Wednesday - Sunny

After breakfast and a funny chat with the owner of the hostel, we had to go and try to print off some tickets once again. Kim bought me a surprise bday ticket to tonight's Champions league match between Barca and Ajax Amsterdam. Im such a lucky fella!

The owner told us that we may be able to print our tickets off at a ticket office down La Rambla, so that's where we went. After waiting in line and watching some pathetic workers do there thing, we eventually were told that we could only print tickets off at the stadium. We will have to do that later.

We then walked up to Casa Batllo, it is another one of Antoni Gaudí’s masterpieces, and is a reno of a previously built house owned by the Batilo family. We had pre booked tickets again so no queues for us! The house reminded us inside and out of the the crazy house in DaLat Vietnam, the architect took inspiration from Gaudi's work, so that's probably why.

Casa Batllo again shows the creativity of Gaudi’s work. The locals call it the House of Bones, the roof is arched and was likened to the back of a dragon. Much of the front facade is decorated with broken ceramic tiles and the balconies and windows look like skulls.

The interior is as strange as its exterior, there isn't a flat wall or ceiling at all. Gaudi seems to avoid straight lines at all cost. He also paid great attention to detail when designing the curvy solid oak doors, elevator and handrails, the stained glass windows, colorful tiles and carved out fireplace too. He even formed up solid brass door handles using a mould taken from his hand!

All the levels have nice decorative parquet flooring and are accessed via central stairwell that wraps around the elevator. The staircase has direct views to the blue tiled double skylight wells on either side. The huge skylights supply light to the whole building, he even used smaller windows on the top levels and increased the window size for each lower level, to help keep the house temperature and lighting even.

The only level that doesn't have the solid oak timber detail is the attic. That floor contained laundry rooms and storage areas. Its got a very Mediterranean feel, with its white walls. It contains a series of sixty arches that represent the ribcage of an animal. Some people believe that the ribcage is for the spine on the roof.

After the wacky house, we went and picked up some baguettes and salad for a late lunch. We headed over to the Arc de Triomf, and sat down on a patch of grass under a palm tree. There are around 5 or 6 of these Arcs around the world, this one was built in 1888 to celebrate Spain's first international exhibition. Sydney in 1879 and Melbourne 1880 were the two holders before Barcelona, London held the first world expo in 1851 at Hyde park and Milan is holding the next expo in 2015.

We then went back to the hostel for a freshen up and caught the metro out to the stadium. We found the stadium ticket office, printed out our tickets then went for some drinks and tapas at a bar close to the stadium.

After the nice meal and drinks, we went back to the stadium and found our seats. I have never sat as high up before! We were the last row, but they were the best nosebleed seats in the house! We could see everything!

We had a great time at game, the game was great, the 79000+ crowd was great and Messi was great! Man he is a freak show! He scored a hat-trick! The skills of that bloke, he maneuvered and stepped around so many players. The new fella from Brazil Neymar had a blinder too! Barcelona did it pretty easy really, they won four-nil, but Ajax had a good crack, they just couldn't get the ball in the back of the net.

After the game to avoid the busy metro, we had a nice hour walk home, and once there, we finished off the lunch leftovers then crashed.