Barcelona Day 3

Once again, we headed to the Mercat for breakfast and lunch food. We had found one stand that sold the most delicious tomatoes! We went there everyday to get some for lunch and we progressively bought more each day. I told the woman that they were the best tomatoes we had ever had. She said they were the kind that Italians used to make their sauces. Yum!

Next we headed off to La Sagrada Familia. We figured getting there an hour after it had opened we wouldn't have to wait in line for that long. We were dead wrong. We got there and the line stretched for at least two blocks! When we finally got to the end, one of the workers came up and informed us the line was closed and that we could come back at noon. He said he suggested buying tickets on-line or going to the ATM on the corner to buy tickets. We headed to the ATM where a line of about 20 people waited. After waiting 15 minutes for just one person to buy tickets and then another 15 minutes for the second person to buy tickets, Ben went in search of a locutorio so we could buy the tickets on-line. I stayed in the ATM line just in case. Ben came back to say he found a locutorio so we went and bought our tickets for later that afternoon and then headed to Park Guell.

Park Guell was intended to be a residential park with about 60 homes designed by Gaudi. Only 2 of the 60 planned homes were built. So Guell's idea kind of failed but the park was beautiful and we got to visit the house where Gaudi lived until he moved into his workshop at La Sagrada Familia. After exploring the park we headed back to La Sagrada Familia to wait until our time to scan our tickets. Once we could scan our tickets we passed up at least 100 people, scanned our tickets and entered. We have decided that during tourist season it is worth the couple of extra euros to buy tickets on-line.

La Sagrada Familia blew me away! We were trying to decide if buying tickets was worth it and I am so glad we did. The height of the towers was unbelievable and the tallest one hasn't even been built yet! The stain glass inside was so beautiful. Gaudi got his inspiration from nature and you can tell by visiting this place. The columns inside resemble trees. After La Sagrada Familia we headed home to spend some time out of the sun and then we went to dinner at the yummiest Italian restaurant. The food was so good! It made me even more excited to visit Italy in July.

While we were waiting in the ATM line, I noticed they were doing work on La Sagrada Familia.

Park Guell

Gaudí´s house

We had a great view of the city from this park.

Mount Tibidabo. If you know me well, I am obsessed with Friends and in one of the many great episodes they talk about hiking in the mountains of Tibidabo. So, when Ben pointed them out to me I was really excited!

 A hospital designed by Gaudí. Up until about a year ago it was a fully functioning hospital. They have decided to turn it into a full time tourist site though so it is undergoing some pretty intensive renovations.

La Sagrada Familia is filled with images and verses from Jesus' life. It is a building truly dedicated to showing who Jesus was and is. I absolutely loved it!

 Matthew 27: 19 - While Pilate was sitting on the judge's seat, his wife sent him this message: "Don´t have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of him."

When you walk in, the floor is covered with images of when Jesus went to Jersualem to eventually be arrested and crucified. These scenes show him riding in on the donkey and the people laying down palm branches and praising him.

The stain glass blew my mind! The inside of this church will be absolutely stunning when it is finally finished!

The altar at the front of the church.

  

That spot of light at the top is where the final and tallest column will go. This column represents Jesus.

Gaudí said he was inspired by nature and you can see this in how the columns supporting the church resemble tree trunks and their branches.

"I believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Amen."

Praise God! This was posted throughout the church in several different languages.

It took me awhile to notice but the nativity scene is built into the outside of the building. Here you can see the star, people worshiping God and, Mary, Joseph a donkey and Jesus.

Down and to the left of Mary, Joseph and Jesus are the Three Wise Men.

Down and to the right are the shepards.

This is a model of what it will look like when it is finished. The middle column and the ones on the far right still need to be built among other things such as finishing the inside.

Barcelona Day 2

We decided after getting up so early the previous morning we would sleep in a bit this day. Best decision. I felt like we were in the dorms again because the showers and bathrooms weren't in the rooms. It was close to the beach though so it was worth having to walk out of our room to shower.

For breakfast we headed to the Mercat La Boqueria. (Mercat is the Catalan word for mercado.) Mercat La Boqueria is similar to the one we shop at in Madrid except much bigger and much more touristy. After getting some food for lunch and breakfast we headed to find where to buy our transportation tickets to Montserrat. Montserrat is a very old monastery on the top of a mountain. During the Franco era some monks fled here in order to preserve the Catalunya culture and history. It was impossible for Franco and his men to get to them.

