Barcellona.

The minimalists were right about one thing though—the striking architectural wonders of Antonio Gaudí. One of these wonders, a 1910 apartment building that has been affectionately nicknamed La Pedrera (the Quarry), is up the street from my hotel. I go to see, expecting I know not what—and finding I know not what: a seven-story building that flows glacially around a corner, its architecture that of an amusement park fun house, all staring eyes and laughing mouths and peephole windows and beetle-browed balconies; waves upon waves of stone, a surf of a building on which great entanglements of ornamental wrought iron seaweed are snared. Standing tall on the roof is an encampment of giant ventilation towers masquerading as merciless-looking guardians, all helmeted and armored with mosaics.