La costa!

Onward to the Mediterranean coast. We stayed in the cutest coastal hill town full of white-washed buildings and quaint everything while visiting family!  I always relish the opportunity to experience a place with a local host, and this visit was a highlight of the Spain journey.  

But we didn't relax for long, sadly.  On to Barcelona, where the lines to pay 20 euro (are they insane?!) to visit Gaudi buildings were long, and the free Gaudi attractions were no longer free.  Jaded by the whole Gaudi scene, we only saw one of his buildings, the Sagrada Familia.  The man was eccentric and given to a lot of exterior embellishment, but the interior of the Sagrada Familia is exquisite and awe-inspiring in its straightforward beauty.  The ceiling is high, the verticality airy, and the hyperbolic arches achieving their desired forest effect.  I felt a connection with Gaudi in our mutual feeling that nature is the greatest inspiration in matters of the divine.

We visited one other modernista building, the Catalan Music Hall designed by Gaudi's mentor, and this interior was again inspirational.  I loved the tile mosaic muses around the stage, the light and whimsy, and for the first time began to understand why these buildings were so ground-breaking at the time: hell, these interiors feel ground-breaking still.