More Barcelona

Sunday December 26, 2010 Day 179

This morning we took the subway to Sagrada Familia, a large church near central Barcelona which has been under construction for more than 100 years. It is slated to be complete in 2027, the 100th anniversary of the death of Antoni Gaudi, who conceived of the church and took over building it in 1883. He was still working on it at the time of his death, at which time it was less than one-quarter complete. The church is a bizarre combination of art nouveau, gothic, and curvilinear forms. It is said that at night, the structure looks as if it is made of bones. The famous British author George Orwell called la Sagrada Familia, “the ugliest building on earth!” On the subject of the extremely long construction period, Gaudí is said to have remarked, "My client is not in a hurry.” We walked all the way around it twice, but did not go in because of time pressure - unlike Gaudi's client, we were in something of a hurry.

This photo (blurry though it is) is for our Louisiana friends -
the Pelican and her babies from the flag made it to a nook on the Sagrada Familia!

We took a different subway back to our hotel to collect our luggage so that we could see a little bit different part of the city from that which we had seen so far. We turned a corner and came upon a museum, not yet opened apparently, which will house some very old boats. Along the side of the approach to the museum lay a red and black (Fight Raiders, fight!) scarf, neatly folded in half. No one was around, so we claimed it for Roger.


We left Barcelona having only scratched the surface of its offerings. Hopefully we will be back - Spain is not terribly far from where we live. We packed our bags and headed for the train station and ultimately home. Boarding procedures for the train were interesting. First, I was plodding along, head down, toward the gate when Roger and someone else shouted at me - I had walked right past a security check! I backed up, apologized and put the suitcase, backpack and my purse into the machine. I had a bag with lunch in it, and he did not require that I put it in. When I walked around to the other side to collect my belongings, there was no scanner to walk through! I could have had explosives strapped to my chest and they would not have been detected! That seems to make no sense. Not only that, when we came to Spain from France, there was no luggage check there, either. We moved on a few meters to a ticket checkpoint, and we were handed a 2011 calendar from Renfe, the train company, called “Things We All Say when We Ride the Train,” including “In which pocket did I place the tickets?” “Look at the sky!” “This trip must be repeated,” and “Tiny snow is falling!” for December.

On the train ride from Barcelona to Figueres-Vilafant, we had another view of the snow-capped Pyrenees - the same mountains we saw on Christmas Eve from Montserrat - but from a different angle. We had a train change near the French border. Our train was ten minutes in arriving, but our connecting TGV train was a good twenty-five minutes late. It was cool and windy on the platform. The train finally came and we had another two hours to reach Montpellier. It was quite cool when we detrained, probably just a few degrees above freezing, and we scurried home as quickly as possible. The apartment was cold when we got in - we had left the heater in vacation mode. We turned on the heater, but I don’t think the apartment warmed up even two degrees by bedtime. We were grateful for the duvet, which is not always the case. We checked our mail on the way upstairs, and got our first (and only!) Christmas card. Thanks, Pam and Ronald and Alex! Roger ran out for a pizza for supper, but the shop on our corner was closed, so he went on up St. Guliem for a baguette and a rotisserie chicken. I fixed peas and that was our supper. Ah, it’s great to be home!