Barcelona, Spain - It's so Gaudi

Barcelona is now most famous for hosting the Olympics in 1992. Many of today's more popular attractions were built for the event.

This statue, representing the spirit of Barcelona, was done in Gaudi style. Gaudi is a crazy artist / architect who ate a lot of magic mushroom paela before he created things. Okay - maybe not - but wait to you see his art! His famous building are extremely strange. Tiff went into one and looked up at the ceiling and it looked like she was inside a lemon merange pie looking up inside at the whipped peaks. Another building looks like the roof is melting off - except it is melting cement. Now you know where the term gaudi came from.

Barcelona now also has one of Europe's hottest nightlife. Dinner is late - try close to midnight - and people then dance till dawn.

The Signora Familia is a church, designed by Gaudi, which has been under construction for over a hundred years and still is. It has to be one of the most bazaar and creative structures even conceived. Look at it, have you ever seen anything like it!

The front of the building looks like a cubist nativity scene but has these tall gothic looking spire things behind it. The colorful mosaic marshmallow designs at the time of the spires are out of this world. You can't help staring at them and wondering how anybody could make a viable structure out of them. They're incredible.

This is the front view of this most magnificent church. It looks like one of those melting candles that are cut-up into slivers and twisted around - you know the kind you buy at the malls. Or it's like those sand castles you make with dripping sandy beach water. Gaudi's style is so gooey and oozy, but it is captivating.

At Gaudi's English Park there were some mosaic benches that wound snakelike around the gardens below. From this angle it looks as if Hans is sitting in a colorful bathtub. But where's his rubber ducky?

The mosaic lizard at the entrance to the Park was Tiffany's favorite.

Everywhere there are little exotic caves, nooks and crannies to get away from the tourists and the heat.

Gaudi is a refreshing change from the predictable structures you see all over Europe. Now if only he could have built an entire city - maybe he did on another planet, it would have fit in well there.

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