Monday was our last full day in Barcelona, and the entire day was focused solely on seeing La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. I can think of two places in the world picture of which completely awed me and that I figured I would never get to see in person. I toured Angkor Wat in 2011, but I had first seen in a book that I pulled down from the shelf in my mom and dad’s living-room closet. I saw Sagrada Familia for the first time in 1992 during the Barcelona Olypmics. I remember long shots of the city from high up—probably from one of the hills that Barcelona floods around—with this unearthly, fantastical, enormous building towering over everything around it and thinking, “What is that!?”
About 20 years ago, acquaintances of Mark who knew I was fascinated by the basilica picked up a booklet about it for me while they were in Barcelona. I still have that booklet, but now I have my own memories and pictures. It’s more unearthly up close even than it was in those long shots on NBC. I’m happy to share some of them with you, and I find it comforting to thing that if I ever develop dimentia, these pictures will be a reminder to me that I did finally make it there.
The first group here is outside the basilica.
The details above are part of the Nativity Façade, which is what you see in the darker (i.e., older) stonework in the first image.
Jesus is publicly flogged.
Peter, remorseful after denying Jesus three times.
Judas’s kiss of betrayal. Note the devil in the form of a snake. That block of numbers is Gaudí’s magic square. Almost every combination of four contiguous numbers adds up to 33—the age of Jesus’s crucifixion.
Even though the images are morbid and depressing, I have to say that I found the sculptural style breathtaking. Many more sculptures in this style adorn this Passion Façade.
One of two pairs of highly allegorical bronze doors.
This is one half of one of another pair of bronze doors, these ones covering in text. (As a typesetter, I couldn’t resist.)
These are inside the basilica.
A close up of one of the allegorical doors.
An enormous bronze plaque with the Lord’s Prayer in many (49?) languages. The English is in this picture (see if you can find it), but there’s also Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and many that I didn’t immediately recognize.
I saved the following image for last. It’s my favorite feature. All of the color you see is just natural light streaming though the stained glass windows and hitting the nearly white stone. It was awe inspiring to see in person.
The shots below are taken inside the towers. We were able to take an elevator probably half or three-quarters of the way up one tower then cross a bridge into another tower and walk back down. The guide told us there are four hundred steps down. I counted 299, but given my propensity to miscount and my frequent stops to take pictures, I suspect he was right.
In the model below, the areas in white are yet to be completed. The plan is to be finished by 2026—the 100th anniversary of Gaudí’s death. However, that seems pretty unlikely, mainly because extending out from the white façade on the left of the model is a planned pedestrian bridge/plaza over and extending beyond the adjacent street. Unfortunately, an apartment block sits on that space, and the residents are fighting to save their homes. I can’t say I disagree with their fight, but I hope some compromise can be found and that the residents can willingly and happily be relocated to new homes.
After all that, our day sounds kind of anti-climactic, but it was good to have the time to process what we’d just seen. We really just walked around the city a little more, soaked our tired feet in the (very cold) rooftop pool, ate dinner in the hotel bar, and turned in before our trip home.
We got up early on Tuesday and taxi’d to the airport, where I discovered that the only Starbucks was just outside the international concourse. I could see it! I could have thrown a stone and hit it! But I couldn’t get to it without leaving the concourse, and getting in was a nightmare the first time. It wasn’t worth a second try, so I just sulked.
I watched a couple movies on the plane. (Moulin Rouge surprised me by being excellent.) I got confused where I was when we landed in Philadelphia (jet lag), then arrived at our condo at 11 p.m. Twenty one hours of travel, and back to work the next day.
But what a trip!
“. . . and back to work the next day.”
Ugh. Didn’t quite plan that one out well!