Sunday – Our walking tour continued on to the Palau de la Musica Catalana, a concert hall with gaudy (not Gaudi!) architecture inside on the roof, and an amazing ornate balcony & mosaic tiled ticket booths. From there it was on to the Museu Picasso (the Picasso Museum – after a brief stop at a Chocolateria…!) where we again stood & admired the building without going inside. The line was pretty long, stretching all the way down the narrow street.
After all that walking it was time to stop for Kath’s birthday lunch. We stopped in at a tapas bar called Sagardi in Barri Gotic. Amazing tapas. And champagne. The place was like a bar, but for tapas! Wooden floors, brick bar with a timber top with glass shelves lined with tapas, big stone wall behind the bar and waiters walking from the kitchen & calling out in Spanish about the trays of tapas they were carrying. All the tapas were lined up on the bar & you walk up & make your selection. You stand around tables & then go up & choose what you like. All tapas have tooth picks in them, partly to keep them together, but mainly so they know how many to charge you for. Loved the place and thoroughly enjoyed my first true Spanish tapas experience.
We continued on, needing to walk off all the tapas we had consumed, to the Roman Walls & Barcelona Cathedral. The walls had surrounded the old city which we then went on to learn about when we visited the Museu de Historia de Barcelona (the History Museum of Barcelona). The museum was filled with relics from the old city of Barcelona (Barcino) which was great…but only some of the exhibits had English translations. The best part though was that you got to go underground & actually walk through the ruins. Was extremely interesting to see. You could see how they made clothes, their shops & their winery. Yes, they had their priorities right back then!
For Kath’s birthday dinner we first went for drinks in Barri Gotic at La Vinya del Senyora, a TINY little bar filled with people, and a wine list that had to be printed (in tiny font) on 2 x A3 sheets of paper it was so long! We ordered wine & jamon (cured ham) and watched while the lady yelled our order up the food lift. Dinner was around the corner at Le Origins (near the Santa Maria de le Mar).
Monday was Gaudi Day, when we got to visit the Sagrada Familia. After a strong coffee (there aren’t too many milk coffees here, let alone mocha coffee!) we set out. The queue for the cathedral wrapped around the block but we were prepared to wait. After 30mins we were let inside & it was breathtaking. Absolutely amazing, and I would go so far as to say one of the most incredible buildings & architecture I have ever seen. The building was commissioned in 1882 to an architect Paul del Villar, and 1 year later it was passed on to Gaudi. He changed the original design to something much more groundbreaking. The building isn’t yet completed, and they estimate somewhere between 2020 and 2040 for completion. There is scaffolding over many parts of the building, and cranes towering over it. The cathedral has 3 facades on the outside of the building –the Passion Façade, the Nativity Façade and the Glory Façade. The Glory Façade is still to be started and is basically a building site at the moment. The Nativity Façade was the first one built, and the stones are weathered and worn, whereas the Passion Façade is built from newer stone, and is much lighter in colour. Gaudi was also in a different phase of his life when he designed it. He was quite sick and in pain, so the figures on this façade are much more angular and look to be in anguish. The facades show his absolute dedication to his Catholic religion, but with his own twist. There are the usual characters depicted (Jesus, Mary and Joseph), however on the top of the pinnacle towers there are coloured bunches of grapes… One of the best ways I can describe some of the towers of the Nativity Façade, would be to say they look like the sandcastles you make at the beach by dripping wet sand through your fingers to make a castle.
Inside is something else. I’m not such a huge fan of his work on the outside of many of his buildings, but inside the Sagrada Familia was something else. One of his big points of difference was his use of natural light, so unlike many other cathedrals which are quite dark and gloomy inside, this one is spacious and open and filled with light. The cathedral itself has a capacity of 13,000 with an area for 1,000 singers in a choir. Quite extraordinary. The other point of difference he has is that much of his work is influenced by nature. Shapes found in nature feature prominently in his work. We were quite lucky that most of the construction inside has been completed, so there is nothing to distract you inside. Parts of the roof rise up around 100m (the largest tower will be 170m tall when completed) and the design is amazing. Angular stonework sits beside cylindrical cones painted gold. You could easily spend hours in there just wandering and admiring. An absolute must see for anyone coming to Barcelona.
So Tuesday I parted ways with my Barcelona travel buddies. They were headed to London and I was headed to Granada in the south of Spain. We had our final coffee together in a cute little café called Clares, and they had good coffee! We sat out on the footpath at our little table and sipped our coffee and talked about what we had loved about Barcelona.
