Spring Break 2009: Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona was a shorter stop for us, only two days, which is unfortunate because it is an amazing and beautiful city. Britney and I arrived in Barcelona and met up with Dewey and Annie around 2 pm. We went to the store to grab some food for a late lunch. After we ate we headed into the city center. Here we met up with a couple of guys that Dewey met on his trip to Prague. These two guys are also from the states and are studying abroad in Barcelona. So they took us around and showed us some cool things around the city. We walked over to La Sagrada Familia [my favorite piece of architecture] to see if it was lit up but we got there too late the lights were already off. So we headed back to our room, we had a big day of sightseeing the next day.

La Sagrada Familia by night [the front of the church]


Day 2. We headed back to La Sagrada Familia [to see it in the daylight] but it started raining. We decided to grab a bite to eat and hopefully it would be done raining by this time. So we ducked into a small restaurant and tried Paella [THE thing to eat while in Spain]. This particular one was made up of sea-food and rice. For those of you who know me well know that sea food is NOT my favorite, but I decided to suck it up and eat it. It wasn’t horrible and I tired mussels, clams, and sting ray [I think]. We ask the older gentleman [whom didn’t speak any English] what it was and he drew us a picture that we all agreed looked like a sting ray…so it could have been something else?! Who knows. This was a 2 course lunch so after Paella we had pork and it was SO good. Yummm.

The yummy pork we had. [above] The Paella we ate. [Below]

By this time the rain had let up to just a sprinkle so we headed back outside on our journey. After a detour into a Tourist Trap store we arrived at La Sagrada Familia. It is absolutely amazing in the day light too. Just a background on the church: It’s a Roman Catholic Church that has been under construction since 1882 and isn’t scheduled to be complete until 2026! It was designed by the Spanish Architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926). He worked on the project for 40 years of his life. The original plans were lost sometime during the Spanish Civil war so the present construction is based on revised plans. You can tell which parts of the church are from which plans. You get a different feeling depending on if you are standing in the front of the church or in the back. Each is just as moving but you see the differences in planning. On the sides of the church you can see like a timeline of the different plans. The Church contains a total of 18 tall towers are called for, representing in ascending order of height the Twelve Apostles, the four Evangelists, the Virgin Mary and, tallest of all, Jesus Christ.

La Sagrada Familia. The back of the church [above] one of the many biblical scenes sculpted into the church [Below]



After the church we headed out to see more works of Gaudi. Fortunately the weather turned and it was sunny the rest of the day.

Gaudi had designed a park and houses located in Barcelona. We didn’t get to see the park or all of the houses but we saw two of the houses. They were amazing. The lines to see the insides of the houses were really long and since we were on a time schedule we decided not to tour the insides but I can only imagine how beautiful they were, when the outsides were really amazing.

After we found the houses we headed down to the water to see the port and the Statue of Christopher Columbus. After a very tiring day we grabbed some food and we ended up meeting with the guys we hung out with the night before. We went down to the beach area for a little bit which was beautiful! Then it was time for us to head to the Bus station and go to the airport and we were off to PARIS!

I really want to go back to Barcelona and see the many things we unfortunately missed but we had a great time here, we just didn’t have enough time. All the more reason to come back right?! =)