Antoni Gaudi (Barcelona Day 2)

For our first and only full day in Barcelona, we got up early to make the most out of it. We started off by going to the Antoni Gaudi museum/house called La Pedrera. We learned a lot about Gaudi and got to see a lot of his architecture. It reminded us of something Dr. Suess would do – very whimsical.

After this, we went to go see the Sagrada Familia, the church Gaudi was in the process of building when he died. The line looked to be about 2 hours long, so we decided that it wouldn’t be worth it and to move on. We got an amazing lunch, which included paella and sangria.  After lunch, we went back to see if the line was shorter for the church, and since it had rained, the line was about a fifth of the size as it was before so we went to see the church; and we were certainly glad we did.  It was still under construction, and is finally slated to be finished in 2026, the 100 year anniversary of his death. It was unlike any other church we had ever seen, so much so that it was almost hard to believe that the Catholic church actually sanctioned a building this untraditional. That being said, it was beautiful. It was bright and colorful and we took a bunch of pictures before moving on to our next stop.

From here we went to Park Guell. Gaudi had also been commissioned to create this park.  Again, it was very different than most parks but very cool.  We climbed to the very top of a mountain inside the park where a cross stood.  We took some really pretty scenic pictures of the city from here.  Then we went to the rest of the park where there were famous statues of a lizard and dragon.  There was a lot of mosaic work with brightly colored tiles on the benches and the covered ceiling and the statues.

After the park, we took the metro to the FC Barcelona stadium.  The Barcelona soccer team just won the UEFA championship, about 4 days previous, so it was pretty neat to be there and see all of the posters and memorabilia celebrating their win.  It was very expensive to actually go into the stadium and get the tour and none of us are huge soccer fans so we just went into the store and walked around.

At this point we were all exhausted so we took a cab back to our hostel and rested for a bit. When we got our energy back, we went to the Montjuic Park to see the Magic Light show, which turned out to be very cool. Then we got some cheap sandwiches for dinner and headed out to the Apolo area, where we hung out at a bar for a bit, met some interesting characters and called it a night.