visit.
We started out early and took a taxi from the cruise ship straight to Park Guell.
Park Guell is a large park designed by Antoni Gaudi. Out of the two zones, we chose to explore the Monumental Zone of the park. His designs are spectacular. Gaudi didn't believe in straight lines and the imagination and inspiration that went into his architecture are wonderful to explore.
We saw bird nests in the holes in the wall and admired the domes fitted between the large columns. It looked like a large honeycomb.
At the top of the park, you are met with views of the city of Barcelona stretching out to the sea.
Walking back down, we stopped to admire the salamander most people refer to as a dragon.
Brigham and I spent a little time exploring the gardens in the free zone of the park. It was winter, but we enjoyed the greenery that we saw and a couple blooms even popped out.
The cute Hansel and Gretel type buildings at the front were what initially drew us to explore the park when we planned our trip.
As we waited out front for our taxi to arrive, we admired the entirity of the park from the entrance.
With one Gaudi site down, and two to go, we made our way to the outside of Gaudi's most famous work, La Sagrada Familia.
Just seeing this cathedral from the outside is astounding. With so much to look at and so many details to puzzle out, it's easy to get a crick in the neck.
We still had time before our entrance call to La Sagrada so we wandered through nearby gift shops and stopped in to try out a famous Barcelona treat: Churros con chocolat.
Basically, it's a variety of churros - we had a few plain ones and one filled with nutella and another with vanilla creme - and drinking chocolate. The drinking chocolate is not like hot chocolate in America. It is thick and rich and not sweet. Basically, it's melted bittersweet chocolate with heavy creme. We quickly realized that one cup would have been enough for all three of us because of the richness. And my American tastebuds craved more sweetness in the cup. Fun to try, but our tummies were rumbling as we left the shop from the rich chocolate and fried churros.
Our ticket entrance time finally arrived and we entered La Sagrada Familia on a self-guided audio tour. None of the pictures do this place any justice whatsoever. First off, the scheme and architecture are so grand that cameras cut it off or lose the details.
Second, each facade and every corner has meaning and purpose. Symbolism of nature and God and creation are in each curve and line and spiraling staircase.
And then you have the large stain-glass window mosaics on another end. I could not capture the beauty and colors correctly. My phone camera would never be able to show the sun lighting the room through the colorful glass.
But I tried anyway.
After we finished the audioguide inside the Sagrada, we headed back outside to learn more about the designs outdoors (and admired the door made completely of names).
Unfortunately, Guadi died before he was able to finish La Sagrada Familia and other designers have taken over and tried to finish the designs while remaining true to the essence of Gaudi. The building is actually still unfinished and won't be finished for a few more years, which is why you see all the cranes in the background.
One of those other designers created the Passion Facade of Christ in tribute to Gaudi. It's designed to represent the road to God, death, final judgment, and Christ's glory in overcoming death. I'm not normally super moved by architecture or art, but this was powerful. I worked hard to keep my emotions in check as I listened to the audioguide describe the figures and symbolism. Especially, when I had to raise my eyes up high to see a small figure of Christ over everything to represent Him overcoming death.
We had been told by multiple people that La Sagrada Familia is a must see, and they were right. We talked about it for the rest of the day and became instant Gaudi fans.
Feeling inspired by our cathedral visit, we walked through the streets of Barcelona to find inspiration for our bellies in the form of tapas.
Tapas are a snack or appetizer that come served either hot or cold. We choose the restaurant Vinitus to dive into the tapas world and we sat in the heated outside part of the cafe to order our small plates of food.
I forgot to take pictures of a few of the tapas, but we did try bombas (potatoes with meat inside) and a stuffed avocado, anchovies (supposedly WAY better in Europe but they were still super disgusting to me), a cod dish, and a couple others that I forget. It was hard to tell what each dish was with our Spanish menus and my mom, looking to avoid the majority seafood or spicy, decided on a hamburger tapa as a safe bet.
And then her burger arrived.
