I had booked a private tour for the two of us because there were some places I wanted to stop at longer than others and things I really wanted Kory to see. I didn’t want to be at the mercy of a small group tour and having to keep to the schedule. We met our tour guide, Christian from Germany, at about 8:30 am. He had moved to Spain because that is where his wife is from. He was friendly and knowledgeable. Less of a crazy man than Renee in France.
The tour was an eight hour overview of the sights in Barcelona and it ended up focusing a lot on Gaudi (otherwise the options were seeing more monasteries.) We started the day from a viewpoint over the city on Mountjuic where Christian gave an overview and pointed out the different areas of the city, and how densely populated Barcelona is with 4.5 million people living in a small area.
From there, we saw lots of locations where the 1992 Olympics were held. Unlike other more recent cities where Olympic venues sit vacant after the games end, all the Olympic venues here are still in use. The Olymics were a major development engine and provided the motivation to lift many areas out of squalor. I also thought it was interesting that the main stadium had been built originally for the 1936 Olympics that never happened here, having gone instead to Hitler’s Germany. The Catalonian people wanted to have an alternate Olympics for all that weren’t invited to Germany, but this was when Franco came to power, and that idea was stomped out.
We passed by many other notable Barcelona sights… among them Camp Nou, the home of FC Barcelona, the futbol (soccer) team. It holds 110,000 people! Wow! We also saw Gaudi’s first architectural work, the Guell family “country” house. Everyone was saying Gaudi’s family came from poverty and was crazy, and why offer the money for him to design and build anything. The rich Guell family liked what they saw and gave him a chance at the same time he was commissioned to do Sagrada Familia.
As I am trying to fact check all this with Kory by the way, he says things only happened “long ago, really long ago and ancient,” so he doesn’t remember exact years. I think they said Gaudi was commissioned in 1893 for Sagrada Familia.
I hadn’t been for about 10 years to the Sagrada Familia area of Barcelona, and boy what a difference a decade makes. There is so much construction completed and they say it will be completely done in 2026, for the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death. The Nativity facade was the one Gaudi originally completed and I had seen that part before. The passion facade is new to me and was done by a Japanese artist and it is more stark and modern. There is one facade yet to be completed as well as many towers, including the tallest one, which will be 172.5 meters high, slightly shorter than the tallest mountain in the city, because nature will always come before man according to Gaudi.
Background information doesn’t give you a feeling of how special and unique the place is. Whereas Kory says he will remember foremost the enormity of St. Peter’s in the Vatican, I will remember the uniqueness of Sagrada Familia more. It is just such a stark contrast to all other church type places I’ve seen. All the sculptures and detail are on the outside. Once you get to the inside, it is like a forest, with the supports looking similar to tree trunks and the ceilings looking like the undersides of trees. The beautiful stained glass windows are blue and green hues in the east and reds and oranges in the west. It is just so beautiful inside. Simple, but beautiful.
From here we chose to go to another Gaudi project, la Padrera ("the quarry," because there was so much stone and dust.) It was a private project he did in the city center so it was starkly different than the “regular residences” around it. It had the usual nods to nature and an amazing rooftop that was influenced by the four forces of nature; earth, wind, water and fire. There were two arches on the rooftop that framed Sagrada Familia and the church on the top of the mountain out of town. Like everything, the arches served a purpose. What I really like about his projects are that they are like something out of Dr Seuss with no straight lines, but they are also very functional. There were internal ramps to the first underground parking garage as well as separate stairs to the private residence so the owners didn’t have to come in contact with the renters.
By now, it was about 1:30 and we went for lunch. Christian took us to a place he had never been before because his usual places were closed for Aug holiday, (like so many have been in Italy and Spain.) We didn’t catch the name of it, but the food was fantastic. For 15.50 Euro, you got a starter, entrée, dessert, beverage (Kory and I shared house wine… too much probably but it was so good.) I had ham and melon, and then Steak. Kory had Roquefort tortellini and his entrée was some kind of pounded fried chicken cordon blue. He had chocolate cake for dessert that was DELICIOUS (I’ll take his word for it, I didn’t have dessert.)
Last up was Parc Guell, which was a failed development that was intended to be a planned rural community for 60 homes and gardens. No one bought anything, so they converted it to a public park. It was interesting to see, but small. Here again Gaudi was before his time, planning three feet of sand as both a playground for the children as well as a natural filter for water because there was no practical way to get water up there at this time.
We also passed a few bullfighting rings, which is polarizing right now because Catalonia is not allowing bullfighting thought the Spanish government may force it as a Spanish cultural tradition. Also interesting that they speak their own language, more a dialect of French than Spanish. And though there have been efforts to secede, Christian and his wife believe they are going about it the wrong way.
After our eight hour tour, we got back on the ship, went to the thermal spa, and then to our dinner at Moderno Churrascaria. It is one of those restaurants where they keep bringing you meat, more meat, and even more meat. SOOOOOOO Good. I had seven different meats off the skewer. My favorite was bacon wrapped chicken, filet, and brown sugar pineapple. But all of it, including the pork, lamb, sausage and short ribs were good. Only thing I didn’t like was the signature sirloin… too chewy. We may have thought of staying out later before dinner, but we were exhausted after the big dinner and long day of touring so we went to bed at 9:30. All in all, an excellent Barcelona day!
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