Barcelona City Tour

 Wednesday Sept 14 (Again)

NOTE: (I really am disoriented I guess. Yesterday I wrote how I thought I lost a day. Today I guess I found it again because I was writing my Thursday blog and then realized its only Wednesday. But I wrote that one yesterday which meant it must have been Tuesday instead of Wednesday. But then we just arrived on Tuesday so I am back to losing a day again and I don't know where it went. At this point I decided just to write another Wednesday blog and right it off to jet lag. )

Today was our day to get acquainted with Barcelona, and yes that meant it was Wednesday. We bought tickets for the double decker hop-on-hop-off bus which allowed us a full day to ride around the city and sightsee.

I was the first up at 5:30 AM. Obviously my jet lag was still in play and I could not get back to sleep. I got up and dressed and prepared for the day while waiting on the others to wake.

By 6:30 I was ready and decided to do some computer work to take up the time.

By 7:30 I was working on the blog and checking the news.

By 8:30 I started mind numbing games.

At 9:30 I started checking beds thinking perhaps everyone was gone and left me in the apartment alone.

By 10:30 I finally had some conscious company. It was comforting to know SOMEONE was starting to get caught up on their sleep.

By noon we were out, looking for some lunch, I mean breakfast, and then headed to the tour bus.

We were given a pair of earbuds which provided a constant guide of the city in 14 languages. We were allowed to get off at any stop and back on a later bus at any time.

We left the bus twice at interesting points. The first was at the National Museum of Art of Catalonia. It was on a hill overlooking the city and had amazing views.

The next stop was at Casa Batlló o La Pedrera, one of the original buildings by architect Antoni Gaudí.

Gaudi was a famous architect of the city whose unique and eccentric designs are world renowned. His most famous work is the Familia Sagrada church which has become the most well known icon of the city. And that happened to be our third and final stop for the day.

We arrived at the church with a enough time for lunch. We sat at a Turkish sidewalk cafe right across from, and with amazing views of, the church.

We were right on time for our 6:00 tour. The entrance has a winding que line with metal railings that ran back and forth several times before reaching the medal detectors. The line could likely hold 100 people but at the moment we were the only ones at that spot. We walked back and forth and back and forth through the empty que making our way to the front.

Jason spontaneously decided he would take a shortcut and ducked under the rails and went right to the front.

The security guard at the head of the line was not amused and made he and I both exit and return to the beginning to walk the que the proper way.

I queried the unhappy guard, he’s the one that broke the lines, not me, why do I have to start over? His reply, because you are his friend. Well that was a butt biter! I complied but secretly thought I should have left Jason back at the apartment in bed.

Aside from the misstep at the gate the rest of the experience was magical. The church was the lifelong work of Gaudi and the crowning achievement of his career. He worked on the church for over 40 years of his life and in his later years he lived there and after he died he was buried in the crypts beneath the church.

The Basílica de la Sagrada Familia (Basilica of the Holy Family) is currently the World’s largest unfinished Roman Catholic Church. Gaudi's work on Sagrada Família is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica.

Seeing the church only in pictures before I had referred to it as the honeycomb church as it seemed full of holes. Seeing it in person proved it was beyond imagination. It was a fairy tale castle of spires and statues and stained glass. It had twisting corridors and spontaneous balconies and winding stairways unlike anything one would experience elsewhere.

We listed to an audio tour on our phones which lasted an hour before ascending in a tiny round elevator up the Nativity tower.

From there were amazing views of the city as well as unique views of the structure itself. Although it was an easy ride up, the decent was all by foot. We descended in a very narrow tunnel winding its ways down one of the precarious towers. There was a lack of hand rails and the middle area was open and disorienting. The lady I’m front of us started praying out loud as she was claustrophobic.

Leaving the church we hit another cafe for a drink and a snack. By now all the city busses hat stopped and we couldn’t even find an Uber or a taxi. We walked the 1 1/2 miles back to our apartment where we all collapsed in exhaustion.