The Juliens: Barcelona Day 2

On our second day in Barcelona, we got up with alarm clocks to be sure to be at La Sagrada Familia in time for our 9:15am ticket entry time.

The church is, I'm told repeatedly by my husband, *only* "a minor basilica." It's nothing short of incredible. It's still "under construction" (we saw lots of cranes and construction areas but no workers).

Because we were a bit early, we started by walking entirely around the church, starting at the nativity facade:

And eventually getting around to the passion facade.

It being a Gaudi creation, there are all kinds of views of spires and other carvings like this:

On the passion facade, we saw the alpha and omega over the door (one point), and we quickly spotted this magic square and verified that each row, column, and diagonal added up to 33, the age of Jesus when he died (three points... it involved math, after all):

This is a window/door back around at the entrance, in the nativity facade.

We found the cast of angel musicians on the nativity facade (two points for finding the one playing the harp and the one playing the violin):

That beautiful door again...

We found the two famous turtles outside. The one on the end of the church that is closer to the ocean has flippers, while the one at the other end has feet.

Finally... inside. I won't describe what we saw much because Tim's photos do a good job of showing the impressive plays of carvings and light.

The shade over the alter has grapes dangling from it (one point).

We did find the statue of Saint Jordi (this guy is EVERYWHERE) inside (two points). (That's not him, but that's the only statue that made it into Tim's pictures.)

The door on the passion facade has words carved in it; among these words, we found "Jesus" (two points). There was also another small magic square carved in the door (three points).

After touring the church, everyone was hungry. We happened on a fantastic patisserie just down the street from the church, bought some sweets (and a few savories), and stopped in a park in front of the church to eat them and play a bit.

From here, we headed to Parc Guell. It was no easy transit, involving a train, and then a relatively long walk (especially since the entrance to the park that we originally headed to was closed for construction). Inside the park was lovely, with nice views down the hill, some musicians (the girls earned points for finding street musicians too, as long as they could name the instrument... eventually a total of 3 points), and lots of green space. It was also a beautiful day.

We finally found our way to the main part of the park that houses various Gaudi creations, including the house in which he lived... only to find that it required a ticket that had to be bought at the other end of the park. By the time we found the ticket office (at about 1:45), we also found out that the next available entry time was 5pm. Shucks. I'd say this was pretty much the only disappointment in the trip. We couldn't wait that long to go in. Not with tired kids who hadn't eaten lunch. We did get some peeks of the area and some of Gaudi's creations.

For the scavenger hunt, the girls got one point for knowing the architect's name and two points for finding the Park Guell sign:

From here started the death march to lunch. We thought for sure that we would simply happen along a restaurant as we walked back towards the train station. We didn't. We saw this guy, though, whose costume was AWESOME (the kids were awed at how he made his coat stand up like that):

There was this headless guy (Cora kept reassuring everyone that it was just pretend that he didn't have a head):

And this guy (our visit with him was followed by a long discussion on how it was possible that he could just sit in mid air like that).

We found some lunch, finally, near the train station. It was a strange little place... world street food. We had some ceviche (GP labeled it weird), pulled pork sandwiches (they were good), and pulled chicken sandwiches (delicious). The kids had fried rice (it was actually quite good, but maybe a bit too strange for them). Just as we finished, the waitress came around and asked us to pay and leave; the cook had just sliced his hand open and she needed to take him to the hospital.

We left this part of town and headed to Parc de la Ciutadella, much nearer to the water. From exiting the metro station, we saw the Arc de Triomf (2 points), with bats (1 point), dragons (1 point), and the city's coat of arms (1 point).

We walked through the arch and down a nice avenue into the actual park. We found the Castell dels Tres Dragons (2 points) and found the three dragons on the edge of the fountain outside (1 point).

We then walked to a very large waterfall fountain (2 points) with more dragons (1 point).

We played for a bit on a little island in a nearby lake, then got some ice cream (and coffee) before wandering out of the park, back to the metro, and back to the apartment.