We got up fairly early and took the subway to go see Parc Guell. The subway system in Barcelona is clean, fast and cheap. We tried to use it any chance we could. To get to the entrance to the park we ascended something like a dozen outdoor escalators bringing you to the gates with a lovely bit of graffiti to greet the tourist. (I am disappointed I don’t have a picture, but this ‘motto’ was one I repeated to Jenn all over Spain)
After entering the park, we walked down quite a way to reach the ticket office and gate that leads into the inner park.
Gaudi had two gate houses built and they remind me of gingerbread houses.
The park was well groomed and seemed like a nice place to sit around and enjoy the weather. You could see the Balearic Sea from the upper platform.
After we left Parc Guell, we walked to La Sagrada Familia and tried to get in (we tried yesterday but they were closing). Again, they had no tickets so I said screw it but Jenn insisted we come back another day. (good thing, too)
La Sagrada Familia is a church that Gaudi started in the 1800’s and it has continuously been under construction since. They are still working on it today and have a lot left to do. It is a huge, impressive structure. I especially liked the statues on the Passion facade done by Subirachs.
Since we couldn’t get tickets we wandered into the nearby park where about 100 senior ladies were knitting lace. That was something I’d never seen before. Afterwards, we continued wandering around Barcelona and we saw a man with a homemade carousel. It was powered by a foot pedal that turned a large wheel. I love stuff like that and was trying to ask him questions about it but there was a language barrier. I really need to work on my Spanish!
We had lunch, went back to the hotel for a short siesta and headed off for a futbol game. The game was unlike an american sporting event in many ways. We were less than 5 minutes late but the outside of the stadium was a ghost town. We bought some Barca hats and climbed up to the top where our seats were. The stadium was packed- there were very few seats left unfilled. There was no obnoxious beer guy walking around. Once during the second half a guy with a water tray walked up the stairs showed off his wares but he never yelled because he didn’t want to disrupt anyone’s enjoyment of the game.
After we got back to the hotel we asked Oliva (the owner) what we should do with the evening. She suggested we go to the fountain, so we did. Near the fountain we sat at a bench with a couple old fellas. We tried hard to converse with them but I think they spoke Catalan so they didn’t even really understand much of my Spanish. We were hoping to have dinner in the area but it turns out there were almost no options, so we ended up having sandwiches from a little trailer in the park. The food everywhere in Barcelona was surprisingly good. You almost couldn’t go wrong, every place we went had at minimum pretty good food.
The fountain turns on at 2100 with lights and music. We sat in the park and had hot chocolate while watching the blasting water. It was a striking display of light and water jets.
