Try to imagine a combination of the most huge, beautiful cathedral you've ever seen and then throw in some Disneyland and a bit of Doctor Seuss and you'll have the basic idea. It was designed by Antoni Gaudí, a Catalan architect who was famous for imaginative designs. He was a leader of the Catalan Modernisme movement. Among other things, they tried to include curves rather than straight lines in their art and you can certainly see that in this church.
They started construction in the late 1900s and it will not be finished for a few more decades. It is gorgeous and original and uplifting and reverent all at the same time. Here's a web site if you'd like to see more pictures and information.
This place is a huge tourist attraction and you have to get tickets online and it's packed with people. We did an audio tour. It was crowded and crazy busy, but still beautiful. My first glimpse of the place from the subway exit was a huge tower with letters spelling "Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus...." spiraling around it. When we were waiting to go in we were looking at all the statues carved into the walls and there was one with his arm lifted and one finger out like he wanted a bird to come land on it. And sure enough, a pigeon came and sat with him for a few minutes. We think it must have been meant to be Saint Francis.
Inside was incredible too. My favorite feature was the stained glass windows. Not the traditional stained glass, but panes with different colors like an enormous color wheel. Everything in the building had a purpose and a meaning. The pillars holding up the high ceilings were also very beautiful. They branched out like tree branches, to give the feeling that the ceiling was the sky.
The massive noisy crowds made it hard to take in the building as a place of worship, although the audio tour stressed the spiritual purpose and meaning of everything. There was a little side chapel where they invited people to sit down and pray. There was a guard at the entrance, asking each person "are you going to pray?" and pantomiming prayer with his hands for those who didn't speak one of the languages he knew. (New word: prayer is "oración" in Spanish). He also turned away a young woman wearing shorts. I was amused by the idea of "prayer police", but the surveillance seemed to work. I went in and it was very quite and I was able to spend a few moments praying for my own family and friends in this amazing place.
After we'd had our fill of Sagrada Familia, we decided to visit another Gaudí location called Park Guell. We'd read online that you should make reservations to visit that as well, but we thought they couldn't possible fill up an outdoor park on a weekday still ahead of the main tourist season. So we didn't bother, especially since we had no idea when we'd be done with Sagrada Famila and wanting to see the park. We were wrong! After a Metro ride and a long walk, we were told we´d have to wait until 6.
So we changed our plans and went downtown to see a very old church called Santa Maria del Mar (Saint Mary of the Sea, web site here). This was the other end of the spectrum -- just as lovely and spiritual as Sagrada Familia, but in a completely different way. The present church was built in the 14th century, but Christians had been worshiping at or near the spot long before that. The buildings close to the church made it impossible for me to snap a picture of the entire front of the church. Here's what I could manage from the outside:
And from the inside:
After exploring this church the afternoon was mostly gone. We were in in the oldest part of the city with many more things to see and do there and resolved to return the next day.
We had dinner once again in the area near our apartment. The owner left a list of recommended restaurants, and each night we've had success just wandering around and finding a place that looked good. This night several places we tried were full and we ended up in a tiny little restaurant that was wonderful. They had just a few tables and the host (who must have been the manager or owner) hovered over us making sure everything was perfect. The food was delicious.
That's the end of the events of the day, but I want to write a little about the experience of trying to speak Spanish in Barcelona. I grew up in the U.S. in a community with many Spanish speakers and hardly any French speakers, so I studied Spanish in middle school and high school the way most people in Canada study French. I enjoyed it and took a year of Spanish at university. I took another year of university Spanish at Queen's just for fun and in preparation for this trip I have been in a really nice conversational Spanish class to brush up again. I am by no means fluent, but I can manage a lot if you give me time and a dictionary. So I was excited about the prospect of being able to use my Spanish.
Barbara and Mike had also studied Spanish and do quite well, but I seem to be the one that's the most gung ho about speaking the language here. While I reviewed Spanish, they learned some French, which will come in very handy in the second part of our trip.
Up until today I was feeling frustrated. I had a few small successes, such as being able to ask at the airport about where to get a taxi and to understand the answer. But mostly people hear my obviously non-native accent when I ask a question and answer me in English. Or even worse, they size me up in one look before I can even talk and address me in English! Added to that is the fact that the first language of many people in Barcelona is Catalán, not Spanish. Although most Catalán speakers also speak Spanish, it´s a second language for many rather than a first.
At first I was kind of annoyed because I *wanted to practice*!!! But I realise that they were showing me a courtesy to moving to a language in which I would be more comfortable and I'm sure it made most of the conversations quicker and simpler than they would have been in Spanish. A little disappointing, but it's not the job of waitresses and ticket-takers and shopkeepers to give me Spanish lessons.
However, tonight in the little restaurant where we ate dinner, our server did not switch to English. He was friendly and courteous, but it was obvious that he didn't speak English. So we were on our own and it was fun. We got the impression that this restaurant catered to locals and didn't get a lot of non-Spanish-speaking tourists visiting them. At most restaurants they offer us English menus and that has been helpful, but we didn't get one here. We spent some time puzzling over the Spanish menu without great success. In language classes you tend to learn basic food words but not a lot of the extra ones that would help with menus here -- particularly seasonings and the many kinds of seafood. We were debating the word "ajo" and a lady at the next table overheard and told us that she spoke a little English and she thought the English word was "garlic". I thanked her and told her in Spanish that we spoke some Spanish and were trying to practice but having trouble with the food words. She immediately went back to Spanish and seemed pleased we were making the effort. We talked with her and her husband for a minute and they were very nice. They were done with their meal, though, and left, and I broke down and asked (in Spanish) if they had an English menu. They did and it was a great help. We ordered and the food was delicious and the server kept checking on us and we were able to tell him in Spanish that the food was delicious. We chatted for a few minutes and told him where we were from and that this was our first visit to Spain. He seemed very pleased with us and to see foreigners making an effort to speak his language. Finally, an interaction that went beyond the bare essentials!
I realised today that my dreams of having long, meaningful conversations with people in Spanish here were probably a bit silly. Most of the conversations you have with people when you travel are fairly brief and practical. But we're really had a lot of short, useful exchanges in Spanish -- "how much are the tickets?", "do you have a table for three?", "may I have some more water?", etc, etc. We've been able to do that successfully even if the answers sometimes come back in English. And we had this nice conversation at the restaurant. We would be much more lost without this level of Spanish. So this trip is more of a linguistic success than I first thought. And the best exchanges have been when we were in less touristy places where people didn't speak English. If I want more of that sort of thing in my future travels I need to spend time away from the big cities. Maybe the Camino someday.... In the meantime, I'll keep studying with patient teachers in Canada whose job it is to stick to Spanish with me even when I'm floundering :-)
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