Casa Mila, Tea, Hookah and the King and Queen of Spain!

As my time in Spain is quickly winding down, I am trying to accomplish all the things on a list I made of things to do before I leave. One of them was to go inside Casa Mila, which is an apartment complex that was designed by Gaudí. So yesterday I ventured there with my friend Olivia from API.

The building is very different looking on the outside... it's very wavy, and non-tradition type of Barcelona building. The inside lobby is beautiful, the ceilings are a mesh of beautiful colours mixed together and there is a large open space in the middle of the building that acts as sort of an outdoor (but technically inside) terrace/patio.

The building is half a museum and half a functional office building. So the first two floors are reserved for businesses and their offices and the upper floors act as a museum. We saw an apartment where the Mila family use to live... it is fully furnished with old fashioned furniture and objects from their home (very antique-y). Next we went to the floor before the terrace as there are replicas of all of Gaudí's major projects (such as Parc Güell, Sagrada Familia, Casa Batlló etc), and the history about them. Then finally Olivia and I made it to the roof which is the most famous part. The roof literally looks like a wave because it's well... wavey shaped. It also has "chimneys" on the top which look more like soldier's helmets than anything, and giant white things that Olivia said looked like "soft serve icecream" haha.

After checking out Casa Mila, Olivia and I walked to the bullfight ring to buy tickets to go see a bullfight on sunday! Currently bullfighting is just frowned upon in Catalunya but will soon be outlawed because it is a very southern Spain thing...so there's a lot of controversy over bullfighting here in Barcelona... but im still excited to see it to form my own opinion on the whole issue.

Then I met up with Liz for tea in the Barri Gothic. As we were walking to my favourite café (La Clandestina) there was a huge crowd of people, with tv stations and their cameras, as well as a ton of police (both provincial and federal). So we knew something was up... plus we couldnt walk the way we normally do because it was blocked off. So as we were walking around the big crowd we found out that the chairman/president guy of the Olympic Game Committee had died, and he was from Barcelona and today was his funeral. As we were looking at the entrance to the Cathedral, there were several cars that drove past us through the crowds. When we looked at the cars we saw some important people waving as they drove by... then they stopped infront of the cathedral and got out... people started cheering and clapping and we realized that they were the King and Queen of Spain... no big deal.

We continued onwards to my favourite cafe and sat down on a comfy couch. I ordered a tea, and Liz got a cappuccino. Looking around we saw a bunch of people smoking Hookah, and then decided to get one, which is called Naguilé in Spanish. We got a flavour called "tutti frutti". So sitting in the café Liz and I chatted about life and our experiences in Barcelona and how we've changed over tea and hookah for about 2 hours. It was a very relaxed afternoon spent in the Barri Gothic. (probably my most favourite area in Barcelona) :)