Park Guell

After we were picked up from Placa Espanya, we were taken to Park Guell. I loved this park. It was designed by Antonio Gaudi and originally was not meant to be a public park. It was meant to be a housing subdivision with 60 houses. Only two houses were built, one for the Guell family (which were huge patrons of Gaudi) and the other never sold, so Gaudi moved in and lived there for 20 years. Later it was donated to the public. This is the entrance.
The salamander is the symbol of Barcelona (maybe Spain, I'm not sure). You can find little mosaic salamanders all over Barcelona.

If your thinking that I make my girls take pictures like this, you are mistaken. They see these things, and run up to me like 5 year olds and beg for a couple of Euro so they can have their picture taken with these characters! Its all them!
These are the entrance houses at the gate, originally for upkeep of the area, now gift shops etc. They look like real life gingerbread houses. The houses that were built for people to live in are not like this. They are more "normal", but still have a Gaudi feel to them.
At the top of the entrance staircase is this shady area underneath the top courtyard. The courtyard has water catchers that funnel water down through these columns and into a cistern. They have a lot musicians under here because the acoustics are good. It was originally meant to be a market place.
This is the ceiling in this area. Gaudi was the first "green" designer. He used a lot of recycled glass, china etc for his mosaics. It was so beautiful. So different.


Here we are on top of the ceiling I just showed you, in the courtyard. This courtyard has a huge, curvy, mosaic bench that goes all along the outside of it. It was so hot up here, but the views were awesome!
When you leave the courtyard area, you walk along this path. I love these mosaic rock columns they had all through the park.

One of the things about the architecture in this park and the the Sagrada Familia is that the stone work looks as though it is melting or like it is made of sand, like a sandcastle. I would have liked to have spent more time here, but our tour only gave us about 45 minutes, which was no where near enough time to enjoy it. I could have used that 3 hours they gave us at Placa Espanya.