Thursday, November 16, 2023
Gosh it’s an early morning, but we’ve got to be ready to get off the ship as soon as we’re allowed. We meet Christine for breakfast at 7:00 in O’Sheehan’s for a sit-down breakfast. I have a veggie omelet with potatoes and appreciate the smaller portions. And at that I can only eat half of it. I guess my tummy remembers last night!
Hmmm, the boat’s still moving at 8:00. We’re among the first to disembark but it doesn’t happen until nearly nine. Our tour was supposed to meet at 8:45 near the cathedral. Not looking good. We catch a cap and bring Christine with us in case she can join our tour. Turns out none of us can join the tour. They never called us and we couldn’t get through to them, so, oh well, we’ll do our thing. Oddly enough, Nick had forgotten about booking the tour so he had gotten us tickets to the Sagrada Familia that included a tour of the inside and admission to one of the towers! Funny how the Universe works! That’s the most important place to visit, to us at least!
Christine has read that Barcelona is the only entire city to win some prestigious award for its architecture!! The whole city!
Christine already has a Hop On, Hop Off pass, so we get three more and ride to the Park Guell, the second most important place on our list. This was supposed to be Gouda’s idea of a perfect community, designed, as were all his works, to reflect and integrate with Nature. Two show house were build but no one else bought a lot, so it never came to be. But there is still so much to see! Gaudi, himself, lived here for twenty years before moving into his studio at the Sagrada Familia so he could be closer to his work.
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| Christmas street decorations |
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| Gaudi's influence can be seen all over the city. |
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| Some things don't change, wherever you are! |
They have turned his house into the Gaudi Museum. He lived very simply and was a devote Catholic. The short video details his life and tragic death after being hit by a tram. Because he was not interested in dressing fashionably, when he was struck they thought he was a homeless person and took him to a charity hospital. The people at the Sagrada Familia noticed his absence and went searching for him; but he was very badly injured and died three days later.
Gaudi knew that his creation wouldn’t be finished before his death. When asked what the completion date would be, he said, “Don’t worry about it. My client doesn’t care how long it takes. God has all the time in the world!” The church is still not finished and is financed by contributions, so there is no fixed dated.
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| Lots of steps! |
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| Audi's house, now a museum |
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| He was a designer and an artist, as well as an architect. |
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| His bust was by Joan Matamala. |
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| These green parrots are all over the place! |
After exploring the grounds and sitting on the enormous curved bench, shaped like a wave, and checking out the “pile of rocks” , so named by the townspeople of the day, we find another HOHO bus and ride to the Sagrada Familia. Christine has gone off to do her own thing.
Our tickets are for 1:00 so we have time for a quick snack. There’s a little shop quite close, nestled between the KFC and Starbucks and Burger King, that has empanadas and other yummy looking pastries and Ginger and I split three of the empanadas and Nick has a pastry with a roll of ham inside. Our empanadas have onion (the best!), beef, and something else which might be cheese and a green vegetable.
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| Woohoo! We're here with time to spare! |
Time to check in for our tour. I just love the new technology that allows everyone to have a headset! It’s a little freaky when the girl giving out the equipment says it’s her first day! But she isn’t our guide! Our real tour guide is a lovely young woman with a charming accent and she knows the story behind every statue and figure. There are currently two facades, The Nativity and The Passion, with the third having been designed but not yet built. It’s pretty hard to describe the grandeur and creativity of the “Bible in Stone”. Every important Biblical personage and event can be found somewhere. And the tributes to Nature abound. The doors are covered in metal leaves and tiny insects crawling around everywhere.
Once inside it’s a total tribute to Nature. The soaring columns all resemble trees as they reach for the sky and have stylized leaves at the top. The the religious symbolism is there, too, but is not overwhelming so that you care moved regardless of your religious persuasion or lack of same! There will be four organs and the choir loft can hold six hundred singers. The stained glass windows represent the four seasons, so you have every color possible and the space is flooded with that magnificent light. When the tallest of the towers topped with Jesus, is completed it will be the tallest building in Barcelona and the tallest church in the world. Gaudi always said that eventually his church would be what Barcelona was famous for. Of course he was right.
