Train stations and beaches

Barcelona has a pretty darned impressive public transit system that I will blog about in detail at a later date. One thing that is notable is that there are 4 major train stations here, and 3 of the 4 are almost entirely underground. The main Sants station -- where the high speed and long distance trains arrive and depart -- is almost invisible on the surface (mostly just a small square glass building with a lot of taxi parking around it). All the train lines are underground for at least a kilometre from the station (heading towards the city, they don't come above ground for ~8 km). And they're putting covers on the exposed lines to both hide them and make the track spaces usable.

The main train lines are under the slope on the left

The Estacion de Franca is the exception. Since being built in 1929, it was the main station in the city, until Sants was opened. With a new station for high-speed trails opening in a few years, Franca will see a further decline in traffic.

Which is a shame, because it's a classically beautiful old station that was restored for the 1992 Olympics.

The entry hall 

The 12 platforms 

The arcing 30 tall roof 

The arrival wall

The station has few trains, mostly the R2 commuter line, which wraps through town to Sants, then heads south to the Airport or elsewhere. 

The station sits near Barceloneta which I wrote about here, which also makes it close to the beach.

Ah, the beach. What better day to go to the beach than on a sunny (though breezy) Sunday? You get to find a bit of sand to yourself and get peace and quiet.

Or maybe not

Barcelona doesn't just have one beach, it has a dozen or more. Each is about 1 km long with a break-wall or marina at each end. So the scene above plays out cove after cove after cove.

The first cove 

And the next 

And the next after that 

And the next after that again

Every cove features multiple volleyball nets, all of which were in use.

Some of these guys were good. Others not so much

The marinas -- and there are several -- range from large to huge and offer the opportunity to rent jet skis or sailboats or windsurfers or kiteboards. The wind was howling this day; many small sailboats were in trouble, capsizing and blowing into rocks, and some windsurfers were not faring much better.

With the Coast Guard watching 

One or two boats 

A pretty marina 

Windsurfers in a hurry 

Zooming around a boat 

Paddlers and smaller boats in the protected waters

And the marinas -- in fact, the beaches in general -- are lined with restaurant after restaurant. There are more restaurants just around the big marina than in Banff and Canmore combined. I'm not sure who eats all all of them.

The beach boardwalk which runs for as far as the eye can see is home to strollers, walkers, joggers, bikers, scooter riders (foot powered Razors and electric powered ones), Segways, kids, kids on scooters -- and nudists. Seriously. The beaches are topless, but a totally nude lady strolled by us on the boardwalk -- being filmed by a dude. 

There are no right of way rules on the boardwalk, by the way. Bikes weave between the walkers, electric scooters race along, walkers stop randomly and chat -- it's the Legacy Trail with sand.

The beaches are ill served by Metro lines (the nearest parallels the beach through the Poble Nou district, about 1.5 km inland) but the H16 bus runs along the beach road and takes you right into downtown (or, conveniently for us, about 300 m from our apartment).

Failed real estate projects

Imagine...

You are a rich person with a tract of land. You hire a noted architect and create a small planned community. You do what EVERYONE does: build the reception centre and public spaces (including the gate house where you enter the community), then build a show home. Your famous architect even lives in a building adjoining the space. You sit back in the hopes that your noted architect and the concept brings in the crowds, and your planned community sells well.

But it doesn't.

Ten years go by and only one lot sells, and only one house is built. Bah, you say, and call it a day, abandoning the project. Eventually, you donate the space to the City, and they use the undeveloped lots as a garden to raise plants to put elsewhere in the City.

But a hundred years later, it's a tourist attraction. Because the noted architect was Gaudi, and his fanciful, colourful, modernistic, avant garde public spaces and two buildings are the talk of the town.

Such is Park Guell.  You can just imagine the sales pitch when they built the place. I think it would have sounded like this:

====================

Announcing... PARK GUELL!

Live in a community that will remind you of Whoville and Dr. Seuss! Your guests will arrive in whimsical style to a the gingerbread cottage Gatehouse!

The gatehouses 

Next, they will be awed by the Grand Staircase!

