared to Gaudi’s other works. There were street musicians performing in the colonnade as well as the peristyle hall under the park. There were violinists, guitarists, as well as a duet with a violin and a bass player. Walking through the different areas that Gaudi designed, I felt like I would hear different types of music from Pachelbel Cannon to a more traditional Spanish guitar song—or what sounded like it.

Not only were there musicians, but street merchants were selling cheap accessories and souvenirs in the park as well, targeting the tourists like myself.

As we started to see the sun again, there were so many more people invading the Park. People trying to take pictures at that perfect spot where you see Gaudi’s slanted columns, with the view of the entire city with the Sagrada Familia in the background, as well as the famous lizard. It was really hard not to get anyone in our picture.

We are all tourists here. But as my hard-drive is becoming full from thousands of picture I took, I keep thinking that I wish I could experience these environments in a different context. This is how I felt when I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid. As I saw all these famous artworks of early Christian religious paintings as well as Velasquez and Goya’s works I learned in my Art History class, I felt so overwhelmed that I was not appreciating every work. As they place 50 paintings on each wall, making the viewer walk through the hall way, I felt like the value of each art piece was diminished. It would have been better if they were all in its original context, where there were found.

-Maya