a Barcelona weekend

My mom and I enjoyed a very chilly yet beautiful weekend in Barcelona. We explored Gaudi's Casa Batlló, where there are no straight lines and the roof is dragon-inspired. It was really interesting learning the techniques he used to create open spaces and reuse materials.





And there was Gaudi's fairy-tale land Parc Güell, originally meant to be a housing complex.




Of course, we paid a visit to Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece La Sagrada Familia. The towering columns are modeled after tree branches, making you feel as if you were in a forest. Gaudi's all about nature and religion, and La Sagrada Familia is the culmination. It's still under construction though- work started in 1882 and is scheduled to be completed in 2026!



And what would a trip to Barcelona be without getting pickpocketed? It's unfortunate, but Barcelona is infamous for its pickpockets. Here's what happened: we were at Parc Ciutadella on Saturday afternoon and my mom told me to take photos for her while she grabbed some bread crumbs from her backpack and left it on the ground behind me. Big mistake. About 20 seconds later, the backpack had disappeared. In California, these things just don't occur to you.

We spent about an hour walking around the park, trying to find the police and half-heartedly looking through the trash cans to see if anybody had taken the money and thrown it away. A very nice man who works for the park helped us (apparently he didn't have anything else to do). After an hour, we did run into the police; they were nice but couldn't do much. It did help me realize how lucky our situation was compared to how it could've been... we were not robbed (by force), we didn't have any documents at all in the backpack, we only had about 20 euro, and we didn't lose anything important other than my mom's prescription glasses (she did have an extra pair). My mom was still extremely bummed out, frustrated, and angry with herself, but what can you do? Anyways, we decided to go to the station to put in an anuncio for the backpack so if it was located, my mom would still get her glasses back. There were 2 British guys there as well as 2 Korean guys (apparently one's wallet was taken from inside his jacket by a team of three, two men and one woman... he had over 200 euros as well as his passport in there). Even though it was apparently a very very short line, we were tired and ended up not waiting to put in the anuncio.

In case you were wondering, here's the scene of the crime: