Gaudi Delights on Grigoria´s Birthday

Today we braved the typical rainy weather (for Grigoria´s birthday, not for Barcelona!) and went on a Gaudi tour extravaganza and later a beautiful beach front dinner to celebrate Grigoria´s 26th Birthday!

The day started with Casa Mila "La Padrera" http://www.lapedreraeducacio.org, Gaudi´s last completed and most important civic project. The building is now designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is currently owned by one of Spain´s large banks. The tour took us around one of the fourth floor apartments, attic & roof terrace.

Although the furnishing were not the original ones they were typical of the era complete with ancient water boiler in the bathrooms. The maid´s room and bathroom were both bigger than my living room!

Guadi´s amazing way of encompassing human & organic forms in the facade, internal "leaf" canopy and the door handles, which molded to your finger's. In addition the constant use of fixed door head lights in each room, meant that all areas of the apartment
felt very comfortable and light.

After briefly visiting the undulating roof terrace to
enjoy the views between rain drops it was time to head towards more Gaudi sites.

During late afternoon we spent viewing the
Caso Batilo http://www.casabatllo.es and visiting Picasso muesuem http://www.museupicasso.bcn.es/eng/index_eng.htm
before getting ready to head out for dinner.

(Grigoria) Getting to the place where we were to have dinner was a little adventure in itself. Blair maintained that he did not know where we were going but had a couple of clues for me to decipher. Each clue lead to a different line on the underground we had to take to get there.
After the third line change I was convinced we were doing a full circle! Our final train took us to the Barcelona sea side were we strolled on the parade overlooking the sea. Suddenly Blair disappeared into what could only be described as a glass box with a staircase leading downstairs. A couple of minutes later, he emerged to tell me that we appear to have a reservation there!

The restaurant was called "Agua" (water in Spanish, website: http://www.aguadeltragaluz.com/) and the staircase lead down to a lovely restaurant with a terrace right in front of the sea! I don't know how Blair managed but we got the best table in the house! Food was of course fantastic and we even got music from a saxophonist playing outside.

After dinner we walked for an hour back to the hotel, which was no mean feat given the distance and the food we had just consumed, bringing to an end one of the best birthdays ever!