Navigation
 | Introduction | |
 |  | Spain |
 | | Madrid (Days 1-3) |
| | Toledo (Day 2) |
| | Sevilla (4-5) |
|  | Barcelona (6-7) |
| | France |
| | Annecy (9-11) |
| | Paris (17-19) |
| | Switzerland |
| | Geneva (11) |
| | Germany |
 | | Homestay (12-15) |
| | Freiburg (15-16) |
| Introduction | |
| | Spain |
| | Madrid (Days 1-3) |
| | Toledo (Day 2) |
| | Sevilla (4-5) |
| | Barcelona (6-7) |
| | France |
| | Annecy (9-11) |
| | Paris (17-19) |
| | Switzerland |
| | Geneva (11) |
| | Germany |
| | Homestay (12-15) |
| | Freiburg (15-16) |
|
Barcelona
Our fourth and final stop in Spain was Barcelona. Barcelona is Spain's 2nd largest city (following Madrid) and certainly one its most famous. Home to the 1992 Olympics as well as such sites as the architecture of Gaudi and the popular Salvador Dali museum, Barcelona has much to offer a group of 30 young American tourists...
On our first day in Barcelona, we took a lovely city tour that first brought us to the Gaudi Center. The Gaudi Center was a very unusual place; all the architecture personally designed by Gaudi and patterned almost exclusively with colored tiles. Several of the buildings there looked like they came straight out of Dr. Suess novels! After the Gaudi Center, we were taken to the tallest (I think) Cathedral yet. The Cathedral in Barcelona was very tall and forbidding, with four towers spiking the sky. The Cathedral, we were told, was not even complete yet, and been under construction for over a century.
We visited many other places in Barcelona, including a stop at the beach. (Many of us actually swam in the Mediterranean Sea!) However, the most interesting stop in Barcelona for me (and many of the ambassadors I talked to) was the fascinating Salvador Dalí Museum. Here's an excerpt from my journal:
Day 7
Today, we visited the Salvador Dalí Museum. Dalí was an abstract surrealist artist weird enough to make Picasso look traditional. His works include paintings, sculptures, jewelry, and even entire rooms. Many of them are illusions or hidden within other works, such as his paintings of a woman inside a pixelized potrait of Abraham Lincoln. Most interesting was the Mae West room, in which he designed furniture for an entire apartment and arranged it in such a way that from a certain position the entire room looked like a portrait of Mae West!
Another interesting fact about the museum is that Dalí arranged the entire thing himself out of an old theatre - he even planned to have himself buried there! His grave is in the center of what was once the stage, and facing it is a painting of his symbolizing death. There is also a passage beneath the stage where you can go to see his grave from the side, including the inscription.
Wow! As you can see, the Museum left quite and impression on me then and has stuck with me ever since! It was unfortunate that we were only scheduled for a brief 45 minute visit. If there were one place I would travel back to, the Dalí Museum would most certainly be it. But, we had a schedule to keep, and that schedule said we had to be moving into France...
