SPAIN: FROM CITY TO WILDERNESS

By Hart PitcherContributing WriterThis is the fourth article in our 2015 Week of Photo Journals: Changing Perspectives. Check back each day this week to see more beautiful photography and travel accounts from UC San Diego students. Click on the images in the article to view the photos up close.I was exploring the city and came across this view at just the right time. You can get a sense of how much energy exists in the city just from how colorful, compact and elaborate each structure is. I think the architecture makes a nice contrast as it fades towards the mountains in the background. Spain has some amazingly beautiful landscapes, and this was my favorite sunset from my trip there.After exploring the city of Barcelona during the day, we went and had dinner out on the harbor for sunset. It was amazingly beautiful, there was a lot going on - including a large pirate ship parked on the dock.La Sagrada Familia is quite a breathtaking site from the outside. I had never seen anything like this kind of architecture. Then I found out it was a cathedral, and I was even more amazed.We hiked for hours for this one. Spain has such an active city life that a lot of people forget how much beauty exists in its wilderness. It is vast in nature, and twists and turns around canyons and rivers.Another perspective of Spain's natural beauty.This view is of Park Güell in Spain. There was a lot going on here, hundreds of people going about their days and enjoying the same beauty as me. It was a beautiful, hot, blue-sky day, and we hiked up a long trail around the back of the park to reach this view - totally worth it.On the coast, I struggled to find a vantage point to look out at the city, but it was worth the search.I love this perspective of the Spanish landscape. It was a beautiful time of the year, when we could still see a faint brush of fall.Buildings on the mountain-tops hardly seem feasible, but people used to live in this tiny formation carved out of the mountain that used to be a city!