As the trip is coming to an end, I’ve begun to think back on all the incredible people I’ve met and beautiful places I’ve visited since I’ve been here. While it is impossible to choose just one experience to sum up the whole trip, I have to say Barcelona was a highlight. I had visited Barcelona once before with my family about two years ago, however my experience this time around was completely different.
Since we only had one day to truly explore the city we had to hit up the two most well known spots in Barcelona: Parque Güell and La Sagrada Familia. Both are well known monuments that the Spanish architect Gaudí worked on for many years. We took a guided tour of La Sagrada Familia so we could fully appreciate its beauty and understand its history. It was fascinating to learn about the organic architecture of the inside of the church that was constructed to model a forest. We also learned about how the church was designed using a complex model of weighted sand bags to figure out how the church could be constructed. My favorite part was the outside of the back of the church which was completely carved with biblical stories and references. It was breathtaking. Hopefully the building will be completed within the next ten years (although they’ve said that it would be for the past 100 years!).
As much as I loved La Sagrada Familia, Parque Güell was truly my favorite part of Barcelona. Every time we turned a corner in the park we found another incredible piece of architecture. We walked up the marble staircase, with the famous Spanish mosaic iguana, to a covered patio with arched ceilings that made us feel as though we were in a cave. Then, we walked up more stairs to the large mosaic bench that overlooked the entire Gaudí village. I’m so glad we got to experience Gaudí’s works during our time here in Spain.
The back of La Sagrada Familia
My roomie and I in Parque Güell!