Friday morning, September 20th, we Metro'd up to the Palau Reial stop. To save time, we walked across Barri Gotic to the Liceu stop.
Coming out of the Metro in North Barcelona, the Gardens of the Palace of Pedralbes was on our left, and the University of Barcelona was all around. It was a totally different feel to the city than what we had been used to -- this was more of the suburban part of the city rather than the tight quarters of the Old City. We wandered around the Gardens for a while, looking for several highlights, including a dragon fountain created by Gaudi. The fountain had been lost for years, as bamboo had taken it over. The fountain is not on the map, but I followed my intuition to find it (Carol actually spotted it first, but I take some credit -- I figured it had to be in that area because there was still plenty of bamboo).
The "palace" (more of a big building with nothing architecturely to distinguish it) was business titan Eusebi Guell's country estate for a while, but is more notable as the Barcelona residence that Franco would stay in whilst in Barcelona.
The green parrots are quite common to
Barcelona parks. They are not native, but
escaped the zoo long ago, and have thrived
in the climate with no natural predators.
The "palace" housed Guell and Franco.
Gaudi's "Lost Fountain" -- a rather whimsical
design of a little dragon. Quite cool.
Gaudi's dragon gate marked the entrance. . .
to the pavilions he built for Guell.
Alas, the pavilions are closed for renovations, but that doesn't deter your faithful blogger from taking pictures of anything and everything Gaudi! Afterwards, we stopped at a coffee shop across the street. The students at the tables around us were busy studying, whilst we luxuriated in our most recent Gaudi find. The guy was a genius. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Mozart, Einstein, Jefferson, Lincoln, Michelangelo, Galileo, Confucius, and many other greats. Add Gaudi to that list.
One last Gaudi pic for this post.
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