Wow. Barcelona.

Ahh Barcelona!
We just got back from three and a half days in Barcelona and they were some of the most incredible days of my life.  The city of Barcelona is incredibly clean and beautiful and I could go on and on.  Not to mention it contains a huge collection of famous architectural projects.  Plus the people and culture were awesome and the food was delicious! With perfect weather added in, I didnt want to leave!  If I ever get a chance, I would come back to Barcelona in a heartbeat.

Our first stop in Barcelona was the Pavilion designed by Mies Van Der Rohe.  You may or may not have heard of him, but he is one of the architects we spent a lot of time studying and discussing in school.  The pavilion itself is not a huge project, but the way it deals with spaces, details, and surfaces was really fascinating, and as always, great to see in real life.  Walking through it was cool and it was a good opening to Barcelona.  One of the three architects of the pavilion's reconstruction was even there giving a tour to some Spanish students in English, so we got to listen in for a little.

 No big deal, just chillin in front of the pavilion

"Interior"

Did some pretty nifty stuff

Chocolate pastry = always a good morning

Next we headed to the Olympic area in Barcelona.  The spire was designed by Calatrava and is a fairly famous symbol in Barcelona.  The rest of the Olympic area wasnt super fascinating, but it was cool to see.  They were even having a Shakira concert in the stadium that night (we were sad we didnt get tickets).

Calatrava's spire

You can see Toyo Ito's tower in the distance

 After that we continued our treck to top of the hill and entered the Botanical Gardens of Barcelona.  These were really very impressive.  They had plants from California, South Africa, and all over the world.  It was on the side of a hill and the pathways they designed were really interesting to navigate.  At the top of the hill was the Botanical Institute.  We snuck onto the second floor on accident and got yelled at haha but it was fun.

Botanical Gardens

Botanical Institute

 Our explorations continued down the hill to other new and notable architecture projects.  This pattern below was really pretty and covered the entire side of a building.  They are old misshapen pots and the sun made them really cool.  For lunch we had our first real Spanish tortillas.  What they call a tortilla is nothing like the flour things we wrap our burritos in.  Instead, its an egg omelette kind of thing, typically with potatoes in it.  So we had tortillas sandwiches.  Not anything super special, but a great lunch and it felt good to try something spanish.

Tortilla sandwich!

 Then somehow we made it out to the sea!  We walked and traveled so much over those 3.5 days.  I swear we walked through every part of Barcelona at least once.  Well worth it though.  The water was beautiful and the sun was shining the whole time.  We stumbled upon this big pier thing with the wave structures going along it and a huge crowd of people walking out.  There was a big mall on the end and it was full of cool shops.  There was even a starbucks! (we later found them all over the city).  We were all cold and could use a little more energy so we got ourselves a little taste of home in the form of coffee. mmmm.

mmm ocean

Starbucks coffee! definitely expensive here, but a great taste of home

 Can't believe we did this all on the first day? Me neither! So much more to talk about too.  So we visited some more really impressive newer projects that were right on the edge of the ocean.  I was a huge fan of them.  The first one was just two towers, but there was a unique bridge between them and a huge piece jutting out.  The second one was an oval shaped building clad in wood with a huge part pulled out of the middle.  Also very cool.

super cool medical research center

Christopher Columbus pointing towards the sea

Colorful roof of a market

Interesting side to that same market

Impressive cathedral of the city (we didnt linger long, we werent there for the old stuff, we get enough of that in Rome)

Getting Christmas decorations ready! Cant wait to see them lit up around rome

Theater designed by a contemporary of Gaudi

 Finally, after walking all over Barcelona, our first day had an incredible ending.  My friend's aunt lives in Barcelona and we had a chance to meet up the very first night.  She was incredibly nice and had lived in Barcelona for many years.  So she was able to show us around and help us learn more about the area, the people, the food, the drinks and the culture.  She took us out for Tapas, because when in Spain, everyone should go out for Tapas.  The first place we went to (apparently the usually go to several places) was packed with people.  We had a local favorite that was similar to sparkling white wine and was really good, with some potato chips.  Then at the next place, we each got something a little more.  I had a piece of salmon on bread with a really good sauce.  Plus we tasted some of their cider/wine/idk but it was good too.

