Day 31: 27 July 2010

Woke up in Barcelona today, and I think we both were not entirely sure where we were! In the past 24 hours we’ve been in three countries and visited several different places so I’m sure that explains our slight confusion!  Decided it was best to check out and have the hotel hold our bags for the day so we could explore the city.  Hotel del Comte was a good last minute find since it was located a block from the train station.  Grabbed some breakfast pastries at a local passticeria and hopped on the train.  Noticed pretty quickly how Catalan, the language of this region is definitely different from Spanish.  It seems like a mix of French and Spanish combined as we looked at street signs and tried to read a few words from our guidebiook. 

One thing we’ll definitely miss about Europe is the efficient train system.  We never had to wait longer than five minutes for a train in the major cities we visited, and monitors let you know along the track how long before the next one arrives.  Our first stop today was to La Sagrada Familia.  This is a huge unfinished Church that was started in 1862.  Artist Antoni Gaudi, a modernist artist, worked on the Church and designed the plans for it until his death in 1926.  Building of the Church has been delayed many times due to finances.  Today we can say we helped fund the construction of the Cathedral because admission fees go towards this fund.  The Church is literally a constructions site with cranes, workcrew, and dust around.  Yet tourists are allowed to visit and watch all the action.

At first, I didn’t get why this is such a big tourist attraction.  Why pay to see a Church that isn’t finished?  However, after taking an audioguide tour and learning about the work that went into building it, and seeing plans for what it will look like someday, I was glad we had come.  I likened to what it must have been like for people centuries ago when some of the world’s greatest cathedrals were built.  Those certainly didn’t happen overnight, and lots of people probably walked by and watched their construction all the time. 

The outside facades of the Church were interesting because they had modern sculptures carved into them of the Passion on one wall, and the Nativity and early life of Jesus on the other side.  The roof was also an interesting take.  We rode a 6 person elevator up one of the towers and were able to walk across a bridge on the front of the Church and through the towers to view parts of Barcelona and the architecture up high.  On top of several spires, there were symbolic sculptures of grapes and the Eucharist made with mosaics of colored Venetian glass.  There will be a total of 18 spires on the Church when it is completed.  Each spire is dedicated to an apostle, one of the Gospel writes, Mary and the tallest one will be for Jesus.  Inside the Church, we had a chance to see some of the colorful stained glass windows, the different colored tall columns designed to look like tree branches and leaves at the top and on the ceiling, Gaudi’s tomb, and a museum with models and sketches of the Church.  Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll be able to come back to see the finished product some day since it will surely be a remarkable site.

We spotted a Subway across from La Sagrada Familia and made our once per vacation trip there to get an American sub.  Then we took the train to the Plaza de Catalunya for some Rick Steves walks of the older part of time.  Walked down the very crowded Ramblas pedestrian zone as far as the harbor.  This area is a mile long stretch that has tons of human sculptures and vendors including those selling flowers, pets, fruits and vegetables, and souvenirs.  We also walked to the Cathedral and the Barri Gotic section.  The Cathedral was nice, and very Gothic despite the construction being done on its outside.  We finished our walk through Barcelona at a café where we got churros and chocolate.  Yum!

Thought we left ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport from the hotel, but as usual, it  took longer than we expected to carry our bags through several train stations and up stairs to connect to other lines.  The direct route to the airport also only runs twice per hour so we had to wait for that train as well.  By the time we made it to the airport, we were only about an hour before departure.  Once again we ran into problems with luggage and had to pay to check one extra bag.  The flight to Dublin was smooth, and we arrived around 1am.  Got our first taste of driving on the other side of the road when we took a cab into Dublin city center.  Brayden was up even though it was close to 2am to welcome us to his place and catch up with us before we all headed to bed.