Barcelona

After 2 weeks on the cruise ship, today we docked in Barcelona and phase two of our trip begins! We had a great time on the cruise and it seemed to go by really fast, but we are ready to explore by car now!

We have a 2:00 reservation to tour La Sagrada Familia today and since we had to disembark early this morning, we decided to take a 4 hour tour of Barcelona with a local and learn about the history.

We learned so much from our tour guide! He pointed out some well known places and others not so well known, but fascinating none the less. There are many different architectural styles in Barcelona that it sometimes feels like a hodgepodge all thrown together.

Here they are together. This is known as the “Block of Discord.” It’s hard to tell, but these two styles are so drastically different from each other that it is strange to see them in the same area.

The building on the right side was done by famous architect Antoni Gaudi. He has a very unique style and most of his buildings are rounded with very little straight lines.

This one is called the “House of Bones,” It looks like a dragon with the scales on top, arched roof to look like the back of a dragon, an eye, the balconies up high for princesses, the top turret representing a lance plunged into the dragon, and the bottom part looking like fangs.

Next we went to Park Güell (pronounced Park Gway). This whole area was designed by Gaudi to be a 42 acre residential development for 60 houses. The houses were built as models, but for various reasons the lots didn’t sell and eventually the park was sold to the city of Barcelona.

The whole park reminded me of the board game Candyland. It is very whimsical, colorful, and bizarre.

These looked like gumdrops around a window

Different, but very neat at the same time

The esplanade is completely surrounded by a long mosaic serpentine bench

The grand porch, called the Hypostyle Hall, was conceived as the site for a market

The grand staircase at the entrance to the park

From there we made a stop at La Sagrada Familia, a spectacular basilica that stands out among all of Barcelona.

Our guide gave us a detailed description of how the exterior of the building tells the story of the Bible. It is truly fascinating and I can’t wait to see the inside later today!

This is the nativity facade symbolizing the birth of Jesus

We took our time walking all around the exterior, marveling at the intricacy of it all.

The passion facade is dedicated to the passion of Christ

The original architect envisioned a classic Gothic style. But eventually, the work was turned over to Antoni Gaudí who completely changed the original project and began building his most famous work.

Here you can see touches of Gaudi’s style

The Facade of Glory is still being built. It will be the largest and of the three facades. It represents Jesus’ rise to heaven.

Our next stop was a quick visit to the beach. There are not that many large beaches along the Mediterranean coast due to the fact that the real estate is so valuable. However, Barcelona recognizes the importance of having a nice beach for people to enjoy.

From there we took a drive up to Montjuïc which has a very pretty park and is a nice place to look down on the city.

Bottoms of glass bottles embedded in the sidewalk

The Olympic stadium that was used for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. The metal structure on the left side held the Olympic flame.

Our tour of the city ended just in time for us to pick up our rental car and make our way over to La Sagrada Familia for our tour of the inside. I was especially excited because we had a tower access along with the tour which would allow us to go to the top of one of the talk towers! We arrived at the meeting place 20 minutes ahead of time and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally at 2:05 I started getting worried and tried to call and email the company. As I was looking up the email confirmation I received from them, I realized they sent me another one just a few days before we left on our trip saying the tour was canceled! I don’t know how I missed that, but we were working hard the few days before we left, so I’m not surprised it slipped passed me. Tickets to go inside sell out months ahead of time, so there was no way we were going to be able to take a tour. I was so upset! I had been looking forward to this since the moment I realized we were going to Barcelona. I was close to crying, but Russell reminded me we were going to encounter bumps along the way and had to roll with it. He even offered to buy me ice cream to make me feel better! I smiled, but it still sucked!

We only travelled a couple hours today. We weren’t sure how it was going to go driving in a different country, but Russell made it seem easy. We are basically going to follow the Mediterranean coastline all the way to Monaco and head north from there.