Day 50 – 28 August 2023 – Barcelona, Spain

A lazy late start this morning, our wake-up call was at 8.30 am & on the bus at 10 am for the drive into the centre of Barcelona & la Sagrada Familia, designed by Antoni Gaudi the famed Spanish architect. The Sagrada Familia was commenced in 1882 & has been under construction ever since, it is still unfinished. This church is now a Basilica after being consecrated by the Pope. The building of it is not funded by the government or the Vatican, but by the people, the congregation is getting less but the tourists are getting to be more & more so the tourists are the people funding it. It is an absolutely amazing building & the architecture is way before its time. This building is visually stunning from the outside. Our local guide explains to us the details regarding the stage the church is at & what it needs to be completed.

There are thousands of people outside waiting to go in, we have our tickets & entrance time already booked so we are first in the line. We move in through the security, as thorough as most airports, then stand on the portico of the side entrance. The attention to detail is amazing. Our guide now shows us a model of the church, with the completed parts in grey & the uncompleted parts in beige. There is still a lot to finish. Given that it has taken 130 years to get this far, who knows when it will be completed. Next she explains all the nuances of the statues, the order they are in & the importance of them in the story of Jesus, all very interesting. The doors are covered in ivy leaves with beetles & spiders amongst the leaves.

Inside is another level again, it is a sensory overload. The vaulted ceilings & the support structures are stunning, we stand there open-mouthed in awe trying to take it all in. Then we look at the walls, the stained glass windows on either side are an explosion of colour, they are extraordinary. Each way we look we see another part of the building we are amazed at. Our local guide does a fabulous job of explaining the inside structure as well & the meaning of the different symbols & the reasons why some parts are the way they are. The altar piece looks unlike any we have seen in any church previously, it looks a little like a large parachute.

We walk out the side exit, the main entrance has not been built yet, the sculptures on this side of the church are different again, in a different style of shaping. The body & features are all very angular with the sculptures depicting the death of Jesus. We again marvel at the architecture of Gaudi, with his site office plus a school he built on this side of the church.

At the front of the church there is some controversy as some old apartment buildings are to be demolished so that the front can be extended for 200 metres. Some of the apartment owners want to stay in the building they are living in.

The church tour over we are back in the bus & have a look at some other buildings in Barcelona that Gaudi designed. These buildings are amazing pieces of architecture as well, he was an extremely talented man.

We get dropped off by the bus at the main square in Barcelona & walk down the La Rambla promenade to the harbour area. There are thousands of people crowding the street going in all directions. As we get closer to the harbour they start to lessen in numbers & when we turn to the Maritime Museum there is hardly anyone. The Maritime Museum is in part of an old shipbuilding yard that was building ships in the 1300s. A 1563 drawing of the city shows theses large stone buildings next to the city walls. The museum is nearly empty, we have it nearly all to ourselves.

The centrepiece of the museum is a replica of the King’s Galley that was built in these shipyards in the 1500s. It is a huge boat, 60 metres longs & over 6 metres wide with space for 236 men (slaves mainly) to row with 5 men to each oar, plus room for soldiers & sailors. There is a good layout in the museum with a good spread of maritime history with all explanations in English as well. We enjoyed all of the displays.

Afterwards we walked down to the boat harbour, saw where the America’s Cup boats are training from for the competition next year & marvelled at the sheer quantity of sailing boats at dock in the harbour. We walked over a large footbridge that is under repair, the underlying support timbers are rotting & are being replaced. The bridge splits open to allow sailboats to pass through into the docks & we watched as the pedestrians hurried to cross & the bridge was swung open. It did not take long for the bridge to open fully, then closed just as quickly afterwards after the sailing boat went through.

We walked to the Basilica de la Merce nearby through a narrow alleyway to get to the large square in front of the church. The church was temporarily closed so we sat in the shade for a while & rested our legs. The walk back to a taxi rank was not far, it was just next to the large column built in 1888 called Mirador de Colum, which is a tribute to Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, the sea captain attributed with discovering the Americas.

A taxi dropped us back at the hotel at 5 pm & we had time for a shower, as the walk was fairly hot & tiring, a little rest, then off on our bus for the farewell dinner. The dinner is at Dolca Herminia, a restaurant in downtown Barcelona & we have a delicious 3 course dinner, again too much to eat, washed down with a sangria for Tereza & a red wine for me. We had a great time chatting with our fellow travelers before it was 10 pm & back to the hotel. Inside the bus it was merry, loud music, singing & the bus driver flashed the inside lights to the tune.  At the hotel we had a farewell photo with the group & saying our good byes.  Thanks to Sonia our tour leader we all became a close knit group. Another 8.5 kilometres of walking & another very good day.