Each morning we wake and wonder what country we are in and if we have to rush to get ready to go on tour…. but no tour today, so a nice relaxing start to the day, think we are getting old!!
Before we left home in July we bought entry tickets into La Sagrada Familia, (Barcelona's 'show piece') for 1pm, and we planned a walking day, so after getting off our shuttle bus into the city, we headed for Las Ramblas. This is the main shopping strip with a centre walkway filled with street stalls and performers, etc….. and we enjoyed coffee al fresco people watching, just by their Opera House.
After reaching the main central square, Placa Catalunya, which was full of tourists and pigeons, we armed ourselves with a map each and then criss-crossed our way towards Gaudi's masterpiece, which turned out to be quite a hike, but we made it in good time and were so glad we had pre purchased tickets as the queue was enormous.
What a truly amazing spectacle is Antoni Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia – impossible to describe and photos will never do it justice. This man with incomparable imagination had the most remarkable dream and good luck as he took over from a parish architect who resigned. Construction of the Catholic Cathedral (The Third Cathedral) began in 1882 and Gaudi took over as the architect in 1883 where he worked his magic for 43 years designing a Cathedral like no other in the entire world, featuring the most superb stained glass windows and ornate spires that reach to the clouds.
The outside is incredibly flambuoyant and to me looks like a magical sand castle that you could only possibly dream about and then upon entering you are totally transformed with the serene smooth pastel architecture that is almost unreal. We strolled around in awe and everywhere we looked was totally breathtaking – then we sat in one of the pews for ages and tried to digest what our eyes could see but we knew it was going to be difficult to remember all the detail. So we bought a book, describing all the different sections of the cathedral and its history which will be sitting on our coffee table when we get home. We also took the lift up into the first tower, where there was a very small viewing area overlooking the whole city - terracottered!!!
Antoni Gaudi died in 1926 (hit by a tram when he left the building) and only witnessed a very small tangible part of his dream – up to the building of the Crypt. His style was very modern and along with drawings, he made most of the designs to scale models. The construction is continuous and much of it is covered in scaffolding and huge cranes tower above and will do so for many, many years to come.
Time for a late lunch and we couldn't resist a delicious pizza and coffee and a short rest, then headed in the direction of Las Ramblas. The clouds were rolling in and before we could even get the brolly out, the heavens opened and drenched everyone in sight. It lingered a little too long, so another brolly was purchased from the hawkers madly running around with a very saleable product.
We had dried off by the time we got back 'home' and enjoyed yet another memorable sailaway….. then it was hard to sleep with so many beautiful visions of La Sagrada Familia!!
Photos: Our amazing day in Barcelonia.
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