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Published: September 6th 2007
There comes a stage in one’s life when you get ABSOLUTELY sick to death of being on a bus - I’m there! Today was another of the long haul legs, from Nice to Barcelona - without any interesting stops along the way. I guess that stopping through some gorgeous European towns would make life so much easier - but then we’d have even less time in the big cities…and we had heard from Tam and Sam that there was lots to see in the big B.
We finally pulled into Barcelona at 5:00pm, and with only 6 chapters of Harry Potter left, we dropped the bags off, then went back on the bus for our City Sights tour…which was nuts! Our guide went 100 miles an hour and the phrasing of words here can become slightly annoying. It is like everyone is trained to speak with a lisp - Barthelona, Grathius etc. Thankfully, we got to stretch our legs at the Sagrada Familia, one of Gaudi’s best pieces of work. This famous architect spent much of his life here, and is renowned as being a genius of his time - the Familia certainly proves that!
The cathedral’s oldest section
Waterworks Building
You can see what else it looks like!looks as though it was a candle, that has started to melt, with wavy stone carvings in minute detail. To think that Gaudi constructed this façade during the 1900’s, and with NO building, plans boggles your mind! Everything was done using a small scale model as a base, and they say that the building won’t be fully completed until at least 2022.
The other facades are more modern, but the Spanish are following Gaudi’s dream for this church - and are even going to knock down entire street blocks to create the parklands for the last wall. Each façade has a green area in front of it, except for the area that is still being constructed, so all those residents will have to move house.
From here, it was back on the bus to drive past some more of Barcelona’s famous sights, including the Olympic Stadium and the Marina. There are lots of outdoor artworks here, and the Smiling Lobster was especially cute. It is certainly a more modern European city, compared to others we have seen. It looks less industrialised - and has more parklands. However, Barcelona cannot expand any more than it already has, due to
the surrounding mountains - hopefully this doesn’t mean they get rid of the green space.
We arrived back at the hotel, via the Waterworks Building - one of the few that soars past 6 stories (a law here) and looks like a giant lava lamp at night. Dinner wasn’t served until 9:15pm, which we struggled with. By the time the Spanish get up, have lunch at 1:00pm, then Siesta, they don’t head back to work until the late afternoon, so the average time for dinner here is around 10pm! That’s hard to wait for if you’re an Aussie used to eating around 6:30pm.
Our room was super small, but that didn’t bother us as we were heading out to find more of Gaudi’s work tomorrow, rather than visit the sacred hill of Monte Surratt. With only 8 hours sleep, at most, it was definitely time for bed!
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emily
non-member comment
cool
i understand