I went to Barcelona for the first time in late March 2024. The trip was mostly just city walk, tapas, and lots of Antoni Gaudi.

My first impression of the city was how well the city was planned – full of grid, though unlike NYC, the just-right-density does not introduce too much traffic. Chamfered further allows through traffic to be less impacted by turning traffic on one-way roads. The grid also allows fewer turns to be made – further reducing the turning traffic. This makes the iconic octagon shaped blocks.

Living very close to Passeig de Gràcia, Casa Batllo was just there waiting for us to discover during our after-dinner-walk the night we arrived Barcelona after a full day of flights.

After breakfast, the trip finally started. The first destination was obviously Sagrada Familia.

It was truly breath taking – it’s hard to comprehend how Gaudi was able to come up with the organic and complex shape, and even harder to think the difficulty of putting those imagination into construction. I told myself that I will come back again whenever it finishes, because I was hoping to see the beauty of it without the crane. When I finally processed the film (I did not process this roll the first, because I was afraid of destroying it, knowing what’s in side), and saw the scan, I realized that cranes do not take away its splendidness, and yet it reaffirms my thought of seeing its complete form.

Gaudi said he took inspiration from the nature – it truly felt like a forest. I was actually pleasantly surprised how well the film performed with handheld composition under the indoor high-contrast light condition.

At last, I have this picture showing in part how the grid looks like in Barcelona – I did not go to a high enough location during this trip to see more of the grid, which is fine, I’ll come back again, and it is for my next trip to capture the landscape of the beautiful city.