Walking the Gaudi and Picasso walks

Walking tours of Gaudi and Picasso
The Gaudi walk was entertaining. As Kath and Kim might say, Señor Gaudi's houses are “noice, interesting, different!” See Julie's photos.

Now, although I understand his philosophy and guiding principles in architecture, I still found myself wondering about what he had been smoking or inhaling when he was designing! We went inside one of his creations (there is no other word for it) the Casa Balio (the house of the Balito family). The nature of Gaudi, his architecture, the house's owner, Señor Balito, the creative people involved with it, and influenced by it, is almost beyond belief.

 Of Gaudi the architect, people believed he was either a genius, a madman, or both. I think both.

The house's owner Mr Balito was not also a very successful business man, but also the inventor of Chuppa Chops lollipops! He got tired of his children leaving sticky caramel all over the designer house and furniture. Solution? put the caramel a stick, the Chuppa Chop was born!

To sell a new product. You need an eye catching packaging. The designer of the first Chuppa Chop label … Salvador Dali! I still find it difficult to imagine the great artist designing lollipop wrappers.

Some of the many designers influenced by this house, were the ones involved with designing the Star Wars movie. It isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to see the resemblance of the Star War characters to the “alien masks” exterior of the house.

 After lunch we went for a walk relating to Picasso the artist, and the places where he lived and worked down by the harbour. A fascinating place. When Picasso (a Communist) was working Spain was still being ruled by General Franco (a dictator) so Picasso could not exhibit his work under his own name, so it was shown under a wealthy collector's name in his own rooms. These rooms are now part of the present Picasso museum.

 A couple if interesting little trivia pieces. In St. Kilda they have red lights. In medieval Barcelona they had the head of this little man to indicate the presence of a brothel.

This particular head was located at the corner of a street called the Street Of The Badly Cooked. The street was so called because when the sailors came ashore they wanted something to eat, it didn't matter how badly it was cooked, before moving on to the more pressing business of finding the little man.

 Originally, the little church in the photo was way out in the bush, and the last stop out of Barcelona before the long and lonely road into France. Over time the people of Barcelona would leave packages, letters etc. with a French address, along with a note asking anyone passing by that address if they would kindly deliver it. So you could say it was the first ever Fedex!