Gaudí day in Barcelona! Among other sites, we hit the Casa Batlló and the Casa Mila. The day started with a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel (where we wrapped up some snacks for lunch too and stuffed them into our bags). Then up the street to Casa Batlló, only a diagonal city block away. It certainly stood out from the surrounding buildings, a colorful exterior with a funky exoskeleton of bone-like balconies and window structures. True to Gaudí's dislike for straight lines and right angles, the mosaic-covered facade rippled, the roof line flowed in a nice arc, and the balconies curved out gracefully from the building.

We paid the steep admission fee and slowly walked through the interior. Again, very few hard angles. The ceiling transitioned smoothly to the walls, and in many of the rooms I was left with the impression of being inside some living structure that had evolved naturally rather than undergone standard construction. It was strange, but comfortable. In addition to resisting straight lines, Gaudí was also very focused on ventilation and natural light. Air vents were artistically worked into the doorways with fine wood carvings, and an open courtyard ran the full height of the building, bringing sunlight into the lower floors. The surface of the courtyard was covered with blue tiles, whose color became lighter as you descended to the lower floors - an attempt to keep a consistent tone as the brightness decreased further down inside the building.

Last stop was the roof, which is one of the most photographed areas of the house. It was almost cartoon-like, with an uneven surface and fairy-tale chimneys covered with colorful mosaics. The blue and green knobs along the ridge at the front of the house reminded me of the spine of some magical dragon, with scaly tiles down its sloping back. We later read that the roof in fact does represent St. George and the dragon! In all we spent a couple of hours wandering through the house, and then spent a while longer sitting out front and staring up at it (and taking far too many photos of course)... Casa Batlló was just opened to the public in 2002, and along with a couple of other neighboring Modernista buildings forms a row of houses known as the Manzana de la Discordia, or "Apple of Discord". (Manzana apparently means both "apple" and "city block" in Catalonia.)

Our first attempt to visit Casa Mila was at about 9:30 in the evening. Also known as La Pedrera, this corner apartment building was completed in 1910. It was an interesting site to view in the light of the street lamps, but the real reason we were here at this time of the evening was we'd read that during the summer it opens at 10:00 for live music and cava on the roof, and that sounded like fun to us. But with it being September, maybe summer was officially over - we waited until 10:45 and it sure didn't look like anything was going to be happening. We made up for it with some wine and tapas, and I enjoyed a Cuban cigar on the walk back to our hotel.

We returned on our last morning in Barcelona, just before heading off towards Cadaques, and did the normal daytime tour. This apartment building is much more subdued than some of Gaudí's other more lively constructions, but it was still quite impressive. It shared the characteristic curved lines, open central coutyard, and wacky rooftop chimneys. Since most of the apartment units are rented out (would be pretty cool to live in one of Gaudí's buildings!), the tour focused on one unit that was set aside and decorated with period furnishings - quite the swanky pad for the hip city-dweller of the early 20th century - and the roof, which had gently sloping floors and the courtyard opening. The attic had been turned into a Gaudí museum, with several of the models that he used to determine the structural integrity of his designs. It was fascinating - he constructed upside-down models with string and hung weights representing the relative load of each piece to see how the forces worked themselves out. It worked for him, but apparently others who tried to work from his rough designs usually failed and their constructions were not stable. I'm sure such techniques would be virtually impossible to push through various standards bodies in today's world, but I guess innovation always has to push the envelope...