It was a grey and gloomy morning - I'm sure that in the sun, Park Güell gleams and sparkles and looks even more extraordinary - Gaudí's great plan to build a park with sixty spectacular villas in it, so that the haute bourgeoisie of Barcelona could live in an architectural dream land. Unfortunately, only two were interested ... but that leaves a lot of park. It's hard not to want to take photos of every single bit of crockery mosaic (surely someone's done a PhD on the late C19th ceramic designs here ...) - there are a lot more where these came from, but these give a good sample.
Then a bus down to the sea, at Barceloneta, which had a remarkably laid back and happy feel to it (with more time, I'd have gone to the zoo, or at least the gardens that they're in, which looks as though it has some wonderful buildings that are relics of the 1888 Universal Exposition) - wandered down the front before getting another bus back to the Sagrada Familia.
This, despite being begun in the late C19th, is famously unfinished - and still very much being worked on. I found it surprisingly repulsive from the outside,
but stunningly beautiful within - though I would take Ely Cathedral over it any day ... It is, though, remarkable.
And then - the research part of today - I found Gaudí's snail! I knew it was there, somewhere, but it took some hunting down - it's on the outside of the apse, together with some snakes and lizards and other things that apparently aren't holy enough to be allowed inside a consecrated space. That seems a bit hard on snails and lizards, although certainly snakes have, in biblical terms, rather a lot to answer for.
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