The Grand Staircase from the main entrance 

The upper plaza sits on a set of columns, with market space under it

Rising above the staircase, the community features the Grand Plaza!

And that plaza...

Yes, the Plaza! Magnificent city views (even on cloudy days). Lined with seats (all with wicked lumbar supports) and decorated in fanciful mosaics.

Popular with residents! 

Beautifully decorated! 

Magnificent mosaics!

And the space under the plaza was built with style  -- and commerce -- in mind! Dozens of Doric columns shaded under a deck, perfect for hosting that Saturday market -- and ingeniously designed to collect water to feed down through the columns to a cistern!

The fabulous plaza will be the community's focal point! 

"Doric" columns abound! 

The great colonade!

And the Fountains! The water collected will feed whimsical fountains that cascade down the Grand Staircase! And the fountains feature... Creatures!!!

Everyone will want their photo with the salamander we call "Bob"

He drools while your guests take selfies! 

And there's a goat-thing, too!

In the evening, you and your guests can go for walks along the Aqueducts and fancifully decorated Rock Walls!

Did we mention the helicoloid columns? 

Angled, too! 

With decorative towers ON the columns! 

A washerwoman! 

Your guests will LOVE knowing those rocks PROBABLY won't fall on them! 

These probably won't fall, either!

And the Showhomes feature the latest in design, from the Catenary Arches and Ribbed Ceilings...

In blue!

...to Concrete Columns in your house...

Beautiful!

...to the Stairs. And the stairs are... everywhere!

Narrow straight ones! 

Narrow curved ones! 

Stairs on the roof!

Houses will feature awesome design elements such as iron balconies and decorative detailing, all designed by our architect!

This balcony COULD BE YOURS!

The chimney is MOVE IN READY!

Yes, all this could be yours! Live in a Gaudi-designed community, with pie-shaped lots (only 6% of which can be covered by a house). Engage your child-like side. Buy now! Lots are available!

====================

No wonder it didn't sell.

Churches as tourist attractions

I haven't been into a lot of them in Calgary or Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver, but I'm not really aware that churches where I live are popular with visitors. They are in Europe, of course, because (like the one in Tarragona, and the Barcelona Cathedral, and all of them in Italy) they're old --substantially older than my country -- and ornate, full of interesting classical design elements. And they can be big.

I kinda feel for anyone here who owns and manages a big, "can seat 5,000 parishioners", church built in the 1200's -- that never seem to have more than a few dozen attending even the biggest mass. How do you pay for the upkeep of things? Barcelona is the first place I've been to in Europe that pushes the envelope on the solution to this problem, with most churches charging people to visit -- nothing widespread (yet) in Italy or France.

So churches here appear to have recognized that they are tourist attractions, and by some rough math, rake in a LOT of dough from folks paying €5 and more to go in for their 10 min visit. Then they charge extra for crypt visits or cloister visits or library visits or rooftop visits.

Probably the king of this is the Sagrada Familia, the single "must see" attraction in all of Barcelona. It's a project started around 1910 and due for completion in 2026. Mind bogglingly big and with a price tag to match, you gotta pay for it somehow, and that somehow is €15 entry fees, €5 audio guides, €9 elevator rides (though they only come as a package with the audio guide), €35 private guided tours -- and they get to do that because the Sagrada is unlike any church you have ever seen, or are likely to see. 

The design dude that dominates the talk (though not the architecture) of this town is Antoni Gaudi -- he of the weird designs seen in buildings I talked about here. Sr. Gaudi is hugely modernistic, and after doing a bunch of other projects in town (which I will write about soon), dedicated his life from 1914 onwards till his death in 1926 to designing and building the Sagrada. While he completed the design (which was the hard part, as I will get to), he didn't get far in the build; he built the crypt and one of the church's 3 facades.

The construction project church from across the street

His facade starts off looking pretty normal, depicting the nativity story...

Guess who

...though is ultrarealistic in that Gaudi made plaster casts of dead bodies and actual people to get the sculptures correct. But take a broader look and it's over the top ornate, with carvings and detailing EVERYWHERE, all of it telling allegorical stories.

