Visitors - Mac & Janice. And a Hospital

Mac and Janice have been visiting, on their way back to Florence where they lived last year.

They timed their visit so they could go to the Barcelona Formula 1 race, but before and after they toured the Barcelona sights and local hot spots.

Visits to our neighborhood restaurants: Can Robert (but inside this time as the courtyard tables were full).
And up the street at Lac Maggiore.
Our best meal was prepared by Chef Mac.
Beef tenderloin medallions in a pepper cream-vermouth sauce, accompanied by scalloped potatoes and asparagus.Mac used his wide angle lens to take a portrait of our living room - and there are Pat and Steve!
Maybe he wanted to document that his art was on display in Barcelona.

Of course there was time for Barca football. We went to the Alaska to watch Barca nip by Chelsea and advance to the Champion League final, and watched at home while they won the Copa del Rey.

More conventional sightseeing included Park Guell.

For some posing at the Serpentine Bench.













And some relaxing - or was it snoozing?



















We also took Mac and Janice to a nearby favorite: Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau.











The hospital is a wonderful complex of modernisme buildings designed by Domènich i Montaner -who also designed the Palau de la Música Catalana. It was built from 1902 to 1929, and is still a functioning hospital (although it is being moved to a new, rather uninspiring, building going up behind the old complex).

The grand entry pavilion sits at the end of broad walking street that leads up from Sagrada Familia and ends in a fountain the pigeons consider their own personal wading pool.
Entry is through spiky, wrought iron gates
The hospital's name illustrates a 20th century route to sainthood. The banker Pau Gil donated money for the new hospital. In return, its name became the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau.

His bust in front presides over the care of the sick (close inspection shows Gil's impressive growth of then-popular muttonchops).









Inside the entry pavilion shows similarities to the Palau Musica.

Colorfully tiled, vaulted ceilings with a skylight that is a smaller version of that in the Palau Musica.
A corridor of stained glass and tile.
The hospital proper consists of a series of separate pavilions. Domènich believed that patients enjoy, and recover faster in, a bright cheerful environment. No minimalist, purely functional design for him! Each pavilion is elaborately and colorfully decorated.
Mac and Janice fly to Milan later this afternoon, and we get ready for our next guests. Tim, Katherine, and Jana arrive tomorrow.