Tired of Beautiful Barcelona Vistas / Another Gaudi Day

Let me just start out this blog by saying what I wanted to say our first Barcelona day ... you know what the official language is here, right?  Not Spanish!  Yes, Barcelona is in Spain, but the official language is Catalan, a regional language that looks to me to be a mixture of Spanish and French. 

All signage is in Catalan first.  If there is a second listing, it's in Spanish.  Third listings are usually in English.  I'm not having any problems being understood, but I am having occasional problems understanding Catalan when it's spoken to me, and I can't figure out all the signage either.  I can give it a good guess, but I'm never really sure.

Yesterday took us to La Sagrada Familia, the most famous of Antoni Gaudi's work - as yet unfinished.  Gaudi was hit by a tram and died in 1926, and the monument/church never got finished.  The 1930's brought the Civil War, and part of the work was destroyed.  They estimate La Sagrada is now a little more than 50% finished, and are planning to complete the church by 2026, the anniversary of Gaudi's death.

Rachel and I bought tickets to go up the elevatore in one of the several spires.  After you get off, there are more stairs - round and round - until you get to a tiny lookout deck near the top of the spire.  Then you cross a tiny little outdoor bridge to an adjacent spire, where you get to descend the steps about 10 stories by my estimate - round and round - with lookouts at various points.  Thank goodness Rachel has no fear of heights and she got all the good photos.  For my 3 Euro to go up there, I simply won the opportunity to clutch the walls as firmly as I could as I descended in circles to the bottom.

We also took in a bit of Old Town, so easy to get lost in but who cares?  It's an absolute delight around every corner.  We found plazas, churches, more churches, statues, stores, the Picasso museum - so much to do there.  We had dinner at Las Caracoles - mussels, Iberian ham, and seafood paella.  Delicious!

When we're out late at night we've been taking cabs home, and last night's cab decided to give us tourists a ride.  When he turned right instead of left we protested loudly - he was caught.

Today, we slept late and didn't hit the pavement until 2 p.m.  After caffeine, we figured out how to take the funicular up to Montjuic Park.  Then we took a tram all the way to the top - you can see Barcelona from so many vantage points up there.  Between all the photos today and from Parc Guell, we've decided we need ascend no more mountains or hills to have a look at the city from above - been there done that - for now.

We went to the Joan Miro museum; this Montjuic Park crown jewel is filled with hundreds of this artist's works, and it's so easy to see his evolution as an artist in room after beautiful room.

Tomorrow we plan to go back up to Montjuic to hit the National Palace which now houses the largest collection of Catalan art. 

Best to all of you,
W.