Sagrada Família

Today, we got up and had some breakfast beers in the sun with some donairs! After we joined our hostel for a walking tour of Sagrada famillia. A building has never left me lost for words, but the Sagrada Famillia did. We learned how the city of barcelona was expanding fast. They decided to build way outside of where the city was because they knew the city would catch up. They wanted to represent that by building the fanciest craziest church around. The first architect only worked on the church for a year because he wasn't making extravagant enough. They fired him on good terms and asked him who he thought could do what they envisioned. He recommended a young Antoni Gaudi, who was fascinated by nature and its fractal shapes. He loved that nothing in nature was a straight line. He wanted to apply that to Sagrada Famillia. He definitely did, as you can see. He dedicated the last 30+ years of his life to this project, designing all the sculptures and designing the entire building himself. Every detail of this building is symbolic for something, and I thought that was so cool. Once it's done, the only thing in all of barcelona that will be taller than Sagrada Famillia is a nearby mountain. He purposley designed it to be 2M shorter than this mountain because he didn't want to offend God. That's pretty generous towards a fella he's never met. If it was me, I'd make it 2M taller than the tallest mountain lol. I guess that is why I'm not the lead architect on one of the seven wonders of the world. He was completely obsessed with the Bascilla. At the time of his death, his baby was only 25% complete. He was buried in the crypt. The Sagrada Famillia has been under construction for the last 142 years and is expected to be completely finished in 2026, but the tour guide doesn't believe it at all. That's because in Gaudis's plans, there is supposed to be a park across the street from the front gates, but when they bought their land way outside of the city, they couldn't afford to buy the land across the street. A private company bought the land and slapped an apartment building up right next to it. Since then, the church has been saying they will tear down the apartments once construction is complete. The apartment has a banner hanging from it, saying, "Our houses are legal." That might delay some things. Unfortunately, tickets were completely sold out, so we couldn't go inside. Maybe one day I'll make it back and see the inside. After we walked up a massive hill to go see a place called parc güell, which was also sold out. I'm gonna be honest I got a little frustrated. We walked way too long for that shit to be sold out as well, so I was annoyed. I guess we need to start booking ahead. Afterward, we decided we'd go check out the Gothic Quarter. This was super cool. The other church we saw was called La Seu. Its constriction was finished in 1448, so it's decently old lol. We kept wandering in the Gothic Quarter and found these narrow streets filled with little bars, so we stopped for a beer at one. Once we sat down, I swear I had to try not to fall asleep inside. We were getting hungry, so we went to a grocery store, we grabbed 4 burgers, spaghetti, and pasta sauce all for 8 euros. That might be the cheapest spaghetti meatsauce I've ever had, but it was so good! That's about it for today, though.

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