La Sagrada Familia y Olympic Village y Motorbike

  Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain and Canary Islands
Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Started the morning off with a decent breakfast at the place around the corner. A few tables down the patrons had a dog with them who apparently speaks spanish. I witnessed the owner giving the dog extremely fast paces word commands to the dog and I witnessed the dog obey nonchalantly. "aqui, ......." Does this mean the dogg speaks spanish? I don't know, I guess I've never witnessed a dog be commanded with any other language than english. English commands seem so much more understandable to animals...so I was a bit surprised at my surprisement because it's just not something you think about everyday.

Anyway, after breakfast we rode the train over to La Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family Church) designed by a guy named Antoni Gaudi.

the dude

. This church was probably the most prolific structure I've ever seen anywhere. It looks like it grew out of the ground or / and is some sort of living thing. It's crazy genious. I've attached some pics of it.

first view of sagrada familia

me at sf

s.f

I really can't say enough about the church. It's the cliche - the pictures don't do it justice deal. I would encourage anyone not familiar to google it and read about the history of it. It's pretty interesting. Construction started on this thing in 1886, and it's still not done. Matter of fact, it's not until around 2026 that they think it could possibly be done. However, a lot of engineers are worried about the foundation due to a close running metro line (underground) and a proposed high speed TEV train line that could run within feet of the cathedrals foundations. Even unfinished, it's just the most intense structure I've ever seen. I think I could stare at it for days and still not understand how it's possible.

front entrance of sf

crucifix carving

judas betrayal

wow

unreal detail at sf

I would recommend checking out the all the pictures in the "slide show" feature in the window above.

We then took a subway ride down to the barcelona beaches and rented a motor scooter to get around in.

hottie

Pretty damned dangerous at first, probably not a good means of transportation for a pregnant Stephie, but we took the risk anyway. Turned out to be a pretty effective way of seeing the city.

arc d triumf

We had a blast! It's parked out front of our hotel right now. Hopefully it's still there in the morning.

yes.

The pictures pretty much tell the rest. Exhausted now. Out.