Today, we were thankful for finally getting a good night’s sleep. We both were worried we would wake up way too early after having retired last night about 9:15 PM. I woke up about 4:00 AM, thinking my watch said 5:00 AM, but knowing it was way too early, I went back to sleep. I was surprised we both slept in until about 7:45 AM, and were thankful for the additional quality sleep.
I went ahead and got up and made some coffee, which was really making boiling water and then adding it to some instant coffee granules in a cup. It was not bad, and it was the best I would get here in the room. I started working on the blog while Stephanie rested. I hate to get too far behind, especially early on when we are tired and things we do and the days seem to just blend together.
I was able to get the “Travel to Barcelona” post completed and then started on the post for the first day in Barcelona. After a while, Stephanie was also up and we decided we needed to get motivated to go out and see some of the sights. Since it was a nice sunny day, we wanted to go to the Sagrada Familia Basilica, and if the sunny weather held out, Parc Güell after that.
We tried to purchase tickets online for the Sagrada Familia entry, but for some reason, we kept getting errors when we went to pay for the tickets. I tried it on two different browsers on my laptop, and Stephanie and I both tried it on our cell phones using the Sagrada Familia App. Nothing worked. We thought maybe the website was being overwhelmed by people trying to purchase tickets online since today is a holiday in Barcelona. After about 45 minutes of pure frustration, we decided to just go over to Sagrada Familia and see if the lines were tolerable to purchase tickets in person.
La Sagrada Familia
We got ready and headed out to take the Metro to the Sagrada Familia. It was an easy Metro ride. We walked to the Placa Universität Metro Station near the hotel and caught the L2 Metro to the stop at the Sagrada Familia. This was the first time we used our 96 Hour travel passes we had purchased and everything worked great.
The Metro Station is right at the Familia Sagrada, so it was a really short walk there. It looked like the lines for purchasing tickets were pretty long, so we tried again to purchase them online on my phone, and for some reason, this time it worked. Maybe there was some security issue with the WIFI at the hotel that did not allow us to get the tickets online there, who knows. But it did work using the cell service data and we were able to purchase the tickets and then get into the shorter line for pre-purchased online tickets.
Sagrada Familia Exterior
It did not take long to get inside once we were both able to load the bar codes for the individual tickets on our separate phones. I had to send Stephanie a link via email to allow here to access her ticket and barcode, and more importantly, download her own copy of the audio guide. That was a little perplexing, but we finally were able to get everything on our respective phones and proceeded to go inside. We each had to have our individual QCR code for our tickets on our separate phones that was scanned to allow us to enter.
Sagrada Familia Ceiling
Now, we wished we had thought to bring our Beats Earbuds so we could listen to the audio guide we had loaded onto our phones. We just used one of our phones and had to listen through the phone speaker, not the best way to hear with all of the crowd noise around us.
We really enjoyed another visit to this wonderful and architectural beauty. It is amazing how the Basilica is constructed and all of the history about it. This was the first time we had used the audio guides during our visit here, and we learned a lot more about the construction of the Basilica. Most of the interior is completed, and only the exterior spires remain under construction, but what a feat that is. The tallest spire will be about 150 meters high when competed, and that will be amazing.
Stained Glass Windows – Sagrada Familia
We spent about 90 minutes in the Basilica, and took a lot of pictures. With the full sunshine, all of the stained glass windows were full of light and color, casting many different hues of color into the church interior spaces.
We finally left and decided to go ahead and go over to Parc Güell since the weather was still sunny. To go there from the Sagrada Familia, we needed to take the V19 bus, and I had downloaded the bus stop to our saved Google Map locations for Barcelona. It was really crowded with people around Sagrada Familia, and we were glad to get out of that area.
Since today was a holiday, people were out in force to celebrate, and there were a lot of Christmas vendors in a park across the street from the Sagrada Familia.
We walked for several blocks and found our bus stop, and only had to wait for about 8 minutes for the bus to arrive. This was our first bus ride using our travel cards, and we had to figure out where to put them into the ticket machine to have them validated for this ride. Now we knew, the validation machines were right past the driver, who also could sell tickets.
Parc Güell
The bus was crowded when we got on, and got even more crowded until we were about 2/3’rds of the way to the Parc. It is mandatory to wear face masks on all public transportation. However, the metro riders this morning were only about 20 percent compliant, if that. However, on the bus, about 95% of the people complied and wore their masks.
It was about a 20 minute bus ride before we got to our stop for Parc Güell. We only had to walk about two blocks form the bus stop to the parc entrance, where we purchased our entry tickets form an automated machine, and skipped the ticket office line. We headed into the park and picked up a park guide, which we found to be pretty useless.
Stephanie in Parc Güell
The parc was really large, but there was really only one site there that it is most famous for, some buildings and benches adorned in colorful mosaic tiles, and that was what we had come to see. Unfortunately, with the mostly useless guide, we could not easily determine the location of that part of the parc.
We did walk a lot and saw some interesting things in the parc, but everything we went to was an uphill walk from the entrance. We did see there were several different places to enter the parc, we had chosen the one we used because it was close to the bus stop.
