A Proper Busride: 42. La Pedrera. Part 1

I've had an overwhelming response to my last email.

It seems lots of people have been to Barcelona and everyone seems to have loved La Sagrada Familia as much as we did. Looking back over my photos it is incredibly more stunning than they depict.

I think we will return to Barcelona. It wasn't until we were leaving, yesterday that we realised how much of the city we had missed There was very little paper-based information available either at the hotel or in any of the public places we went. In addition, public signage was very poor. We had done a bit of Internet research before we arrived, but not a huge amount. It was as we drove "out of town" that we realised that we had been in quite a northern part of the city and that, because the city stretches north to south, we had missed a lot of things to the south, much of which were associated with the Barcelona Olympics. Oh, well, we'll just have to visit again!

But for now ... back to the present ...

The traffic in Barcelona is brilliant. Four lanes wide, all in one direction from north to south, with an inner circle and an outer circle. The Metro is brilliant, too. Much newer than Paris, and over a smaller area - a little cheaper and with trains every five minutes on every line and NEVER more than 3 or 4 SECONDS late. We didn't try the buses.

So, after our introduction to the genius of Antoni Gaudi at La Sagrada Familia, we chose a private residence for our second visit. This is an apartment building, on a corner, in a salubrious (as our friend Debra would say) suburb. It was built between 1905 and 1912 for a wealthy couple by the name of Mila, hence the name La Casa Mila. They had as much trouble with municipal planning authorities as does anyone in the world trying to build something "different".

This building is of passive solar design and has three huge apartments on each floor. The stair wells act as natural ventilators and the ventilation towers on the roof are unique, decorative features. The roof area is a sun terrace which encourages tenants to "mix and talk". Each apartment has a front door for visitors with lift access and a back door for servants and family, which is accessed via stair wells with "common meeting and talking areas". The building is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was restored in the 1980's with private funds from one of the big banks which now owns the whole property. The buildings tenants are now various art galleries, both public and private.

The official name of the building is La Casa Mila - the Mila House. But the "nickname" has always been La Pedrera - the Quarry. This is because the external facade has been sculpted to look like rough rock.

Of course there was a queue to get in, but it was only about 15 minutes in the sun. We passed the front gate as we queued. It is made up of a pedestrian gate on either side and a main car sized gate in the middle. It is the access to the internal courtyard from the street. Imagine the luxury in 1912 of being able to drive your "motor" through this wrought iron and glass gate to an underground garage.

And this is the internal courtyard where you would enter through the aforementioned gate . You would drive your motor down the ramp into the underground garage (which had water-tanks collecting rainwater for the gardens), then either walk up these stairs, where the plants are, to the back door of your apartment, or you would go up in the lift to enter your front door.

We climbed the internal stairs to the roof. There were eight flights like this. Oh, my poor knee.

But I made it to the roof ... and what a sight. These "sculptures" on the roof are chimneys and ventilation vents. Each has a significance, but because I'm not much into iconology or religious motif, I didn't take all that much notice of the audioguide.