Day 4 of Spanish Vacation: Barcelona on February 15th, 2017

After a Ryanair flight from Fes back to Barcelona, we took an Aerobus ride downtown and checked into our hotel. Leaving the chaotic Moroccan Medina’s behind, it felt so great back to civilization.

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So now it’s the morning of February 15th, as we took it easy and got up late (we never got up early in our three-day stay in Barcelona) to recover from last night’s flight. After breakfast at our hotel near University of Barcelona, we made Sagrada Família our first stop of the day, which was just a metro-ride away.

Sagrada Família

A monumental church devoted to the Holy Family, an unfinished architecture masterpiece by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, an emblem of the city of Barcelona.

We arrived at Sagrada Família a little bit earlier than the designated time on our e-ticket, so we took a tour of its surroundings first, and found its reflection from Plaça de Gaudí Pond pretty charming.

At first, I was somewhat skeptical about Sagrada Família, little good comes out of my procrastination. Well, it’s Spain, so things understandably don’t get built overnight. After all, who would labor and toil when he could just sit in the restful Southern Europe sun leaving life’s troubles behind? I was even giving it a laugh when the audio guide said Sagrada Família would be finished by 2026, the centenary of Gaudí’s death, “No way!”.
But when I approached Sagrada Família through Nativity Facade, my opinions changed. Not like any churches I’d seen before, on its exterior, it transcends the mundane emotionless European churches of spires and arches and triangles, as Antoni Gaudí managed to fit half the Gospel stories over the doorways of Nativity Facade. It’s like, when the rest of European churches were obsessed with geometry, Antoni Gaudí brought out literature to decorate Sagrada Família’s facade, and gosh it’s beautiful.

Inside Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí used branching columns to imitate trees of life. Emblems of the Twelve Apostles were placed on each of twelve major columns. Sunlight fell through stain glasses on both sides, leaving vivid paints on the columns and walls.
At the same time, the chants of Veni Sancte Spiritus was hanging over my head, just to make the experience perfect.

Then there’s the Passion Facade with sculptures showing scenes towards the end of Jesus’ human life. The sculptures were denser, more recognizable, and in Gaudí’s typical abstract style.

Tower Visit

After that, we sat in Sagrada Família for some time to wait for our designated tower visit time. My bad as when I brought the tickets online, I should arrange the tower visit first because its times were fixed. We chose the towers on Nativity Facade, because they were built when Gaudí was still alive.

Tower visit of Sagrada Família starts with an elevator ride up, and then it was fabulous views of the city of Barcelona (the nearby buildings presumably have height limits no to block views from Sagrada Família), followed a walk down Sagrada Família’s towers with its inner structures at hand.

Police Station Visit

After Sagrada Família, our original plan was to visit Casa Batlló, another Gaudí’s architecture achievement. So under Google Map’s advice, we took the metro purple line to Passeig de Gràcia Station.
Just as we’re exiting the station, I found the zippers on my friend’s backpack was open. Further look inside revealed that his wallet (luckily, not his passport) was stolen during our metro ride. So instead, we went to a police station under Plaça de Catalunya (quite interesting location) to report the incident.

At the police station, we waited for some time (typical Spanish) for an English-speaking translator to arrive so that we can get the official police report (for his insurance to reimburse his loss). While waiting, we used the chance to finish our (late) fast food lunch. To keep it short, it came from a nearby McDonald’s.

Park Güell

Having reported the theft we just encountered, we found it was too late in the day for us to visit Casa Batlló anymore, so we decided to visit Park Güell on the city’s Northern hills instead (at least the park didn’t have a closing time). When we departed Plaça de Catalunya, the sun was all shining brightly, and we thought, maybe we could catch some great sunset. (No, it would be too late to visit the ticketed part of Park Güell which was Gaudí’s estate.)

From Plaça de Catalunya there was multiple direct buses available to Park Güell.

More bad news from Park Güell, as I found my Sahara-sand-inundated camera ceased to operate completely. Before this, my gallant camera soldiered on despite having inaccurate exposures at daylight, which is sort of fine because my cell phone can very much take care of day-time photography. But at Park Güell, my camera just died, completely.

At Park Güell, we reached Turó de les Tres Creus (Hill of Three Crosses) which was the highest point of the park consisting of a pile of rock. There are currently three crosses on a hill of stone, called the ordeal. Two of them indicate the cardinal points (NSEW), and the other pointing to the sky. But this was not the intention of Gaudí, he wanted to build the chapel here in the city garden, but since they found some prehistoric remains, was inspired in caves to build this monument. (Translated by Google from www.parkguell.es/ca/guia-turo-las-tres-creus.) This was in my opinion an ideal place to watch sunset from the park, however, just after we left Plaça de Catalunya clouds began to gather over Barcelona skies, and it even began to drizzle. So goodbye sunset and hello freezing sea wind.

After our last glimpse of hope for sunset was blown away by the bitter sea wind, we decided to walk down the hill and exited the park.

Barcelona Harbor

After that, my friend suggested we visited Barcelona Harbor for the night. Not a bad idea since Barcelona was anyway a seaside city, and we hadn’t planned to visit its shores.

After that, it was basically random walk.

Finally, it was dinner time (8pm), as my friend suggested local seafood cuisine.

I was so amazed at myself that I didn’t throw up after eating all this seafood that I usually stayed clear of. Maybe it’s because the Burger King that followed which tranquillized my stomach?
END

Day 4 of Spanish Vacation: Barcelona on February 15th, 2017 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.