Sagrada at Last, bucket list
I posted last week so late that there really isn’t much to say this time around, considering it only covers 3 days. Whoops. I’ll make do with what I have.
I finally went inside the Sagrada Familia – Barcelona’s most famous landmark. We strategically chose a Wednesday afternoon because we reasoned it would have less tourists due to it being the middle of the week. The outside of the building is quite intricate and imposing on its own, considering that it takes up an entire city block and looms several stories higher than the surrounding buildings, but since it is carpeted in scaffolding and cranes it isn’t as impressive. On the inside, though, the place is magical. I usually disparage cathedrals of all sorts, just because they all begin to look the same. But this place was so incredibly modern and unique that you have to admire it. Even though it has all the normal church things – pews, altar, organ, and so forth – it looks like some kind of alien symbiote has warped them to be more angular. I’d say the wait and price are worth it to get inside, definitely.
We also checked out this nifty little hidden park next to the famous Parc Guell called Parc de la Crueta Del Coll, which is built into the side of a big hill, with a pond/lake hugging the cliffside, and giant concrete claw hanging over the pond. I climbed it, of course. Looks like it would be a great place in the summer.
The weather is getting quite nice out, and this has more ramifications than simple beach time feasibility. Europeans from all countries seem to sprout up out of nowhere in this city whenever the weather gets nice – I don’t know how they get flights here so fast or if they are simply lucky. They’re so easy to spot, too – gaggles of pale sunglassed up lost looking young people all walking together somewhere near Las Ramblas. Heathens! The nice weather means that we have Castellers practice outside now, which is a nice change. At first I thought – “Wait, now we are simply over a hard concrete floor, isn’t this more dangerous?” but then I remembered that inside it’s basically a just as hard gym floor, so there’s no difference.
The other day we played a drinking game called True American, which is apparently from the show New Girl, and is more or less a combination of multiple other drinking games, except that it all takes place while you are moving candyland style around the room perched on top of pillows, because the floor is lava in this game. The mechanic could use some refining, but drunk people trying to balance on tiny pillows shouting out the guessed connections between two nouns is certainly fun.
I am working my way through a ‘bucket list’ of things I want to do before I leave this awesome city. It's mostly bars that I have heard good things about, some experiences (like a weekly roller blade ride I hear about) and a few other things like stuff I want to climb, or venues I haven't hit yet. We'll see how many of them I fill out by the end.