Let's Travel Europe: Gaudi in Barcelona

Tuesday 8th April – an early start to the day as we decided to go into Barcelona to check out the Gaudi architecture. Barcelona is 140k away, about 1hr 45 mins via the tunnel and motorway. It was a good road with 120k for the best part of the trip.

A very striking mountain range on the drive to Barcelona

We were in Barcelona by 9 but then had a bit of mucking around to finally park the car and head to La Segrada Familia – the Gaudi designed basilica. We stood in the ticket queue for 1 ½ hrs, McDonalds for breakfast as we queued. (We need to get smarter when we got to Rome for example, and book day tours where they worry about the transport and tickets!) It is just amazing how many visitors there are in the city and not even at peak season. We heard quite a few English accents but seemed to be mostly European.

It was worth the wait. You just cannot describe how magnificent this place is. It really has to be seen to be believed. Hopefully the photos will give a small taste. Apparently it is the most visited church in the world. They let through about 2500 people per hour.

Next up was the Parc Gruell – gardens with Gaudi houses and lots of Gaudi features. Again the photos will hopefully give some idea.

In Barcelona we made use of the metro to get around. It is so easy to use and the trains appear to be every 2 to 3 minutes. I don’t think we waited longer than 2 minutes and once we let a train go without us because we were still deciding where to go next. But we did a lot of steps yesterday – not Roman steps, but Spanish steps which are at least consistent.

We also visited the food market in Barcelona. Beautiful fresh fruit – king size strawberries, baklava (for supper), lots of people and most appeared to be tourists. The street outside the market (La Rambla) was crawling with people and this was around 6 in the evening. We wandered this street for a bit and had dinner near the market (asian noodles).