After a truly wonderful breakfast at our hotel (I don’t do food porn, but if I did you’d be seeing photos here) we mostly successfully navigated the Barcelona Metro to Casa Milà, commonly known as La Pedrera. Gaudi considered La Pedrera to be his masterpiece—at least up until he devoted the rest of his life to the Sagrada Familia. It’s easy to see why. The structure is based on 127 brick ribs that intentionally mimic the skeleton of a whale. This free flowing structure meant that there were no bearing walls to take into account when he designed the building, allowing him to use whatever organic shape suited his eccentric fancy.

We arrived in Barcelona at 6:30am after a flawlessly executed but not very comfortable (cramped, terrible food, and turbulent—but cheap!) 30 hours of travel that included two red-eyes. The Barcelona airport is a model of efficiency. Got through customs and baggage claim quickly and a ride to our hotel was waiting for us when we were done. We got to the hotel by 7:30, and although they graciously took our luggage, the room wasn’t going to be ready until around 10:30, which we knew beforehand. So—we had been awake and in the same clothes for 30+ hours, were dead tired, and had nowhere to rest. Let’s go exploring!