On our last day and a quiet Easter Sunday in Barcelona, we first visited Barcelonas most emblematic symbol and Gaudis best-known work that was neither begun nor finished by the great man Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia. This church is still under construction for over 100 years already, and it is still going. Gaudi estimated 200 years to finish the project, but with todays technology, officials from the churchs foundation now venture that it all could be completed by 2015 total of 133 years of construction, if it is on schedule. The church has already scheduled their first mass on St. Josephs day (19 March) in 2007. It will be an exciting event.
We began the tour on the ground level seeing the construction, admiring some of the completion work, and reading some brief articles talked about certain design elements of the church. Then we took an elevator up to the middle of the bell tower, then walked to the top to have an over view of the site, and had a closer look of some details at the top. We then used the stair and get back to the ground level and to the basement, where they had more details and information about the building in drawings and models. There was a section talked about how nature inspired Gaudis work. Structural design for all the curves and arches that we saw in the church were explained. Gaudi is a genius - a man with a mind beyond his time.
With all the stores were closed on the Easter Sunday, we were surprised some tourist sites would be flooded with people. Temple Expiatoori de la Sagrada Familia was actually alright wasnt too crowded. It was maybe we were there early and missed the later crowds. When we got to our last sightseeing place, Park Guell another famous design by Gaudi, the front part of the park was flooded with people. We felt that most tourists decided to visit the park at the same day. The first thing we visited in the park was one of the two gingerbread houses at the front. It is a gift shop, and had a small area displayed a park model that marked all the sightseeing points. The gift shop is very small, and it was too crowded. Kevin found it was too many people for him, so we quickly finished the gift shop and walked through the front part of the park through all the people. The park was very big, and had a nice view seeing the city. In the centre of the park, there were many seating areas and few bridge structures. They were a lot more subtle by using large pebble brown rocks as the only material for all structure. They were well blend with the nature. Comparing to the front part of the park, where it was mainly white and colourful mosaic tiles for accent and patterns, it gave me a grand welcoming at the front to the park. In the park, there were few musicians played different instruments in varies part. They were all very good, which made my visit to the park a lot more enjoyable. We worked our way back to the front entrance to take few pictures of the citys most enduring symbols mosaic lizard fountain, before we finished our final sightseeing location.
Before headed back to our hotel for the airport, Kevin insisted to have the last taste of hot chocolate and ice-cream at Farggi. After the delicious desserts, we got attracted to a bakery and café store at another hotel on Avda Diagonal on our way back to the hotel. They had some hors d’ouevres on the shelves that we could help ourselves and check out at the bar. We had tried many different ones, but my two favourites were the crab meat salad, and caviar.
We purposely gave ourselves some time to shop at the duty free shops in the airport, since all other stores in the city were closed. Shopping in Barcelona airport was great! There were many different stores, especially for the wearable items. The best part was most stores there were affordable. The most affordable one was Zara, and we were there for most of the time. They either didnt have the clothes or size that we tried on in the other store, but we managed to find something else. I was very happy that I found the man watch that I was looking at few months ago in London. Kevin and I are both taking turns wearing it.
In general, Barcelona is a very beautiful city. The city streets or grids were very wide to accommodate the load of traffic for both cars and pedestrians, and amazingly the city plan was designed and built almost 200 years ago. Gaudi had such big influence in the city. Many buildings to street lamps to floor tiles on Passeig de Gracia were designed by him. Majority of the buildings in the city central were well preserved in good condition. Kevin and I considered visiting the city again when the Gaudis church is completed. It will be some good time before it will happen.
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