Barcelona, December 5-7th. Amanda and I, on our last big adventure . . .

Barcelona’s mystical charm has captured my imagination. You can see the toughness and pride of this still staunchly Catalan city, as it defines itself separately than the rest of Spain in accordance to their previous separate nation, history and language. Catalan is still the language spoke most prominently there, and as the bus I rode wound through the countryside on its way to the city, I saw an abandoned building that told me everything I needed to know: Catalunya was written in big, loud graffiti letters, while underneath was written Espanya with a big red X through it. You see this toughness, this stubborn nature of the nation within a nation in its landscape, and you see their choice of stubborn freedom, an enhance imagination, run its course through the city limits with the creations of architects Antoni Gaudí and the like.

I fell in love right away, as I sat on the hour long bus ride from the Girona airport to the city center. Looking out my windows, my overfed imagination ran wild, making up stories and mythical creatures in my mind. The grass here grows in raw, grassy tufts, bursts of adrenaline as they finally break through the dry, caked land and into the proud Catalan sun. The mountains too, are tufts of greenery, roughly scattered here and there. They, in my zealous imaginings, became a tough, grassy, uneven rug laid over top of all Catalunya´s treasured stories, hiding them from the greedy Espanya. Kapoc trees that twist and wind around upon themselves became dark fairytale creatures that take all the bad energy of the people, of the history and absorb into their altruistic way, the evil curling their branches, thwarting their aged trunks.

In Barcelona, you choose the color of the sky. As the bus drove into the city, it carried on this tradition of mythological visions as the tops of the partitions between highways had glass panes of all different colors. It’s as if they were saying, like the process of selecting paints, "What color would you like your sky, miss? Are you someone who is satisfied with your happy life? If that’s the case, we have bubbling, fantastical blues of every shade for your picking. Or are you one of those people who only wish the world in which you live was more like the world in your imagination? If so, we have just the colors for you: a rosy red, or a trepid yellow, or even sinfully gleeful green."

Barcelona was home to one of the world’s most expressive and artistically free artists of all time; Picasso. Manda and I wound through the series of rooms full of Picasso’s early work, and watched as the works slowly progressed from the clear realism in his first work towards his better-known style of Cubism.

Saturday was the Day of Gaudí. His famous unfinished church, the Sagrada Familia, made me cry, I loved it that much! I am not one of those people who cries when seeing art, but this time, I did. It was so beautiful, so resonating for me, as his architecture, his art, is so natural, so approachable. In his words, “originality consists in returning to the origin.” The interior looks like palm trees, and the top spirals on the outside have bundles of fruit, echoing his organic style, and how he takes his inspiration from nature. The stain glass was all colorful geometric shapes that made the room glow with fiery reds and comforting blues. It was the most beautiful church I have ever seen, and it didn’t feel intimidating, even though the top spirals reach up forever, past all other buildings attempting to break the skyline of Barcelona. It was something I could feel, a style that I could relate to, a quiet refuge among the other lofty, beautiful, yet somewhat scary churches I have seen on my travels.

We then made our way to some of his other creations. First his Park Güell, with the boldly colorful bench that winds around the main market square, and the quiet trees by his earthy, clay-looking walls, and the tree-imitating columns supporting the ceilings of his creations. We started from the side entrance, and made our way to the famous dragon in the main entrance, near the colorful mosaic tiles on the walls leading into the park.

We also saw his Casa Batlló, which reminded me of a house that a mermaid would live in under sea. Some say the top looks like the back of a dragon, the light reflecting blues and purples from his scales. The last creation of his that we saw was his other apartment building, Casa Milà which wound around, up and down, its walls so different than the other boring, straight walls of the buildings next door.

We then made our way to the Port as the sun passed below the water, and then we ended our night in the Plaça d'Espanya, where every Friday and Saturday night, they have a fountain show, lighting up the shooting water, in time with music.

We made our weary way back to our endearing little hostel, owned by a young “hippie-ish” couple, and run by them, the woman’s brother, and her mother. They, too, added to my love of Barcelona, with the homey-feel of the hostel. Tired, feet sore, but minds racing, as if just brought to life, we dreamt that night of places that only exist in our imaginations, and Barcelona.