Spain Day 4 - Bienvenidos Barcelona!

Today begins the second leg of my tour of Spain and so far not even the slightest sign of chocolateria! It helps when you only drink the bottled stuff I guess. How does one describe Barcelona? Hmmm, well...Barcelona is to Madrid what L.A. is to New York, what Coke is to Pepsi, what Ikea is to Target, what Posh is to Sporty. But to be fair, both cities are filled with their fair share of Spice Girls.
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Sagrada Familia. Possibly the best piece of work that Antoni Gaudi never got to finish. Filled with religious symbolism, modernist curves and just plain whacked-out freaky stuff, this church still under construction is possibly the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. There is really no way to describe the feeling that you get when you gaze up into the heavens or try to figure out the riddles of its design. Poor Gaudi was unfortunatly killed by a trolly, the San Francisco treat kind, not the Strawberry Shortcake kind, before he could finish his masterpiece. Construction has been ongoing ever since then by generations of Gaudi's followers who have carved their own nitche of weirdness over the century.
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The opposite side of the original facade has a more cubist, angular feel. Where the front of the Sagrada Familia depicts Christ's birth, the back side shows us his adult life eventually leading to his crucifiction. The Christ that you see behind me caused protest a few years back as it shows a completely nude Jesus. ... Completely. Nude. Jesus. ... Three words that I just don't like saying if it weren't for the sake of letting you know.
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This cryptogram is genius and possibly my favorite part of the the Sagrada Familia. The numbers, no matter how you add them up, equal the number 33; the age that Jesus was when he was crucified. It's just like being in the Da Vinci Code!
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Our next stop was Parc Guell where we were met by Gaudi (?) himself!
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This park was originally supposed to have plots for 60 houses or more but the land was so far away from the center of the city that it was never sold. Gaudi then bought the property and hit it with the crazy stick and I am forever grateful. Salamanders (the unofficial town symbol), dragons, baby doll parts (seriously) and every color that you can imagine finds its home here.
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Most of Gaudi's building's tell a story. Anything from the simple, like the Hansel and Grettle house as seen above to the insane Casa Batllo which tells the story of a dragon eating a town full of people and the house being made of their bones. Craaaazy partaaaay!
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After a full day of running around Gaudi land, I checked into my ultra sexy room at the Hotel Alexandra and got my party duds on because I had a date with a special event.
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We chartered a private boat and ventured out into the Meditteranean to watch the Disney Magic come in for the first time to it's new, exotic port of call. It wouldn't be a Disney event without a few fireworks, classic Disney fanfare and Mickey speaking in Spanish!
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