One of our afternoons in Barcelona was devoted to Parc Güell, Gaudí's fanciful park landscaping design that was to be an upscale residential neighborhood until the funders decided that they'd rather live closer to downtown. So it was left as an open-air park, free to the public, with Gaudí gems at every turn. Our first task was to find the place - looked easy enough on the map, but actually accomplishing it was a different story! We embarked on a crazy drive around the hills west of Barcelona, along impossibly narrow one-way streets heading steeply up, down, and around. Good thing I've been pretty used to driving a car with standard transmission on the hilly streets of San Francisco, or our clutch would've been toast. At one point we ended up at some unnamed park at the very top of the hill, with a fantastic view over all of Barcelona. We rested a bit here and tried to catch our bearings before diving back in to the madness...

It took a while to find the Parc Güell, but once we were on the right track the signage was decent and led us straight to the car park (which was free by the way). The entrance from the car park turned out to be a side entrance, and as we wandered in it took us a few more minutes to orient ourselves. When we found the main entrance then everything started to fit together. And it was nice - no entrance fees, unpretentious, just a nice park to stroll around in and relax. We strolled for a couple of hours, taking in the strange rocky pathways held up by stone pillars in seemingly haphazard angles...

The most interesting stuff was collected near the main entrance, with lots of mosaic sculptures (including the classic dragon-lizard that shows up in so many photos) and the two bizarre gate houses that look like they're part of a gingerbread candy house. Up the stairs from the gate houses (past the dragon-lizard) was a covered plaza held up by a collection of 84 stone pillars (the Sala Hipóstila). Most of the pillars where vertical, but several around the plaza's edges leaned inward. This area was designed to be the neighborhood market, and now served as a nice shady place to hang out and stare up at the various mosaic works that adorned the ceiling. Some classical guitar players added to the surreal atmosphere.

Up above the market is a nice open area lined with a long bench curving along its perimeter. The bench is covered with white tiles and colorful mosaic displays along the backrests. This open space is called the Banc de Trencadís, and it was another nice place to hang out, but much too hot in the middle of the afternoon. The rest of the park was much less ornate, with the structures designed to blend into the natural landscape rather than stand out. As you move up past the aforementioned areas by the entrance, several paths fan out through the park gardens. Planters made of unfinished stone that looked as if they grew straight out of the hillside lined some of the trails, and elevated walkways and benches had a similar appearance. After a relaxing afternoon in the park we were ready to head back down into town and find the next tapas experience...