We finally found where to get our tickets. We were in a bit of a rush to get to the metro because we had to take the metro and then a train to get to the cable car ride. The next train was leaving soon so when we got to the metro and saw it was about to leave we ran down the stairs. Ben made it on but barely. His bag almost got clipped off. I was left standing on the other side of the door looking at him asking him "What the heck?!" A lady standing next to him was laughing pretty hard. I waited for the next metro and met up with him at the stop. We had one minute to catch the train. Again we were running through the station but we made it! It was about an hour ride and we met some ladies from Georgia who were on vacation in Barcelona and then off to Madrid.

You could either take a cable car or some sort of little train up the mountain to get to the monastery. We opted for the cable cars. Once we got up there we walked around for a bit and did some hiking up to where an old convent used to be. How those little old nuns got up there in their little nun shoes is beyond me! They must have been some tough old ladies!

Once we got back down we headed down to see the Black Madonna. She was originally carved out of wood and therefore had white skin but the smoke from the candles turned her black over the years. There was a line we had to wait in and as we slowly inched forward there were some kids behind Ben that kept crowding him. He said at one point he was resting his hand on a railing and the boy behind him rested his chin on Ben's forearm! I laughed so hard. At one point I told him I could switch with him but he informed me he was "playing games" with them. I looked at him and he said sometimes he would lift his foot up like he was going to step forward and within half a second one of the kids would have their foot in the empty space left behind and then he would put his foot back down right in the exact same spot. He was cracking me up!

After the Black Madonna we headed back to Barcelona to visit the cathedral and then rest up before meeting a friend for tapas. One of my friends, Nicole, met a boy named Adria through a program that WWU does. They have kept in contact over the years and he and I have spent time together when he has been in the States. So when we decided to go to Barcelona I emailed him to see if we could get together. He took us to a yummy tapas place on the water.


Mercat La Boqueria

 

Montserrat

We made it to the top!

The cathedral at Montserrat.

Catalunya flag.

The rail track that we took to get to the base of our hike.

The cathedral in Barcelona.

Me and Adria.

Barcelona Day 1

We had to get up at 4am to catch a taxi and get to the airport in time. We thought it would be easy to find a taxi but we forgot that people head home to the bars around 4am and they were getting all the taxis. I had a number for a taxi company so I called them for a cab. However a couple minutes later we found an empty one and hopped in. A couple minutes later I got a call telling me where our taxi was waiting. I told her I had found another and she got kind of mad and said you couldn't do that. Oops.

We landed in Barcelona around 8:30am and headed to the tourist information booth in the airport to figure out how to get in to the city. Once we got into the center, we walked to our hostel and dropped our bags off since we were a couple of hours away from check-in.

After we dropped our stuff off, we headed up Las Ramblas, the main street through town and where a lot of the touristy stuff is. On the way we stopped in Iglesia Santa Maria del Mar. After walking down Las Ramblas we headed towards La Sagrada Familia, the main tourist attraction in Barcelona. It was designed by Gaudi and building started in 1882 and they are still working on it! The projected finish date is 2030! After looking around the outside (the line was way too long!) we decided to head back to the hostel for a nap.

After a much needed nap we headed to the beach which was a 10 minute walk from where we were staying. We saw the World Trade Center building and also the FC Barcelona Futbol team bus. They were in town for a game that night and there were maybe a couple of hundred people crowded around waiting for them to come out to their bus. We stuck around for about 20 minutes and then left. By this point we were pretty hungry and we wanted to go eat. Ben had found a good looking Mexican restaurant over by La Sagrada Familia so we headed back there. The food was so good! It had been almost a year since we had had good Mexican food. We kept asking for chips and they kept looking at us like we were crazy. They couldn't figure out why we would want chips without the "stuff", nacho ingredients.

After dinner we went to check out La Sagrada Familia at night. It was beautiful all lit up at night.


Iglesia Santa Maria del Mar

Christopher Columbus

One of the many Gaudi buildings in Barcelona.

La Sagrada Familia

The World Trade Center

FC Barcelona Futbol bus

The water was so cold!