28 April 2023 Figueres: Dali the Man!

An hour north of us by fast train is the final resting place of Salvador Dali.  The town is Figueres and Dali spent his last years designing a Theater that will house his grave.  It is also a museum with many works by Dali but also some other artists. This post is just the pictures of Dali himself.  Having been to his Museum in St Petersburg FL and the Museum and Gallery in Montmartre Paris we wanted to get this important Dali landmark under our belt. 

Let it out!

A crab lover

The eye of the artist

A self portrait

Here is lies in rest

My best Dali "wide eyed amazement"

Ouch!

 It had been 327 days since we began our Migration

27 April 2023 Barcelona: Mercado De La Boqueria

 

We took the Train down to the Marcado De La Boqueria and wandered at length.  We bought a fresh batch of Squid Squiglies to eat right away.  Then we got a slider taco that would have been OK if the gal had not left it in the microwave for five minutes!  But the hot ham and cheese panini made up for all that.  We were hunting for something special to get for dinner and discussed several options.  We settled on chicken hearts to put in with the soup that we had already made.  But finding the one meat stall of 20 that had hearts was a challenge.  That is where the wandering came in we found the stall but no vendor!  More wandering and as we were leaving we found the stall was open and dinner was procured.  Fast forward to a successful dinner!

It was a big building with lots of stalls

So many spices!

Some goats heads and kidneys

We thought about getting tongue for dinner

Some pricy cherries

An entire potato on a stick

Choose your fish

Like a cuttlefish

Sardines

From fruit smoothies to Iberian Black Hoof Jamon

Le Foot

Lots of meat

Red red meat

It has been 326 days since  we began our Migration

24 April 2023 Barcelona: The Genius that is Antoni Gaudi!

This is one of the first inverted 3-D models ever used in architecture, circa 1889. It was created by Antoni Gaudi to help design the Sagrada Familia. He could make make sketches and drawings directly from the string shape. Gaudi made many of these models and each one could take years to produce. The first picture shows strings suspended from a scale frame of the footprint of the building. The bags of sand were measured so that they accurately reflect the weight of the stone column that that particular string represented. You can see the general shape of the building in these strings, but upside down. 

I flipped the picture so you can see the shape better.

 This picture is a replica made for the museum.  Gravity pulls in same direction for all the strings. If a string is anchored in one point it will hang strait and mimic a column. It the string is attached at two points it will hang in a curved shape like an arch. The shape of the arch is not quite circular and it will change depending on the weight it needs to hold up. This is how Gaudi came up with parabolic and hyperbolic shapes. He is the first person ever to use these shapes in a large project. By shifting anchor points and weights the results could be seen real-time in the strings.  We saw all these items in the downstairs basement museum.  There were tools, models, glass samples, explanations and much more.  We did not know that two days after the start of the Spanish Civil war, anti catholic anarchists stormed the Sagrada Familia.  They smashed the models, burned Gaudi's papers and tried to blow up the nativity facade.  The explosion did not go off but by the end of the civil was 40 churches in Barcelona alone had been destroyed, and 12 people directly involved ion the building had been killed.  Through all this the work continued and some of the plaster models were put back together with the remaining pieces of plaster  

Looking a bit shabby, Gaudi's last known photo

Looking straight up

This contains some of the original Gaudi plaster model.  It was put back together like a jigsaw puzzle  with the pieces they could salvage from the attack

Another model, one that got smashed by the anarchists

One newer model

The color pallet for the windows

Stone working tools

Samples of the stained glass used in the windows.  Gaudi wanted the windows at the top to be more transparent than those on the bottom.  This floods more light in at the top illuminating the upper reaches of the building and 

Footloose ?

A replica of the 3-D string model

So very detailed!

This is meticulous work

In the workshop there are many pieces.  Some are 3-D printed and they all are used to help in the construction process

The workshop is a very busy place

The gift shop!

What the Pinnacle on the Jesus tower will look like

It has been 323 days since  we began our Migration

24 April 2023 Barcelona: The Outside of the Sagrada Familia

 

Picking up from where I left off in the last post, we headed outside.  The crowds were just as thick but now they are peering around corners looking for the bathroom and some souvenirs.  We were looking for the same. We found them, much to our relief.  There are five different types of stone used in the construction.  Inside, the largest of the columns, the ones supporting the Jesus Tower were made from porphyry.  This stone is a very dense fine grained volcanic material the strongest of all the stone used in the building.  It comes from Iran and is purple with white inclusions.  Basalt, the next strongest stone is used in the bases for the evangelist's towers and is sourced from Catalonia and Italy.  Many types of granite are used including blue granite from Brazil and white granite from Madrid.  Towards the exterior weaker stone is used such as limestone and sandstone.  This can come from France, England, India or South America.  A specific sandstone was used in much of the early workings.  This is Montjuic sandstone which is particularly weather resistant.  The quarries closed in the 80's and now stone is reclaimed from older buildings and wherever else it can be found.  A great amount of effort has gone into sourcing a similar material from somewhere else in the world,  The color of the different stone is more evident outside where old and new construction co-mingle. 

A golden Christ at the top of the Resurrection facade shows the happy ending

A completely different style than that used on the nativity facade at the entrance

Each stone is hand finished

Moving down from the top we see the crucifixion

Four of the 18 towers that will eventually rise up

The bounty of the earth

Grapes!

The tallest tower will be just shy of 172 meters, more than 560 feet.

More of the story

The trial

A newer area and the stone in clean and bright

An unexpected blast of color

It has been 323 days since  we began our Migration