¡Barcelona Dos!

Here’s a shot inside this adorable bakery, Lolita, which we found on our first night (I meant to include this in the last post):

In order to not waste a second of our precious time in Barcelona, we headed out of the hostel, full and caffeinated from our free breakfast, at 8:15am. We were all very impressed with ourselves.

First was the Sagrada Familia. The line for this main attraction in Barcelona was unbelievably long but moved pretty fast. The Sagrada Familia is a huge cathedral that was designed by Antonio Gaudí, a proud architect from Cataluña. His designs were so specific and detailed that workers are constantly adding on his designs to the cathedral today, more than 80 years after his death. Ever since I went to the National Cathedral in D.C. when I was in 8^th grade, I’ve been fascinated by cathedrals. So when I went the Catedral deToledo a few summers ago, my interest was sparked once again (might have teared up). Since then I’ve been so lucky to visit Notre Dame, Chartres, and many other less-famous cathedrals here in the northern part of Spain. Although I’m always amazed as I walk into each, most of the cathedrals in Europe look pretty similar. But not the Sagrada Familia. Gaudí was an absolute genius. He spent most of his childhood in the country, surrounded by nature, and so many of his designs are influenced by tree roots, flowers, pods, leaves, branches, etc. It’s kind of hard to tell by just looking at the building because it’s so overwhelmingly detailed. Luckily there were little signs and models of how he developed his designs. I seriously could have spent ALL day in there! I took tons of pictures but I really don’t feel like they do Gaudí justice:

We had the option of taking an elevator to the top of the cathedral to get a better view of some of the designs as well as the city. It was only 3 euros more with our student discount (go UIMP!) so we had to! Worth every penny:

Next was more Gaudí up on the hill at Parque Guell. This huge park is filled with winding benches, mosaic lizards and houses, and tons of other things that we didn’t have time to see. Like I said, the place is huge. It would literally take you all day to see all of it and we were pretty exhausted from the heat by the time we left.

For some reason this stupid thing won't let me re-size some of the pictures so they're kinda tiny.

More to come!!!