What you see there is a jumbo shrimp with some cheese between two mushrooms with a smear of ketchup on the plate. Oh, how we laughed at Mom's "burger". This burger is Mom's worst nightmare. For someone who hates seafood, it was a disappointment. Brigham and I both thought it was delicious.
Feeling somewhat underwhelmed by our tapas, we wished we had more time to explore different choices as we were admittedly out of our league in knowing what to pick.
Our final Gaudi destination was located just around the corner from our tapa restaurant and we walked right over to Casa Batllo. This is a mansion Gaudi designed for the Batllo family. The front is supposed to look really cool, but unfortunately, it was under construction so we missed out on the grandeur until we entered the mansion for another self-guided audio tour.
Gaudi did not disappoint with more funky and elaborate aspects. Two columns in front of a door? Why? Only Gaudi knows.
Even the tiles in the courtyard were full of patterns.
The house was designed to be like a marine with blue flowing from dark to light to help transmit more light from the outside in. Gaudi was actually quite innovative in his designs to create air-flow and light exposure in the rooms.
The attic had dramatic arches and we stepped up spiral staircases to get to the roof.
Gaudi didn't forget the roof with crazy peaks and figures, and we were allowed to see more of his work with ventilation.
You won't find anything simple when Gaudi is involved. And now you know where the term gaudi comes from.
You'd think after three Gaudi attractions, tapas, churros, and gift shopping that we'd be done. But, oh, not yet.
We now headed through the streets of Barcelona to walk down Las Ramblas, starting at the Placa de Catalunya fountain.
Brigham had to have another fountain picture, of course.
Las Ramblas is a large street that cuts through the middle of the city and has everything you can think of. Shops, markets, museums, side streets with leather and jewelry stores (where I was admittedly swindled into buying cheap jewelry that didn't even make it through the rest of the day before it fell apart), food, and lots and lots of people.
Go more than one day on our trip without gelato? Not a chance!
Walking through Las Ramblas while lazily eating my way through a giant cone of deliciousness was one of the highlights of my trip. Both Brigham and I wished we had much more time to spend exploring Las Ramblas.
Near the end of the street were people painted to look exactly like statues and they played the part so well that we would have never known they weren't statues if we hadn't seen other people interact with them. If you donate a Euro they "wake up" and interact with you. Brigham immediately went right up and he couldn't contain his glee. I'm still not sure why he was so worked up about it, but he grinned and giggled like a silly fool.
It was seriously hysterical.
It was a good thing we had such a light-hearted moment at the end of Las Ramblas because we were about to come across one of the most stressful points of our trip.
We were told to catch our shuttle back to the cruise ship by the Colombus statue. Well, the Colombus statue is hard to miss, but there are so many buses and tours and no clear space was marked. The stop could have been anywhere in the surrounding area of the Colombus statue. We asked many people, the tourist desk, and every bus driver we could, and yet we could not find our shuttle. We wandered around stressed out, snippy with each other, and then started running back and forth and checking every bus. Time was ticking down and we truly began to worry we were going to miss the all aboard on our cruise ship. Luckily, nearly at our wit's end, I noticed another bus in a transportation area and saw a teeny-tiny sign saying Costa. I was able to flag my Mom and Brigham down and we boarded the correct shuttle and made it back in time. But boy were we upset with the lack of information provided to help locate the bus. We made our complaints known to the cruise company later.
Starting the day out stressed that we wouldn't fit all of our appointments in, we had time to spare in the end. And it was lucky we did with our bus debacle in the end. I was thrilled with how it played out because I had worked so hard to create the schedule and prayed that I hadn't overshot the mark. The planning paid off as we enjoyed many more sites than most other people were able to even think about. Besides that stressful bit at the end of the day, we truly enjoyed our day in Barcelona. It is one of the cleaner cities we visited, we were wowed with Gaudi sights (and didn't even see them all), and tried interesting food. The lot of us agreed we would enjoy going back to Barcelona in a heartbeat!