Whoa. 

Detailing everywhere

There are turtles holding up columns and turkeys roosting, domestic dogs  (breeds they didn't have 2,000 years ago), folks playing instruments that didn't exist...

Bassoons were invented around 1650

...and other modernistic takes on things, like the doves flying out of the green tree...

Huh?

...and doors made of leaves and full of bugs and frogs.

And this has what to do with anything? 

The critters are cute 

So are the bugs

So my "first impressions" of the place were... interesting.

But...

When I got inside and listened to the audio guide, then toured the "how he did it" museum underneath, it started to make sense. Gaudi put together two fundamental breakthrough "never been done before" bits of architecture and design: the incorporation of elements inspired by nature, and the elimination of the T-square in favour of geometrical elements based on paraboloids and other mathematical forms.

As to the former, one only need to look at his columns. They are trees, spreading as they rise to act as an umbrella, eliminating the need for external (or internal) buttresses as in every other church built before 1900. Even the places where the "trunks" split to "branches" feature details modelled from nature, as if other branches are broken off -- patterned after birch trees.

They rise then spread 

Trees above the choir loft 

The main corridor

Brilliant. Massively tall yet wide open. And the "forest canopy" (AKA the ceiling) is a series of identical parabolic dishes which reflect sound, especially above the choir loft. They manage the sound, but like the shape of eggs, are incredibly strong and support roof with ease. Being identical, they are mass produced reducing costs.

And they look like a forest canopy 

More canopy

Churches have stained glass windows. Check. But Gaudi used the directions of the church to put warm colours where the sun rises, cool colours where it sets, bathing one side of the church in orange and the other in blue. And since all the religious stories are outside the church on the facades, the windows are abstract, just mosaics of colour.

Flowers 

A mosaic colour mix 

The blue side 

Oranges and greens

If the front "Nativity" facade is ultrarealistic, the rear "Passion" facade is hypergeometric and the opposite in its bleakness -- supported by columns designed to look like ribs and muscles and with a changing geometric cross section along its length.

Note the columns 

An angular Christ on the cross 

Geometric bad guys 

Pensive

Go to the museum under the church and you can see how all of this came to be. Models of cross sections he built in multiple styles to test ideas. Samples of the natural elements (like trees) and his models in plaster. Miniatures of the machines used to create his shape changing columns. Geometric forms that look complex from the side but make sense when seen from above or below...

Straight line model of the roof canopy forms 

Undulating roof of the school... 

...rendered as a model. Easy

And for me (the engineer), coolest of all: the string models. Background: if you dangle a string or chain between two points, you create what's call a catenary arch, though it is upside down. The weight of the string at each end is the force needed to support the arch if you turn it rightside up. Connect a bazillion of these together, and you can measure the strengths needed to build your whole church. Here, for instance, is the original 10' tall string model of the entire nave of the church. All the little brown bags are weights simulating the downward forces on the roof.

So cool

Look in a mirror and you can invert it, seing what it will look like rightside up (though my photo doesn't do it justice).

Awesome

Sr. Gaudi was one impressive engineer and architect. Though as a designer, he needs to learn that bassoons weren't around when Jesus was born, having Jesus parachute into your church...

Maybe not the intent, but that's what it looks like

...and topping your towers with bunches of pretty grapes and wheat sheaves just really looks silly.

Yeah

The Sagrada is a church that doesn't feel the slightest bit revenant nor secular, but rather like a Disney attraction. Approach it as such and it's an interesting study in creative architecture. Approach it as a church and you'll be somewhat disappointed.

===============
Footnote:

We wanted to go up the Towers of the church to see the impressive view. We took the €9 elevator ride.

Don't.

What a waste. The elevator takes you (and 8 others) up 65 m to a tiny viewing platform that has room for 10. Elevators arrive every 2 min; do the math. The one we took (the Passion tower) is a construction zone around the platform. The views are mostly blocked by fences and towers.

Wow. What a view.

 Then you have to walk down 65 m though a tight circular staircase.

10 stories of this... 

...surrounding this tower...

...then down 10 stories through this shaft

But the breeze at the top is nice.