Barcelona, continued…

Day two here in the heart of Catalonia began with a subway ride to the Sagrada Familia. There we were able to take advantage of a serendipitous set of circumstances…

It turns out that the same ‘plugin’ I installed to allow me to finally post the bird call audio file yesterday, also enabled ‘push’ notifications, so that I’m alerted whenever someone posts a comment.

The serendipitous part is that it allowed me to see a comment first thing this morning that Mary left last night, saying that we could skip the lines at the Sagrada if we sprung for the guided tour! What a huge bonus it was, as the line was more than two blocks long when we got there, not to mention that the tour was the perfect way to learn very much more about the that mind-boggling structure! The guide wears a mic, and we all wear a receiver and headphones. It was perfect, so thanks Mary; yours and Fred’s tips have really made this trip so much better than it might have been without them!

What about the cathedral, I hear you ask. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re in for a(nother) treat; if you have, well you’re gonna just have to endure more photos of it!

I can’t even begin to go into all the various details about how grand a project it is, as it’s late and we’ve just had another splendid meal, so I’m going to cheat and send you to their website, then follow that up with my usual dose of photos:

Just outside the main doors, they’ve very helpfully placed that model. The parts in darker brown are completed, and the white parts are yet to be built. Still, their goal is to complete the structure by 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death.

Here is an assortment of views, inside and out, of his masterpiece…

After our morning there, we realized that we’re starting to feel the toll that all this urban sightseeing is taking on us. It’s funny, but it seems so much more exhausting (for us anyway), than a six-day bike tour!

Anyway, we decided to start taking the Metro more (which is included in the tourist card we each bought), so we subwayed across town to see the Joan Miró museum.

It was a real treat to see such a concentrated dose of his work, and even though it seemed to be overrun by German high school students, we really enjoyed it. The museum doesn’t allow photos of course, but I did get this nice shot of the city from the roof of the museum (and there’s a Miró sculpture hidden in the shadows in the middle of the photo as well):

If it’s not already apparent, today was overcast, and we did get rained on a few times in the afternoon, but nothing serious.

From the Miró museum, we headed back across town to see the Palau Música Catalana, another amazing Modernisme building near the old town center. Unfortunately, it was already sold out for the day, so we bought tickets for tomorrow. I did grab a shot of the outside before we headed to Las Ramblas…

We spent an hour or so wandering that very crowded and touristy section of town, as well as the very colorful food mercado, before heading back to our hotel’s neighborhood for dinner. We both decided the more tourist-oriented the area, the less interested we were. Big surprise, eh? Here’s a nice shot of that area anyway, including some evening light as a shower was letting up:

I think I already mentioned our dinner, but it was really a memorable one, and the restaurant just happened to be directly across the street for our hotel. It’s called Igueldo, and serves Basque food. We had a couple of nice seafood plates, some grilled mushrooms, and an artichoke and duck’s liver dish that’s a specialty of the house. Amazing.

At last check, tomorrow is going to be rainy. We’re going to play it by ear, but there are still quite a few things on our must-see list. Stay tuned!