The Sagrada Familia and Las Ramblas

After a breakfast of fruit and pastries, we headed to the train station. That was an added bonus of having a lot of company early on in our European adventure -- we learned how to navigate the public transportation (not that the Linguist needed the lesson), but now the rest of us feel pretty at ease with how it all works after having done it so often over Christmas.

I knew ahead of time that the Sagrada Familia was designed by Gaudí and that the word "gaudy" was a result of his artwork. I tend to like things done more simply, so I didn't really expect to like what we saw there. Construction on the Sagrada Familia has been ongoing for nearly 100 years. The outside is pretty impressive...and, well, gaudy. What I didn't expect was what was inside. The first thing that caught my eye was the stained glass windows running from floor to ceiling -- not in one continuous piece, but in smaller windows. The glass is being completed according to Gaudí's design, and they've been working on it since 1999. Not all of the windows are done yet, but those that are are breathtaking -- usually running from top to bottom in rainbow order.

Close up of one window.

Another perspective on stained-glass windows

The other thing that's hard to miss are all of the pillars that are in the interior. They aren't uniform like those we've seen in Greek or Roman architecture, and the ceiling above them, while lovely, isn't particularly uniform either. On reading one of the informational pieces about the room, I learned that Gaudy designed it to feel like a forest and on taking a step back, I could see that the pillars were tree trunks and the designs on the ceiling above were in imitation of leaves. The impression is that of sitting in a huge forest of trees with light filtering in from all directions. It was breathtaking! And in my opinion, a brilliant design for a place of worship.

The "forest-like" ceiling

In another room outside the chapel, they had a display on Gaudy and his art. Like I said, I know very little about him, and I was interested to learn that he was sickly as a child and as a result, spent a lot of time on nature walks with his mother. His love for nature is reflected in all of his archicture -- from the bent line (picture a leaf blowing in the breeze...it goes from straight to bent and back again) to a spiral (snail shell) or even the shape of a seed. He must have been an absolute master of geometry the way he took two or three different geometric shapes and combined them to create intricate looking columns, or tweaked the straight edges traditionally used in architecture to make a bent edge. We also saw a display he created to understand reverse tension (picture an upside down arch). I was blown away by the whole thing and it made me think about art and architecture in a different way. I'm hoping we'll have a chance to see some of the other areas in Barcelona that he influenced.

Note the shape of the windows like honeycomb &  the lights like cut off tree branches

View of the back of the Sagrada Familia

After the Sagrada Familia, we were able to fulfill Pianogurl's fondest dream and eat at a KFC. She saw one in Germany in February and has been dreaming of it ever since. It was good, but a little disappointing in that they didn't serve macaroni and cheese and the taste of everything but the mashed potatoes was a little different than what we're used to in the U.S. The biggest complaint was no salt on the fries...

Following lunch we headed to Las Ramblas. It's basically a huge median that has shops and booths on both sides and hordes of people walking in the middle. The Linguist said there are usually entertainers along the route, too, but we didn't see any. Deep Thinker was positively dying to spend his money. It seems he doesn't feel like he's been somewhere until he's procured a keepsake. The first booth that really sucked the kids in was a pet shop. They had the cutest little bunnies -- one was even a lop, a bunch of hamsters and two sizes of turtles -- little and teeny tiny. After dragging the kids away from that, we did manage to spend our money on mosaic turtles -- much less messy! We also strolled through La Boqueria. It's a huge market like the one by Maria's house in Valencia, but about 4 times the size. It's mainly food, and of course the draw for our kids was the seafood displays because the food was still moving! Talk about fresh! The lobsters, crabs and shrimp were still wiggling around on the ice. The Net even found a live version of a long, skinny shell he found at the beach in Valencia. They told us it's called a "knife" because that's about what it looks like. The octopuses were oohed and awed at...although I still think the turkey head with the bulging eye takes the cake in this department!

The famous Ramblas of Barcelona

These are the "Navajas" (knives) kind of like long, skinny clams.
These were alive and measured about 6 inches long.

An historic cathedral in Barcelona near the Ramblas...it didn't all fit in the photo.
Note the Gothic architecture.

After we finally twisted our way through the plentiful seafood area, we came to the real treasure -- a table full of chocolate! The woman was so kind and gave us little bites of a whole bunch of different yummies. The kids picked out big coins of chocolate, filled with nuts or crispy rice. The Linguist. Pianogurl and I chose truffles, chocolate-covered sugared nuts, and fancy little candies that looked like miniature cupcakes. We took our treasure and made our way to the Cathedral, where we sat on the steps and ate chocolate while we listened to a violinist. He was pretty amazing and now all the kids want to play the violin. However, he seemed a little crabby and when people clapped he told them that thanks was money. Rosa took that to heart and carried several coins over to his open case. We opted not to go into the Cathedral since there was a 25-minute wait time and a cost of 42 euro for our family -- perhaps on another visit. I'm curious because it's Gothic architecture and so different from what we've seen in Italia.

Dinner was at a little place next to the metro station. The boys had pizza, Rosa had her signature -- spaghetti with parmesan. The rest of us had bocadillas (sandwiches). They were filled with tortilla, which in Spain is a dish made with potatoes, onions and eggs. Think omlet with a lot of diced potatoes cooked in with the egg and you'll have the right idea. The bread was rubbed with tomato on the inside, but other than that, had no other toppings. It was pretty tasty, but I'm not a huge fan of the hard bread Europeans seem to love. The only advantage I see to it is portion control! Dessert was churros, both plain and chocolate dipped, and miniature cups of what they call hot chocolate for dipping. It wasn't quite as thick as the Italian version, but was definitely closer to pudding in texture and melted semi-sweet chocolate in taste, than to anything I'd drink!

The Net enjoyed Churros and chocolate

I told The Linguist that I love being a tourist -- too bad we aren't independently wealthy so we can spend all of our time eating new foods and looking at and learning about new places and things. I tell myself that I'm sure it'd get old, right?