Barcelona

I'm just finishing up a week in Barcelona, where I've been teaching a class on my book along with my co-author. Barcelona is the City of Many Strange Buildings. Across the street from my hotel is a modern art museum with some sort of giant fake barbed wire on top of it:

And around the block is a famous house, called Casa Batllo, which was designed by the modernist architect Antoni Gaudi, who is responsible for much of the strangeness of Barcelona:

The peak of the roof is in the form of a dragon's spine:

And in the attic of the house you can find the ribs of the dragon:

Also designed by Gaudi is the Sagrada Familia, which is possibly the strangest church in the world:

It has been under construction for 132 years, since 1882. Among many many odd features are carved snails and molluscs on random spots of the exterior:

and many fruits and vegetables at the peaks of the spires:

Up in the hills at the edge of the city is the Park Guell, designed by (surprise!) Gaudi. Full of even more oddities, such as the long dragon bench:

odd aqueduct-like walkways:

and more rib-like archways:

It also provides spectacular views out over the whole city:

Barcelona is full of people. The population density here is about 41,000 people per square mile, which is forty times the density of Austin. My hotel is on La Rambla, which is one of the main pedestrian walkways:

I'm pretty sure there are far more people out walking along this one road every evening than there are in the entirety of St Andrews.