Barcelona :: Casa Batlló – “The Wave of Creation… or a woman’s breast.”

“Barcelonaaaa!”
– Paperboys

Last day in Barcelona and my feet were planning my imminent demise… I could hear them whispering in my light ballerina shoes, that had only the barest hint of padding… “Going to La Sagraaaada Familia, eh? Yes… Yes… very tall building… Oh, going to the tower! Would be such a shame if say… little Pinkytoe over there had a seizure all of a sudden… one might fall down and put us out of our misery!”

I was with a psychologist the whole time, in fact, I share a flat with her, so no worries. The voices are fine, she told me.

See? She takes good care of me…

(La Sagrada will have to wait for blog post #3 from the Barcelona trip or they’re gonna be so big the three people who sift through them wont bother and that just leaves me… We’ve already established that I hear enough voices as it is, I don’t need to start talking to myself too).

Anyway! We hadn’t seen a Gaudi construction for almost 34 minutes so we figured it was about time we went back to Casa Batlló one the most famous works Gaudi ever created: “The Batlló family was very well known in Barcelona for its contribution to the textile industry in the city. Both Josep (Battló) and his wife were open to anything and they decided not to limit Gaudí, they wanted him to come up with a risky plan. The family lived on the Noble Floor of Casa Batlló until the middle of the 1950s.”

I recommend byuing tickets in advance. The Tourist Information stands along La Rambla don’t sell tickets to La Sagrada Familia, but they do cater to a lot of other tourist attractions and a pre-bought ticket (which they print out for you when you buy it) will let you skip the often enormous lines on location.

If you can overcome the cringeworthy audio guide touring the house is a spectacular experienc. (I gave up around the time the woman in her exceedingly moaning voice exclaimed a swirl in the ceiling as “evoking the Wave of Creation… or maybe a woman’s breasts…” – I understand why the guide was free). Unlike La Pedrera, we started at the bottom, coming up the hallway staircase, which already showed Gaudi’s knack for details.

Fantastic details like this is found all over the house.

The first floor held a sort of dining room (there was no furniture) with massive windows facing the street we’d come from. The mosaic (AHA!) was fabulous and, as it is a Gaudi creation, the ventilation was creative, the shapes all organic, the way the windows worked was pure ingenuity and the colours spectacular.

A small room with fireplace designed for a couple on one side and their chaperon on the other…

One of the smaller windows overlooking the street

A spectacular chandelier… Allthough I do think moving it might present a problem, should the lady of the house ever change her mind 😉

God forbid there should ever be a straight line…

Yo mama, Audioguide… Yo mama so swirley, she resembles the Wave of Woman’s Breast… Creationally.

Creative lighting

The rest of the house consists of several rooms, not all are accessable as the house is currently in use. There are offices in several of them, but the stairwell is worth the visit in itself. You can also see the back patio with fabulous mosaics (of course!) and some very creative flowerpots:

Slightly more decorative than the ones on our balcony back home…

I am going to bug you with tons upon tons of pictures of that slightly anonymous church structure called La Sagrada Familia, so I’ll leave you with these for Casa Battló, but suffice it to say, if you’re ver in Barcelona and you skip this building, you are doing it wrong. And I’m travelling with my very own shrink in tow, I should know all about “wrong” 😛 (Hey! My mom says I’m not diagnosed!)

This would be the previously mentioned stairwell – at some places they had the wibblywobbly glas you could look through. Made it look slightly like you were underwater…

Tiril on the roof. You can tell it’s Gaudi, of course, but it’s still worth checking all the buildings. ALL THE BUILDINGSSSSS!!!

Be sure to look down when approaching the house. The tiles on the pavement were designed by Gaudi too!

The front of the house – enough said…

The one thing I absolutely knew I had to see was La Sagrada Familia. I’ve only seen it in pictures and films and was really excited to get up close. We found out the day before that we could buy tickets online and fetch them in these little machines off the street market “Caixa”. Very handy indeed. It said “buy tickets