Straight up, this is a long one.  Sorry, sis.  I didn't want to trim one entry shorter.

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05 Apr 2008. 10:30pm.

Barcelona.

We woke up bright and early, showered quickly, and dashed down to the train station in order to catch the 7:00am train.  Sleep sloughed from my eyes like scales as we neared the city, the sun beginning to crest along the water, a carefully constructed vision of pastel pinks, rosy reds, deep oranges and the consummate yellow.

We had arrived, stretching and yawning.

We quickly disembarked from the train, following the thick stream of people up the stairs and into the main station.  The tourist offices are closed, and my roommate says she doesn't want to have to pay for a subway or train, so I look at the big wall map, find our destination, and we blaze our trail.

I don't know what to expect from Barcelona, frankly.  The day I arrived I was too wiped out to think about much of anything, and my only goal was to get myself to Tarragona.  Today, however, I'm free to see the city as it is.

As we walk quickly down the street in order to reach our destination sooner rather than later, I take a few moments to gaze at my surroundings.  It all feels, somehow, familiar.  It's almost like 'Tarragona-PLUS!', in that the vibe (from the cafés to the architecture of the buildings to the arrangement of the tiles on the sidewalks) is just like that of Tarragona - it's just that the buildings are taller, the streets are wider, the crowds are bigger.

We continue to trudge down the road until we can see the spires of our destination.  If Pervy's feet weren't killing him, I would be breaking into a run, filled with overwhelming desire to see her - La Sagrada Familia.

The church is the pinnacle of everything architect Antoni Gaudi stood for, the yet-unfinished crown jewel of his body of work that dominates the city, demanding attention and respect.  Its multiple spires reach towards the heavens, clamoring towards God in reverence, even though a third of them have yet to be completed.

It has two entrances, and I carefully decide to approach the Nativity façade first.  It's densely populated with birds, shepherds, angels, and multiple representations of the Holy Family during the infancy and young childhood of the Lord.  It's very gothic in its style, with lifelike images crammed into small spaces, littering every inch of the façade with decoration.

The central image of Joseph, Mary, and the boy Jesus looks as though it could have been pulled straight from any number of seventeenth-century cathedrals - very old-fashioned, austere, beautiful.

We walk in and make our way to the lift that takes us up into the spires, finding the line pleasantly short until we are able to arrive at the top.  The view of the city is impressive, and I can see in any direction for kilometers on the clear, sunny day. The wind whips past, chilling me to the bone as I stare across the vastness.

I allow myself to get lost between the four Nativity spires, up and down tight spiral staircases and across carefully decorated buttresses, until we arrive back at the ground level to make our way through the unfinished, empty church and see the Passion façade.

If the Nativity entrance was old-fashioned gothic style, the Passion is the opposite.  Dominated by stylized, modernistic, faceless figures, all jutting angles and emotion rather than lifelike in any way.  It's imposing, to say the least, and juxtaposed with the gothic style of the other entrance it's shocking.  (Of course, that was Gaudi's goal.)  It's almost as though I'm unable to avert my eyes, captured entirely in the sensation of the moment.

La Sagrada Familia wraps around me, works its way inside of me - the supreme example of modernism in architecture and design, the physical, tangible version of everything I love about modernism in music and literature.

We walk back down the street until we get to La Pedrera, Gaudi's personally built apartment complex.  It, too, is a prime example of modernism, from the focus on decadent design, the conjunction of old and new without apparent connections, or the rooftop terrace, with odd-shaped, craggy outgrowths reaching towards the sky.  Gaudi received his best inspiration from nature and his building is as layered and complex as his cathedral, full of earthy textures and carefully planned homage to nautilus shells, coral, tree foliage, and insects.

After a quick trip on the Barcelona Metro System, we arrive at our final destination for the day - the Museu Picasso, the second largest repository of his work.  It, too, is a pictoral lesson in the trajectory of modernism, from his early realist phase through neo-romanticism, the blue period, the rose period, until the culmination of his vision of modernism - cubism.

It's fascinating to observe the evolution of one of the twentieth century's most well-known painters from boy to master.  Yet, finally, we arrive at the final sala - Picasso's studies on Velazquez's most amazing piece of art, Las meninas.  This is something I've wanted to see for years, surpassed only by my desire to experience the original in Madrid.  I slowly wander through the room, peering in at the small paintings with one of the characters in them, until I reach the centerpiece - five huge canvasses, each dominated by different versions of Las meninas, in charcoals, greens, reds, each a drastic re-imagining of the original.

I sit on the bench, staring at the largest, overcome with emotion and almost a sense of catharsis.  I continue to enjoy them, until Cameron taps my shoulder insistently, indicating that he is ready to go.  I finally pry myself away, reticent.

We spend the rest of the afternoon walking around the old section of Barcelona, seeing old churches, cathedrals, and the most impressive post office I've ever laid my eyes on, until our feet are killing us and we decide to head back to my beloved Tarragona.