My room at the Majestic Hotel in Barcelona. So we had to leave the boat by 8am this morning. I'm not sure why they had to do that and everyone was complaining. So I checked out and hung out at the hotel for a few hours while I waited for my room to be ready.
I went up to the rooftop and took some pictures of the view. And then I took a nap for about an hour on one of the lounge chairs. It was a beautiful warm day. In the distance you can see several important sites. This is the La Sagrada Familia, which I will be walking too later today.
The penis shaped building is in a plaza called The Glories. The shape of the Torre Agbar was inspired by the mountains of Montserrat that surround Barcelona, and by the shape of a geyser of water rising into the air. Jean Nouvel, in an interview, described it as having a phallic character. As a result of its unusual shape, the building is known by several nicknames, such as "el supositorio" (the suppository), "l'obús" (the shell) and some more scatological ones. Its design combines a number of different architectural concepts, resulting in a striking structure built with reinforced concrete, covered with a facade of glass, and over 4,500 window openings cut out of the structural concrete. A unique feature of the building is its nocturnal illumination. It has 4,500 LED luminous devices that allow generation of luminous images in the facade. In addition, it has temperature sensors in the outside of the tower that regulate the opening and closing of the glass blinds of the facade of the building, reducing the consumption of energy for air conditioning.
The buildings in Barcelona are just wonderul and you can spend all day walking around just looking at it. It is unique.
This fountain is said to give citizenship to anyone who drinks from it.
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was a Spanish Catalan architect, who belonged to the Modernisme (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique style and highly individualistic designs.
Gaudí's first works were designed in the style of gothic and traditional Spanish architectural modes, but he soon developed his own distinct sculptural style. Some of his greatest works, most notably La Sagrada Família, have an almost hallucinatory power.
He integrated the catenary arch and hyperboloid structures, nature's organic shapes, and the fluidity of water into his architecture. While designing buildings, he observed the forces of gravity and related catenary principles. (Gaudí designed many of his structures upside down by hanging various weights on interconnected strings or chains, using gravity to calculate catenaries for a natural curved arch or vault.)
Using the trencadís technique, Gaudí often decorated surfaces with broken tiles, plates and other ceramics from the city. His work is EVERYWHERE!
Casa Milà was built in the years 1905–1907. Most people consider it magnificent and overwhelming; some say it is like waves of lava or a sand-dune, and today it is a landmark of Barcelona. 
It could be compared with the steep cliff walls in which African tribes build their cave-like dwellings. The wavy facade, with its large pores, reminds one also of an undulating beach of fine sand, formed, for example, by a receding dune. The honeycombs made by industrious bees might also spring to the mind of the observer viewing the snake-like ups-and-downs that run through the whole building.
Built in the year 1877, the local name for the building is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), and indeed it does have a visceral, skeletal organic quality. It was originally designed for a middle-class family and situated in a prosperous district of Barcelona.
The ground floor, in particular, is rather astonishing with tracery, irregular oval windows and flowing sculpted stone work. It seems that the goal of the designer was to avoid straight lines completely.
Much of the façade is decorated with a mosaic made of broken ceramic tiles (trencadís) that starts in shades of golden orange moving into greenish blues.
The roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon or dinosaur. A common theory about the building is that the rounded feature to the left of centre, terminating at the top in a turret and cross, represents the sword of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon.
At sunset I finally made it to the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi was an ardent Catholic, to the point that in his later years, he abandoned secular work and devoted his life to Catholicism and his Sagrada Família.
He designed it to have 18 towers, 12 for the 12 apostles, 4 for the 4 evangelists, one for Mary and one for Jesus. 
Barcelona fell on hard times, economically. The construction of La Sagrada Família slowed. Four years later, Eusebi Güell, his patron, died. Perhaps it was because of this unfortunate sequence of events that Gaudí changed. He became reluctant to talk with reporters or have his picture taken and solely concentrated on his masterpiece, La Sagrada Família.
On June 7, 1926, Gaudí was run over by a tram. Because of his ragged attire and empty pockets, many cab drivers refused to pick him up for fear that he would be unable to pay the fare. He was eventually taken to a pauper's hospital in Barcelona. Nobody recognized the injured artist until his friends found him the next day. When they tried to move him into a nicer hospital, Gaudí refused, reportedly saying "I belong here among the poor." He died three days later on June 10, 1926, half of Barcelona mourning his death.
He was buried in the midst of La Sagrada Família. although Gaudi was constantly changing his mind and recreating his blue prints the only exsisting copy of his last recorded blue prints were destroyed by the anarchists in 1938 at the hight of Francos invasion on barcelona. This has made it very difficult for his workers to complete the cathedral in the same fashion as gaudi most likely would have. It is for this that Gaudí is known to many as "God's Architect". La Sagrada Família is now being completed but differences between his work and the new additions can be seen.
As of 2007, completion of the Sagrada Familía is planned for 2026. However, this may prove wildly optimistic if the worst fears of many eminent engineers and architects are realized. These have pointed out the structural dangers posed by a tunnel for a TGV-style high-speed rail, which would run within feet of the church’s foundations; one might note the precedent of one metro tunnel in Barcelona’s Carmel district that collapsed and destroyed an entire city block on the 27th of February 2005.
This is my sweet pup of the day. I can't believe I am seeing my little girl tomorrow.