First Tapas!

Finally she took us to a bar that she goes to all the time, where one of the owners is from the UK and speaks english.  This place was packed too but we were able to grab a table.  I split the mixed Tapas plate with my friend.  There was potatoes bravas (potatoes with spicy sauce and garlic sour cream), blood sausage, chorizo, onions, peppers, seafood empanada thing, fried cheese thing, potato and zucchini tortillas, and a few other random things on it, served with bread.  This plus some local spanish wine was an incredible meal.  Plus we spent a long time talking to our new friend in Barcelona.  Like I said she told us all about Barcelona and we learned so much.  She made that first day so incredible and I am so thankful we were able to meet her.
I love Barcelona!!

Sooo incredibly good! I am a huge fan of Tapas.

And thats only day 1.  2 more days to come!

More Vatican...Incredible pizza...and Im off to Barcelona!

So here are some more images of the vatican museums.  Like I said before, the place was huge and I have endless photos from just that tour.

One of my favorite rooms was the room of animals, filled with really dynamic animal sculptures

everybody loves a cool domed celing

dramatic much

really famous raphael fresco - school of athens

I definitely snuck my camera into the sistine chapel and stole a few pictures.  They are really strict and say that they are not allowed, but luckily im one of the few people in my group with a really small camera, so it doesnt stand out.  Got some good pictures of the famous ceiling and the last judgement on the wall.  Very cool to see in real life after always hearing about these frescos

Ceiling!

The last judgement

Famous ramp at the end

Soon after that tour, we got to take another trip to a construction site.  This is the site for the new congress building in Rome.  A project by Fuksas, the title is "the cloud."  Pretty dramatic right?  The idea is a floating cloud inside a glass and steel box that hold the new congress.  Of course, the concept is cool, but nothing is ever that simple.  After visiting the construction site, it was clear that they were going to have trouble getting this "cloud" feeling across considering the huge quantities and masses of steel they had to use to even create the form of the cloud.  But after visiting the site it will definitely be interesting to see how it comes across in the end and how the site is eventually transformed.

Does it look like a cloud yet? hmm

 And then last night, I had the best pizza in Rome.  Legit, it was awesome.  This place was called Dar Poeta and they had so many different pizza choices.  I saw one that had salmon on it and had to go for it.  It had gorgonzola cheese, mozerrella, rucola and salmon.  mmmmm.  The salmon was awesome on a pizza and the gorgonzola was also excellent.  Definitely going back there.

Excited to dig in

Digging in hardcore

 And for dessert, apparantly this restaurant is famous for their nutella and ricotta cheese calzones.  Sounds incredible right?? well it was.  Covered in powdered sugar and cocoa, filled with warm and steamy nutella and sweet ricotta cheese.  What a meal.  I left extremely stuffed.  This was my celebratory dinner after finishing our last review before our final.  Definitely bringing my sister back here when she gets here, one of my fave restaurants so far.

Yes please

Messy and delicious

Now I am off to BARCELONA for thanksgiving break! I am sooo excited.  I keep saying we are going to have to find a spanish turkey and some spanish pumpkin pie somewhere for our own little thanksgiving.  We leave tomorrow night and will be there for 4 nights.  Im not bringing my computer with me, but will be taking another huge amount of photos, so I will update when I get back.  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Church project and Vatican Museums part 1

This whole post basically revolves around our urban and architectural history class.  This class is responsible for a lot of our sight seeing, museum visiting, exploring and understanding of Rome.  We have one project during the semester and we basically get to choose any building from the Renaissance and write all about it.  The building I chose is the one below.  San'Agostino.  I was reading in one of the texts that is required for the class, and they started criticizing the proportions and the composition of this church.  I thought that was unusual because I was just so used to reading about how big, how pretty, how awesome every church is.  But this one was somewhat of an experiment during the time and they inevitably got a few things wrong.  So it sparked my interest and now I'm writing a paper on it. Its pretty interesting and the scrolls on the upper left and right of the front facade are the main subject of the criticism.  They author of the paper basically called them hugely disproportionate.  oops!