The Three Crosses – Parc Güell
Stephanie finally asked a parc attendant how to get to the main colorful attraction we were hunting for, and we found out that we had to go back for a ways on the trail we had come there on and take some steps down. However, we were now close to another sight in the parc called The Three Crosses. We thought we were already really close to them, but in the end, we were not. After more uphill walking we finally arrived at the Three Crosses, which were less than spectacular, and probably not worth the effort to get to them.
Parc Güell
We headed back down the path and finally found the steps downward to the part of the parc we wanted to see. Ouch, the steps were irregular in length and depth, and by the time I got down my 63 year old knees were screaming. Of course, Stephanie made it down a lot quicker, I wish I had her younger knees, I know mine were not that tender at her age!!
The colorful area of the parc was very crowded and obviously where everyone wanted to visit. Did I mention that it was a Holiday in Spain?? We got some good photos, but had hoped to set up our tripod and take some pictures of us in the photos with the colorful mosaic tiles and buildings in the background. That was not even an option with the crowds. It was tough just to get pictures in general.
Colorful Mosaic Benches – Parc Güell
We had to ask about getting back to the entrance we had arrived at, it was where we needed to go to catch the bus back to the hotel. We were told to go down the steps (ouch) to the bottom and then head left, and then left again. At least these were regular steps and more friendly to my knees, but there were still a lot of them. It was really crowded at the end of the steps, once again a popular photo op location for all for the people here today.
Parc Güell
We took some photos and then headed left as directed. Unfortunately, going left also meant going back up steps, and more steps, and then again, more steps. We finally made it to the same entrance we had originally come in at, and this was the only area to catch a bus back to our hotel. We then had to walk uphill to the bus stop for the No. 24 bus.
We were almost to the stop when the bus arrived, and we flagged him down, luckily he stopped just about 10 feet past the actual bus stop, and we boarded. This bus was much less crowded, and we were able to get seats. We had about a 25 minute bus ride to the bus stop closest to our hotel.
After departing the bus at our stop, we knew we needed some bottled water, the water in the hotel is very chlorinated tasting. Unfortunately, since this is a holiday, all of the normal grocery stores are closed, and only the equivalent of “convenience” stores, moistly run by Pakistani or Indian people are open, and the prices are outrageous. They are all open 24 hours and all say “Supermarket”, but are anything but Super. We went into one where the bottled water prices were not too bad, but opted to try to find one closer to the hotel so we did not have to carry the heavy water too far. We went into two different stores, and neither had any pricing on their bottled water, meaning “today is a holiday and we can charge you what we want”. We did not even try. We know from past experience these store are a rip off.
We went back to the hotel and dropped off some of our gear and drank our remaining bottled water and then headed out to go back to our favorite restaurant on Las Ramblas, La Poma, where we had eaten yesterday. We had seen some people eating pasta dishes yesterday that looked really good, and wanted to try those. It was about 4:00 PM when we ventured back out.
Table at the La Poma
We were going to eat an early dinner since we had not been able to find anything to eat for lunch at Parc Güell. We had thought about eating lunch after touring the Sagrada Familia, but everything around there seemed touristy, and then there were the crowds of people. However, when we got to the area around the Parc, we found that there was nothing there but the park, no restaurants or even food trucks, so we were not able to find anything there to eat.
We were seated at a table next to the front glass, and had a nice dinner. Stephanie ordered a Carbonara pasta dish and I had Rigatoni in an arabbiatta sauce. Of course, a 1/2 liter of red wine was in order, or on order. We also ordered the fried calamari again because it was so good yesterday. Stephanie’s pasta was the better of the two dinner choices. Mine was good, but had no spice to it, which is what arabbiatta sauce is know for. Dinner was good, but not as good as we thought it would be.
Dinner at La Poma
During dinner, we met two men traveling together that were seated at the table next to ours. We could hear them talking about a cruise ship, so we asked them if they were on the Viking Cruise, and they said yes. We chatted for a few minutes, and they took our picture. Their names were Russ and Tim from Palm Springs.
After dinner, we walked on Las Ramblas and enjoyed the Christmas lights. We were tired and decided to head back to the room, but first stopped at the first “supermarket” store we had been to earlier that actually had prices on their bottled water, and where we should have bought the water in the first place. It was not too far out of the way, and the store was really nice and clean inside. Water turned out to be fairly reasonably priced and we thought it was not that much more than in a grocery store.
We headed back to the room to relax, and I worked on the blog. We had some Rosa wine from our purchases yesterday, and I worked on today’s blog post while we relaxed. We only walked 22,643 steps today, and we could tell from our weary legs, so getting back to the room at 6:20 PM was not a bad idea.
There was something going on tonight, we saw some streets blocked off by Police, but never really saw why, possibly part of the holiday celebrations. We did learn later that apparently Spain had lost to Morocco in a World Cup Soccer match, and that explained some of the cars we has seen with orange flags with a green star in the middle being waved as the drove by honking their horns. That was the Moroccan Flag.
It was good to relax and be away from the crowds.
We turned in about 10:00 PM for the night, it had been a good day.