Don & Donna Barcelona

 Old world charm Seville is no longer the gateway to the New World or a major player in global politics. But its rich history dating back to Roman times and cultural traditions make it a great place to visit, and probably to live. Modern comfort, meet European style We booked our trip through Costco Travel and they put us up in first class hotels, the highlight of which was Seville”s 5-star Hotel Colon Gran Meliá. My favorite part was the art-themed floors. Each floor was dedicated to a famous Spanish artist. Ours was the Murillo floor and one of his lovely cherubs graced our door. The door to our hotel room in Seville Flamenco  Seville is the birthplace of flamenco dancing, which remains wildly popular among young and old alike.  This lovely señorita performed a flamenco dance with live guitar and singer in the bar of our hotel Flamenco shops line the cobblestone streets of the old town and with fashions changing every year, locals regularly buy new dresses for the week-...

Tapas and beer at la Boqueria Market in Barcelona’s Gothic quarter After breakfast… For us, vacationing in Europe means lots of walking, eating, and visiting museums. And in Barcelona that means visiting the Surrealists—Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, and Pablo Picasso, who each have museums of their own. These young geniuses came of age in the early 1900s and were mature artists in the 1930s when civil war broke out in Spain, followed by World War II,  another dark and frightening time.  The Surrealists expressed their imaginations by breaking with the realistic conventions of traditional painting and giving free rein to subconscious interpretations of reality. For Picasso and Miro, that included capturing the struggle of the Spanish Civil war and the plight of the common man. Dali, however, embraced wealth and pursued fame above politics. His ostentatious behavior and support of dictator Francisco Franco were so offensive that the Surrealists kicked him out of their club. He didn’...

 Undulating rooftops and turrets inspired by the morel La Sagrada Familia Antoni Gaudi (1852 - 1926) was a Catalan architect who introduced Barcelona to a new approach to building called Modernista. A prolific architect and a deeply religious Catholic, his masterpiece is a gothic cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, which dominates the skyline and is still under construction. He also built Casa Mila, a fanciful downtown apartment building, and Park Guell, a failed development on the hilly outskirts of the city. Gaudi’s parapet is constructed like a morel Gaudi combined fanciful ornamentation with modern structural principles, based on the natural form of trees, butterflies, and even morel mushrooms.  He was a humble man who credited God with creating the natural world that was his inspiration. Even his most playful buildings have a sense of sacred space. Casa Mila or La Pedrera This was my favorite Gaudi building because it was an intimate living space. Part of the building was rent...

Getting around town Barcelona is divided into districts—Antoni Gaudi architecture to the north, Port of Barcelona to the south—and both are accessible via the city’s “hop on, hop off” bus tours, which we love. We are logging upwards of 15,000 steps per day, but being able to relax on an open air bus with an audio guide is a welcome respite. We bought two day tickets for  Barcelona Bus Turistic and followed both the red and blue routes. Barcelona is a big city with 1.6 million inhabitants and it took us a full day to get our bearings. We arrived on Saturday, bought tickets, and spent most of the day scouting out the Gaudi buildings we wanted to tour.  Audio guides make the bus ride like a tour. We passed Gaudi’s Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera, and will tour inside tomorrow. The Modernista style of architecture, which Gaudi pioneered,  utilizes modern construction with medieval embellishment. The Port of Barcelona is a bustling sea side, almost as pretty as Grand Trave...