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| This is the last facade; the windows are just drawings right now. |
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| Notice Gaudi's initials in gold. |
The Mary tower is topped with a three-dimensional star and is one of the featured images on t-shirts and such. And I was fascinated by the fact that Audi’s face is actually part of one of the facades. Also, in order to be sure that the next architect didn’t go off in another direction from Saudi’s original ideas, He built the first facade, rather than building horizontally! That left little option for his successor!
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| This is Gaudi's face! |
When our tour is over we are free to wander anywhere inside or out until our tower admission at 2:30. There is one one elevator up and that’s the only way to get to the top, so people queue up - but not before your appointed time for crowd control. It only holds seven people, so you can imagine! And the only way down is a narrow spiral staircase of three hundred steps! Some of it is quite dim (Thank goodness for phone flashlights!) with no handrails. But from the top you get a marvelous view of the city and an up-close look at some of the ornamentation, all covered it colored tiles of all hues. And each one is so different from the others!
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| The Mary Tower |
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| I'm sure it won't look like a Dalek when it's done! |
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| All 300 of them! |
Finally we are saturated with magnificence and find our way back to the bus. We have earbuds that connect to the recorded message and we can choose our language and control the volume, not like the good old days where you had to strain to hear the guide who rode with you.
We drive through most of the city learning how much Gaudi influenced its design and finally hop off at the Rambla, pedestrian shopping street with small roadways on either side, perfect for rambling! We find a little cafe that has the Chocolate con Burros that Nick said we shouldn’t miss! They are small, churros that you dunk in a cup of really thick hot chocolate. And when you’re finished munching, I think you need to drink the chocolate! Nick thinks I’m a little loony but finally gives it a try and thinks maybe I’m not! Ginger was with me from the get go!
Now it’s time to make our way back to the ship and it’s easier to take a taxi than find the shuttle bus. He delivers us right to the entrance to the port and we are sucked into the Duty-Free shop. Then it’s onto the ship to drop our goodies and find Christine at Spice up top. She introduces Ginger to a lemon-drop martini which I get to taste and find quite good. Ginger isn’t too impressed and thinks her next experiment will be a dirty martini. I have a boring old rum and Diet Coke with a lime. It’s time to lay off the calorie-laden Bushwhackers!!
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| More of Gaudi's influence! |
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| And yet again! When he died the entire city turned out for his funeral procession. |
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| Barcelona loves their football team. The complex houses other sports, too, and all the teams are referred to as Barça. |
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| So many motorcycles! |
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| Chocolate con Burros!! |
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| Tastes so much better than it looks! |
It’s pretty windy up here and even though we’ve all donned jackets, it still time to go inside. Down at the atrium we find the rest of our new friends from the tour yesterday and have a lovely chat and another round of drinks. Christine introduces me to a Caesar or Bloody Caesar, which is like a Bloody Mary but with Clamato juice. It’s really, really good! I get Nick to try it and at first he’s not impressed; but the second sip does the trick and he gets his own!
Christine had come back to the ship early and eaten around four o’clock. But it’s much later than that now and so she accompanies us back to Taste and just orders two of the appetizers. She has one while we our eating ours and then decides she needs to go to bed. She’s gone when the second one arrives, so we just share it amongst ourselves! They were both Vegetable Tempura Rice Rolls and quite good. I got the Seared Swordfish Carpaccio with looked lovely but had little flavor. For dinner I had the Hungarian Beef Goulash which was quite flavorful. And for dessert Nick and I planned to share the Milk Chocolate Mousse with lemon curd, port wine syrup and orange cookie crunch and the Dark Sweet Chery Clafoutis with mint strawberry syrup and French vanilla ice cream. (Couldn’t you just die from the names!) Ginger Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp with lemon sorbet which is one of her favorites, so we don’t expect her to share!
Our waiter is exhausted and not quite up to the excellent service we’ve received so far; but he’s a sweetie and we would never complain! Especially since he also brings us a Chocolate Raspberry Torte with mixed berry sauce that no one ordered! We actually leave most of the desserts and have about closed down the place. We get back up to our room just a bit before eleven!! Long Day!! But tomorrow is a sea day.. Hurray!! Nick’s going to join Christine’s trivia team at one and Ginger and I will cheer them on. And we’ve got show reservations tomorrow night!! But now it’s time to crash!!!
