Barcelona, Spain, Thurs 09 Oct 08

We misheard the reception guy last night and managed to miss breakfast. So we found a little cafe for a much needed coffee and some food. Great coffee in Spain! We were heading to La Sagrada Familia for our first visit, the church that has been under construction for over 100 years. It was started by Barcelona's famous architect Gaudi in the late 1800s and was never finished. Now they're building it to his exact specs (so it's taking awhile).

I have to admit I was impressed. It was one of the most unique buildings I have ever seen. The outside has three major facades which are all very different from each other. I liked the Passion with it's bold sculptures. Out of the facades are cone towers, there will be 12 in total to represent the Apostles. There is symbolism and stories everywhere in the building and carvings and statues. You could spend hours trying to interpret it all.

The inside was just as beautiful. A lot of work was going on in the center clove where they were finishing the ceiling high pillars and stonework. The pillars are designed to look like trees which branch at the top and the stonework on the ceiling is carved to look like flowers and trees to feel like a forest canopy. Very beautiful. It was really interesting to watch the workers too, they must get so frustrated with all the people watching them but I guess they'd get used to it eventually.

There were two elevators up to the towers on each side, we picked the one with the smallest line. They were a bit cheeky and charged another 2.50 for the 30sec ride up. But I'm glad we did it because once up there you were let out into a maze of stairs circling through the towers. We had so much fun wondering around, finding new paths to take. You sometimes popped out onto ledges where you could look down onto the crowd and get mega vertigo because they jut out so far it's really freaky when looking down.

Coming down we ended up on an insane circular stairwell. It was designed so you could look down the centre and see all the way to the bottom (which is a long way!) and to me it seemed like the stairs were designed to look like a sea shell.

Down in the crypt they had all the miniture models and original drawings of the church so you could see what it was eventually going to look like. The church is going to be incredible when finished.

After leaving we took the Metro down to La Rambla, the main centre of Barcelona. We got out at Place Catalunya which was a large square at the top of La Rambla and was full of pigeons! Nick pretended to feed them so he could try and catch one but they were too smart for him... :)

We walked down the length of La Rambla to the pier, it's a very wide pedestrian street but it was packed. So many people, mainly tourists, wondering up and down it. Even on a Thursday it was hard to manoeuver through everyone. There were lots of street performers, including a very strange guy sitting on a toilet, I kid you not!

La Rambla was littered with stalls selling souvenirs, art and sadly animals (birds, rabbits etc). We found out later they just close the stall up like a box with the animals inside for the night, it just didn't seem right. We also found a cool fresh food market down a side alley which had the most fantastic selection of fresh fruits and seafood.

At the bottom you reach the wharf which is quite a fancy upmarket area with lots of walkways and restaurants. We were pretty hungry so we made the mistake of stopping into a tapas bar for a drink and nibbles. A jug of sangria, a selection of meats (think salami), some olive oil bread and 35euro later we were feeling pretty ripped off. We learned our lesson on that one.

It was starting to get pretty chilly with the wind off the water so we left the wharf and headed into the old Gothic Quarter. Wow what a cool area. Tiny narrow streets, wicked spanish style terraces and lots of tiny cafes and shops. We had a lot of fun wondering around the streets and just exploring. It was like a maze and at each junction we'd just pick an alleyway that looked interesting. Somehow we managed to come out where we started, we'd gone in a full circle and no idea how it happened.

We found a small bar off La Rambla for some more Sangria (I was loving the stuff!) and beer. It had a great view over La Rambla so made for fantastic people watching. We spent a lot of the night there, had dinner in the old quarter before heading back to the hostel for a night cap on the hostel terrace.