Big day in Barcelona (part 1)

Pat's perspective:
A very fine breakfast buffet featured WAY more than we could eat. We had an early start and couldn't delay, since we had tickets for a tour of the Sagrada Familia church starting at 9:30 am, and needed to figure out the Metro. The only snag after purchasing our tickets was that we needed to exit the station to get on a train going the opposite direction. We made it to the tour in plenty of time.
It was very informative, narrated in English by our guide - her name was Haizea, a Basque name, which sounded like "Isaiah" (the prophet). We were given headphone devices to listen to her - lots of tours were going on around us, with probably 100's of people.
It was breathtaking to actually be inside the church. It's been under construction since the late 1800's. When I visited with Barb (and Madrid foreign study pals at the end of our term) in 1975, only the Nativity entrance structure had been completed, so that was all that we were able to see. After the 90 min tour, we visited the museum - & gift shop, of course - and spent another hour or so inside the church on our own.

So much detail, everywhere we looked, both high & low. What a genius Gaudí was ... also the people who've continued his work since his death in 1926. The entrance on the opposite side ("The Passion") has since been completed, and the main entrance ("The Glory") has only begun ... and has a way to go. The light shining through the stained glass windows was just incredible!

Laurie's perspective:

The height- the light- the colors! After our guided tour, we spent a couple of hours walking through the museum, checking out the gift shop, and another hour or so back in the church to take in all the details.

We realized that Gaudi's genius included not only architecture, but a deep understanding of theology, symbology, tradition, nature, color, and physics. After getting chewed out for ducking under the pew divider strap thing, we just sat in wonder, then walked around noticing more and more details. One thing that we saw was a window near what will eventually be the main entrance with the names of Estevan and Isobel.

Having spent most of the day at La Sagrada Familia, we decided to take the Big Red Bus tour around Barcelona.En savoir plus