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An earlier project by Gaudi, Casa Batlló is  completed in 1906. Even though it’s just a few blocks down the street from Casa Mila, somehow I missed this building during my previous visit to Barcelona, but that just meant I got the delight of experiencing this building for the first time. Casa Batlló was a renovation project for Gaudi, which included re-building the main street-facing façade. It’s a bold, exuberant composition of natural organic forms, symbolism, and brilliant color, with a generous and playful use of mosaic glass and ceramics. The top of the façade is famously known as the dragon’s back because the curving shape looks like a spine and the colored masonry tiles are its iridescent scales.

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Designed by Gaudi and completed in 1912, Casa Mila (aka La Pedrera) is an apartment building in the Eixample neighborhood. It was commissioned as a family residence that included apartments to rent in this up-and-coming fashionable area. Located just around the corner from our hotel, we were able to walk past it each day and view it at different times of day and night. Twenty years ago I also walked past Casa Mila and took photos of the exterior, but it was not open to the public then.Today, you can tour the building including its spectacular rooftop.

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It is a work that is in the hands of God and the will of the people.

-Antoni Gaudi

I‘ve had three architectural experiences that have, literally, brought me to tears: Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut de Ronchamp, Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery and most recently, Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. This wasn’t my first visit to Barcelona or to Sagrada Familia, but it was my first visit in twenty years and a lot has changed. Sagrada Familia (the Church of the Sacred Family) has been under construction since 1882. Yes, 1882. At 131 years it’s one of the longest running construction projects in history, and it still has a projected twenty-plus years to go. At least that’s the target because June 7, 2026 will be the 100-year anniversary of Gaudi’s death and that’s the planned date to finally complete his vision. But there’s still plenty of work to do, including ten more spires in addition to the eight already built. The central spire, representing Jesus Christ, is designed to be 560 feet tall, which is twice as tall as any of the other spires and will make Sagrada Familia the tallest church building in the world.

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Nestled off La Rambla lies one of Barcelona’s great landmarks, the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria – more commonly known as La Boqueria. A public market with roots dating back to the 13^th century, it is as much a feast for the eyes and ears as it is for the nose and mouth, and was one of our favorite adventure stops in the city. Flowers, spices, candies, fruits, vegetables, seafood and meats, wines, cheeses and chocolates, and every sort of person in-between buying, selling, sampling, eating, talking, and laughing. Walk around a corner and see people sampling cheeses with sangria; turn down the next aisle and watch Iberian ham being carved off the leg.

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As the morning sun rises up over Barcelona, warming the sidewalks along the Passeig de Gràcia, a line of people forms outside Casa Mila in anticipation of its daily opening. Half a block away a street beggar named Dani is positioning himself on the back edge of the sidewalk for the day. Articulate and fluent in English, his deformed body has made him a merchant of the streets, and in exchange for a euro he’ll give you a bright blue marble Pente stone. Thousands of people will walk by him during the course of a day. Few are probably aware that he speaks a tongue other than his native Catalan; some will give him money, most will ignore him as they pass by. I’ve always felt drawn to people like Dani, curious as to how they ended up in their station in life. So I spend a few minutes chatting before moving on, aware that every moment I take up of his time means less money given by others. In exchange for a blue marble, I leave behind three euros.

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This coming Monday HBO will air An Apology to Elephants, narrated by Lily Tomlin and directed by Emmy winner Amy Schatz.

An Apology to Elephants spotlights elephants’ importance to global ecology and the environment. Known as the “gardeners of the forest,” they clear large trees and branches for food, which makes way for smaller plants and animals to thrive. However, due to the ivory trade and habitat destruction, elephant species are considered either vulnerable or endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and are at risk of extinction within the next ten years. [The documentary also] describes the often-brutal treatment elephants undergo when they are trained to perform, the psychological trauma they suffer and the physical damage done by inadequate living conditions in some zoos and circuses.

An Apology to Elephants premieres Monday, April 22nd, at 7pm EDT.

To: Task Force on the Woodland Park Zoo Elephant Exhibit & Program
Re: April 18th’s Woodland Park Zoo Elephant Exhibit & Program Task Force Meeting

I was in attendance at last night’s first Task Force meeting and have several questions regarding it.

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We don’t ask if a dish is “good” or “bad.” Here there’s no such question. Our question is: Does it make your hair stand up on end? Is it magic?

-Ferran Adria

Night Four (final night): We once again head back to the El Raval neighborhood and to 41 Degrees, our second Adria brothers restaurant, located next door to Tickets. And that’s where the similarities end. If Tickets didn’t engage all five senses, the concept at 41 Degrees is specifically about engaging them all. Perhaps that’s why it’s called 41 Degrees Experience. The restaurant is small, with just sixteen diners a night consisting of four two-top tables and two four-top tables. Similar to Tickets, you make reservations sixty days in advance, but you need to reserve a full table and put down a non-refundable fifty euro per-seat deposit. The six tables are seated in rotation starting at 7:30pm, with the last seating at 8:30pm. These are early reservations for Spain, but with the “experience” clocking in at just under four hours you need to get an early start.

The idea is this: fourty-one courses are served consisting of about fifty bites, tastes, and sips, in a culinary trip around the world that the servers guide you through. There are some elBulli classics served here, as well as many other unique and new dishes, all with the common goals of intense flavor, gorgeous and pain-staking presentation, along with surprise and magic.

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Night Three: Hisop is a small, starkly modern and minimalist dining room located in a quiet alley off the busy Avinguda Diagonal. As such, it’s probably not a place you would stumble upon by accident. It’s been open since 2001, and in 2010 it received its first Michelin star. This was going to be our first Michelin experience, and while I know stars aren’t required for a great dining experience I can’t say I wasn’t curious to see what Michelin star dining was like. Hisop was the most formal of all our dining experiences in Barcelona, although not pretentious or stuffy. It was a nice change of pace from our last two nights of casual tapas. Hisop offers a nine-course tasting menu, which Craig and I both decided to order so we could try several different things. We didn’t do the wine pairing, but we did share a bottle from the same local region as on our first night at La Pepita, and it was equally delicious.

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Night Two: We took a cab to Tickets in Barca’s El Raval neighborhood, and as we approached the large storefront windows plastered with its branding my first thought was Planet Hollywood – which isn’t a great sign. I knew Tickets had a casual, carnival-themed atmosphere, but I could do without the over-branding. Tickets is considered the hardest reservation to get in Barcelona right now. Seats are released at midnight GMT exactly sixty days in advance and are quickly snapped up, so it requires calculated advance planning if you’re going there. And you are going – because it’s Tickets, and because it’s the Adria brothers.

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