Fri, 24 Oct 2003

author Liz	location Paris, France
posted 20:00 CET 31/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Espana ( all photos )

Parc Güell, La Sagrada Familia ( 72 photos )
On Friday I woke up feeling much better than I had been feeling for the last few days, so we both enjoyed our breakfast's before heading outside to explore more of Barcelona.
Our first stop was at an internet café to check our emails, and then we caught the Metro and travelled across the city.
From where we got off the Metro, we climbed steeply uphill, making use of a few escalators that were in the centre of the road going up. At the top of the hill, we entered Parc Güell, a huge and beautiful park that was designed by Gaudi, the same man who built and designed a lot of La Sagrada Familia.
From the park we had excellent views out over Barcelona, with the sea in the distance and the sun shining brilliantly over everything. We spent quite a while enjoying the view and had a nice walk around the top of the park, before heading downwards.
Further down through the park, we saw the main areas of Gaudi's influence - his own beautiful house, the water fountains and seating areas all decorated with colourful broken tiles, the two 'gingerbread' houses, which I particularly liked, and the very famous 'Drac', a mosaic covered dragon.
We explored all around before exiting out through the bottom end of Parc Güell.
From there we took a long walk to La Sagrada Familia which took quite a while, but at least it got us off the busy tourist trail for a while. We stopped along the way for a snack from a bakery, and enjoyed looking around a different section of Barcelona's many streets.
After a while, we reached La Sagrada Familia, only we were at the other end of the church to the end we had seen the night before. But first, here is a bit of information about La Sagrada Familia...
La Sagrada Familia is a church that construction started on in 1882, and today, in 2003, it is still not even half-way to being finished. Gaudi had a lot to do with it's design, and he also did most of the work on one end, the Nativity Facade, the end of the church that we had seen on Thursday night. Unfortunately, Gaudi was run over by a tram in 1926, and died a few days later, for a long time construction slowed down or stopped altogether, partly because nobody knew just how Gaudi had planned how to build such a huge and complex building, let alone keep it upright for years and years. Now, they have a tentative finishing date of sometime in the 2020's, but a lot of people feel that the church should be left as it is, as a tribute to Gaudi.
So, Tim and I now stood at the Passion Facade, built long after Gaudi's death, sometime in the 1950's. It is instantly different to Gaudi's end of the church, and I have never seen such contrasting sections of the same church.
The Passion Facade still had biblical scenes, as does the Nativity Facade by Gaudi, but the stone carvings have very straight, severe lines, and it looks very modern, and hardly like a church at all. In comparison, Gaudi's Facade is full of flowing lines, soft curves and a lot more detail. Gaudi's Facade even has a tree carved high up, and the tree is covered in doves to symbolise peace. It's hard to explain....you'll just have to go and see it yourself!
Tim and I bought tickets to go inside, but before we went in, we stood and stared at the newer Passion Facade for quite a while. Then we went into the church.
It is quite strange to follow to line of a pillar, up and up and up, and then it just ends, with no roof, just a patch of blue sky. And only two or three windows, of the ones that have been built, have stained glass in them. There is scaffolding everywhere, and even some drink dispensing machines, which we thought was wrong. It is a church, after all.
You can walk around a little way inside the church, but there is scaffolding or machinery in most places, so once you see a bit of the inside, you pop out at the other end, underneath the Nativity Facade by Gaudi.
Here, Tim and I sat and stared and stared at all the detail. I could go on and on about this facade, because it really is quite amazing, but once again, you'll just have to go and see for yourself :)
Next, we climbed up into one of the incredibly tall towers, nearly to the top, crossed a bridge, and then wound our way down again. We went really high up, so we had great views looking down into the church and also out over Barcelona. We were so high up that I felt dizzy, especially after winding up and down all the stairs! Being up so high gave us a chance to see a lot of Gaudi's work up close, which was fantastic.
Back down on the ground, we had a bit of a rest while still admiring the church, before finding the nearest Metro station and catching the Metro to a station near our hostel.
We spent a while back at the hostel, relaxing and catching up on our journals, before cooking pasta and sauce for dinner.
Once we had eaten and done our washing up, we headed back outside and walked from Barri Gótic up to the Musical Fountain, which sits just below Palau Nacional where we had walked up to the day before. Here, they put on a show similar to, but nowhere near as good as, the Magical Fountain on Sentosa, Singapore. It had lights and music, but the views out over Barcelona were better than the fountain.
We met up with Marty and Katherine there, and after Tim and I had taken a few photos, the four of us headed off on a tapas and bar hopping spree.
We went to three or four different pubs, and at most of them had a plate or two of tapas (olives or potatoes bravis or calamari) and a drink. It was lots of fun, and the last bar we went to was the Wax Museum bar where we had been once before, with all the wax trees and so on, before heading back to our hostel.

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