I was thinking about design, generally speaking, when I took all of these photos in Spain – but they’re just snippets. There were so many more I wanted to take. I promise I’m done talking about this trip, but I hope you enjoy these pictures.

Would you believe that this is the ceiling of a church? This is Gaudí’s famous La Sagrada Família.

I would like to live in a place where I stumble across beautiful buildings like this:

Another Gaudí landmark, La Pedrera. This is the front door.

Wouldn’t you like to live in a place where all the sidewalks are as beautiful as this?

Art in my hotel room. Not your standard Impressionist flowers or sailboat scene:

Mercat de Santa Caterina, Barcelona. Not Gaudí, but obviously heavily influenced by him:

The ticket window of the Palau de la Muúsica Catalana (Barcelona):

Street lamps along La Rambla in Barcelona:

One of the courtyards of the art museum in Seville.

The middle row of polka dot shoes are kids’ flamenco shoes. This store had the most fantastic, most colorful kids shoes you have ever seen – like leather mary janes for toddlers in every color imaginable.

The Alcázar gardens (Seville). I’m thinking about landscaping my backyard to look like this. A small project for next summer, right?

The next few are from the Alhambra in Granada. This might be my favorite photo from that day:

Restored tilework:

Unbelievably beautiful ceiling representing the celestial heavens:

I loved this door:

Our gorgeous hotel room in a 16th century mansion in Granada, which deftly combined old and new:

And finally, I just couldn’t get over how cool the street lamps are in Granada:

And by the way, the Market Hotel in Barcelona (see last week’s post about it) really lived up to my expectations for it. It was hip and gorgeous but not pretentious. Their restaurant was stunning too; you can see pictures of it on their website, if you’re so inclined.