There was a little bit of deja voo today when we started by going to see some of Gaudi's work, the difference was that today we were off to see the most famous (half) buil
ding in Barcelona -Sagrada Familia. Gaudi worked on this cathedral between 1883 and when he died in 1926... it's still being built today and the official website says it "could be finished some time in the first third of the 21st century". When you see the detail on every inch of it you understand as to why it is taking so long. It is being built entirely by donations, plus presumably the 11 euro admission price from many of the millions of visitors every year help as well! We decided not to go inside because apparently most of the interior is under scaffolding at the moment, we were just thankful that the majority of the scaffolding on the outside had been taken down a few weeks ago. The height and attention to detail is stunning, but you then have to realise that the main spire hasn't even been built yet! A truly incredible work of design,
art and engineering. Shona's cousin Callum has just returned to architecture school and we were definitely thinking of him and maybe one day he'll design something this amazing (although hopefully he'd be alive to see it completed!) As per normal we stop at pretty much every souvenir shop in the surrounding area, then make our way back into the Metro to head down to the Picasso Museum. A note about Barcelona, apparently it's a reasonably safe city from a violent crime point of view, however it's one of the least safe cities in the world when it comes to pickpocketing. We were told all the horror stories on the bus, then we heard a few more first hand from people over the last couple of days that had had things stolen or almost stolen. Getting onto or off the Metro is a prime time to be hit -so we were even more overly paranoid when doing that! We get to the museum to find that it's shut because it's a Monday, which isn't the end of the world because Mike really wasn't interested and Shona was only passingly interested in any event (you may have noticed by now that art galleries don't feature prominently in our travels!). We use the afternoon to suss out the post shop and get 6kgs of our scrap booking stuff sent home.... because that's right, we'll be doing various scrapbooks as well as this blog! Hopefully it got sent ok, the language barrier was pretty thick at the post shop and we won't know for a month or two if we got it onto the right ship! We then spent an hour or so on the beach... sorry Janine, Shona didn't feel brave enough to join the topless on this beach -so once again no pictures to post for you :op We were also pretty nervous about our bag, even though we took minimal stuff with us we weren't prepared to leave it on the beach while we swam. So we sadly had to take turns which kinda took some of the fun out of it. There were heaps of people offering a range of options on the beach from beer, coke and water to massages and tattoos. On the way home we went past the world's tallest Christopher Columbus statue, situated near where he supposedly
returned from America. We didn't realise when we first passed it on the way into the city that you can actually go UP this very skinny column... but it once again ticked the "climb something high in the city" box and also brought Mike's vertigo well and truly back into the fore. The views were pretty good, although it's a little bit of a squeeze to get around the viewing platform and back down the elevator! We make it back it the hostel in time to get a shower and make it to the Travel Bar to use our complimentary voucher (without which you have to pay 1 whole euro!) for a meal. You'd expect a 1 euro meal to be rubbish, but this flavoured rice and vegetable dish wasn't actually too bad and it achieved the goal of getting us in and buying a couple of drinks... which still made for a good value night! Back again to the hostel to do a small load of washing, although we get distracted with our 500 card game and talking to the others in the room and forget to get it back before the 11pm laundry locking! Doesn't turn out to be a big deal as the hostel staff are very helpful -but it does mean that after packing etc we aren't exactly in bed early before tomorrow...
ding in Barcelona -Sagrada Familia. Gaudi worked on this cathedral between 1883 and when he died in 1926... it's still being built today and the official website says it "could be finished some time in the first third of the 21st century". When you see the detail on every inch of it you understand as to why it is taking so long. It is being built entirely by donations, plus presumably the 11 euro admission price from many of the millions of visitors every year help as well! We decided not to go inside because apparently most of the interior is under scaffolding at the moment, we were just thankful that the majority of the scaffolding on the outside had been taken down a few weeks ago. The height and attention to detail is stunning, but you then have to realise that the main spire hasn't even been built yet! A truly incredible work of design, 
art and engineering. Shona's cousin Callum has just returned to architecture school and we were definitely thinking of him and maybe one day he'll design something this amazing (although hopefully he'd be alive to see it completed!) As per normal we stop at pretty much every souvenir shop in the surrounding area, then make our way back into the Metro to head down to the Picasso Museum. A note about Barcelona, apparently it's a reasonably safe city from a violent crime point of view, however it's one of the least safe cities in the world when it comes to pickpocketing. We were told all the horror stories on the bus, then we heard a few more first hand from people over the last couple of days that had had things stolen or almost stolen. Getting onto or off the Metro is a prime time to be hit -so we were even more overly paranoid when doing that! We get to the museum to find that it's shut because it's a Monday, which isn't the end of the world because Mike really wasn't interested and Shona was only passingly interested in any event (you may have noticed by now that art galleries don't feature prominently in our travels!). We use the afternoon to suss out the post shop and get 6kgs of our scrap booking stuff sent home.... because that's right, we'll be doing various scrapbooks as well as this blog! Hopefully it got sent ok, the language barrier was pretty thick at the post shop and we won't know for a month or two if we got it onto the right ship! We then spent an hour or so on the beach... sorry Janine, Shona didn't feel brave enough to join the topless on this beach -so once again no pictures to post for you :op We were also pretty nervous about our bag, even though we took minimal stuff with us we weren't prepared to leave it on the beach while we swam. So we sadly had to take turns which kinda took some of the fun out of it. There were heaps of people offering a range of options on the beach from beer, coke and water to massages and tattoos. On the way home we went past the world's tallest Christopher Columbus statue, situated near where he supposedly 
returned from America. We didn't realise when we first passed it on the way into the city that you can actually go UP this very skinny column... but it once again ticked the "climb something high in the city" box and also brought Mike's vertigo well and truly back into the fore. The views were pretty good, although it's a little bit of a squeeze to get around the viewing platform and back down the elevator! We make it back it the hostel in time to get a shower and make it to the Travel Bar to use our complimentary voucher (without which you have to pay 1 whole euro!) for a meal. You'd expect a 1 euro meal to be rubbish, but this flavoured rice and vegetable dish wasn't actually too bad and it achieved the goal of getting us in and buying a couple of drinks... which still made for a good value night! Back again to the hostel to do a small load of washing, although we get distracted with our 500 card game and talking to the others in the room and forget to get it back before the 11pm laundry locking! Doesn't turn out to be a big deal as the hostel staff are very helpful -but it does mean that after packing etc we aren't exactly in bed early before tomorrow...
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Glad you are having a good look around Barcelona - though I remember the smell of some of those back alleys! Somewhere less smelly next?
ReplyDeleteGlad to see you are going to scrapbook your trip. I also bought heaps of scrapbooking gear while in the states but alas have only done 6 pages so far. We will have to compare scrapbooks in the future.
ReplyDeleteFun day!
ReplyDelete