Easter in Barcelona

Sunday was another rainy and cloudy morning. Since it was Easter we weren't sure what would be open, if anything. But we caught the train to Parc Guell anyway hoping for the best. And it was open! I was pretty excited because that was one of the places I really wanted to go to in Barcelona. Downside: some of it was ... guess! Under construction. Ugh. But, what we did get to see was still really cool. The park was on top of a really BIG hill, so high that there were outdoor escalators leading up to to, after a ten minute incline you had to walk up.

It had another amazing view of the city. The park is a little hard to describe, but the architecture of it is just very funky. It was designed by Gaudi and much of it is made with ceramic in a mosaic style. It's very colorful and fun -- I just wish it had been sunny. We walked around that as much as we could, but the upper half all seemed to be fenced off, so less time was spent there than we thought.

After that we headed back into the city and down to the beach. It began to rain steadily as we got to the beach and the wind was blowing pretty hard. After seeing the beaches of Portugal, Barcelona's was nothing too impressive. But we got lunch outside under big orange umbrellas right by the sand, which was nice. We just wandered around that area for a bit after lunch and then got churros con chocolate. They were amazing!! It's churros, basically pastry with sugar on top, and then a cup of a hot chocolate like substance only much thicker. We dipped the churros in the chocolate and when those were done we drank the rest. So good.

That night we went to check out the biggest church in Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia. It has been under construction since 1882 and isn't even close to being finished. It's actually one of the most visited buildings that isn't yet completed. Gaudi worked on it for 15 years until his death and then a lot of it was destroyed during the Spanish War. It's expected to be completed by 2026. It's really spectacular looking! Gaudi was amazingly inventive. We got to go inside and see the construction site and the interior of the building that has been completed so far. After wandering around inside we went to mass there!! A lot of people have asked me if the service was huge, but it wasn't at all. The main part of the cathedral is still under construction so just a small part on the side is closed off for service. There was a small makeshift alter and a few benches set up for pews. There's no heating installed in the cathedral yet so there were heat lamps set up around the pews and a piano off to the side. But the service was really, really nice. It was all in Barcelona's language -- Catalan. I didn't understand a word of the service, but got the gist of what was going on. The congregation for the mass seemed mixed, from Americans to Barcelonians and citizens from other parts of Spain. In the end they had people from different countries come up and say Happy Easter in their native tongue.

After that we just grabbed a quick dinner on the way to the metro and headed back to the hostel to get to bed early because we had to get up early to catch more trains, planes and automobiles back to Ireland.