I can’t believe its the last day of my trip already! But we certainly made the most of it. Having bought tickets for Park Güell yesterday, that was our first stop today. I went to this park last time, but that didn’t stop me from learning new things here. The first thing we did that was different from last time was the warden’s house. Inside I learned that the park itself was actually meant to be a sort of neighborhood with 60 private properties and a variety of communal services. Ultimately only 2 of the 60 properties were built and one was turned into a school.

The second new experience was Casa Museo Gaudi, which is the house that Gaudi eventually moved into on the property. It offered a little more insight into the architect’s personal life, and had a really cool gallery of all the buildings he worked on.

The last new thing wasn’t so much an experience as a piece of information. Everywhere in Barcelona there are these large, loud, green parrots. Last time I was here I remember being so surprised by them and being excited everytime I saw one. Well while we were in the park, a tour was going by, and the guide of the tour just happened to be explaining why they were there. Apparently, the city of Barcelona at one point decided they had a pigeon problem, and that the solution to this problem was to introduce parrots into the environment to chase them out (why parrots are preferable to pigeons she did not mention). Unfortunately, this is not what happened, instead the pigeons and the parrots became buds, and will nest in the same trees together. So now they have twice the number of birds, not exactly the intended outcome.

To carry on our Gaudi education, we went next to Casa Batllo. This again was a private residence Gaudi built, this time with a more aquatic inspiration.

Again we had an audio guide that was quite good and we learned about the ventilation system designed to emulate the gills of a fish, and the skylights designed with a turtle shell pattern, and the glass barriers on the stairs that made you feel like you were underwater.

Similar to casa mila, the attic had the rib cage arches going on, and the roof had some funky chimneys that were both pretty to look at and functional.

At the very end of the tour, there was something called the Gaudi cube, which was a room where the walls, the floor, and the ceiling are all screens. On the screens they showed lots of different images that raced past you, some of nature, or science experiments, others of Gaudi’s designs with special effects. The idea was to try and get you into the head of Gaudi to try and imagine how he got his inspiration. Plus the doors opened like a spaceship, so that was cool too.

To finish off the day, and the trip, we went for dinner at a Rooftop restaurant. We actually sat inside because it was windy and raining, but we had a nice view all the same. The food was super yummy, I had what was listed as a club sandwich with a twist, which turned out to be 4 little open face sandwiches with a fried quail egg on each. I was a little wary, but they were actually so good!

For dessert I had something called the pineapple mood (the name of the restaurant was Mood), which was half a pineapple hollowed out, with a sort of pineapple cream and chunks of pineapple and mango in it. Also, super yum.

And that’s the end of the trip! Tomorrow I fly home to Victoria (11 hours…), and while the trip was super fun, I’m glad to be going home.