Front facade

huge side buttresses

Interior, restoration on the ceiling and right aisle

Then we got to go to the Vatican Museums with our class! That was sooo awesome and they are so big.  There was so much to see, I dont think we saw it all in our 4 hour class. We missed out on the egyptian and etruscan portions of the museum.  But I'll probably go back when my sister comes in december or at some point.  I dont even know where to start, there were rooms and rooms and courtyards, and halls, and everything filled with sculptures and paintings.  We even got to see a few special rooms not open to the public because our professor has some good connections I guess.

hall of sculptures. original

Really cool ramp

joelle knows what this one is? Its really cool and apparently well known

room not open to public.  vips only haha

Chicken Parm! Cant go wrong with an american twist on italian food.  We had our chicken parm and watched some of the earlier harry potter movies, in preparation for the new one. Its a good thing everyone here loves harry potter.

Roman Villas

Recently we did some day trips to local Villas (basically huge Renaissance palaces in the countryside with huge gardens).  We learned all about the villas and their layouts and symmetries and everything.  Of course we also had a midterm recently in our history class (i think i did fairly well, but we will see on monday when we get them back).  So heres some images from the visits.  All the gardens were way too symmetrical and the interiors were way too decorated.  They had some great views of the surrounding towns and countryside.

Villa Farnese, its actually a pentagon in plan

symmetry, symmetry, symmetry

Spiral stairs are always popular

Even more spiral stairs

Not a bad view from the balcony

Nice little dining table outside

 Oh and two random things I saw in Rome that I thought were pretty cool.  First, I saw a big group of film crew people on my way to school.  There didnt seem to be any famous actors or anything, but definitely wouldnt see a film crew back in Troy anywhere.  Then I just saw a guy carving a huge piece of sausage/bologna/meat/whatever you want to call it.  Dont see that every day either.

moviee, too bad I didnt see any stars yet

meat much?

More modern site visits and our new site

So our more recent Italian tours and adventures have included more modern site visits and explorations.  While the historic center of Rome doesnt contain much (any) modern architecture, the outlying area has some pretty impressive projects.  We visited Renzo Piano's three auditoriums.  They were pretty decent (I thought they looked like bugs on the outside) and the insides didnt seem to be anything too special.  But always good to see different things.

Giant bug auditorium

Cool wooden rehearsal hall

Roof of the stadium I showed last post

 Next we went to Zaha Hadid's MAXXI Museum.  This one was pretty awesome, in my opinion.  It recently won the Pritzker Prize this past year(International architecture award, basically for the best building in the world).  So we went to it with pretty high expectations and ready to be impressed.  And I was.  The museum was really unique and I really liked the overall form of the museum.  Im still up in the air about the rest of Zaha's works, sometimes they can be a little blobby, but I'll definitely admit I like this one.  She does a lot of cool things.  Plus shes an Iraqi women who basically is ruling the architecture world from her office in London.

exterior view

Pretty cool stairs

Pretty cool couch, right?

I thought this was the coolest exhibit

And I dont know if I've shown these pictures yet, but this is the site of our new project.  Using a fascist building, we have to modify it in any way we want.  We basically have free reign and can do anything we feel like to the site (very unusual for us, and kind of hard to figure out a good direction to go with the project) but its a cool project because its another one thats totally different than what I have ever done.  So here is our fascist church (slightly ironic because Mussolini didnt like the Catholic church, but thats another story).  I'll have to show you how we are mutating it in a future post

The church for our project

Symmetrical much?