Turned up at Sagrada Familia shortly after opening time and managed to avoid a big queue. My first thoughts when walking into the church was that is was fantastic, I loved the stonework and stained glass, really impressive. Amir on the other hand was complaining it didn't look old and dilapidated, but I don't really get that. The only annoying thing is that there's so many cranes around the outside, you can't really get a nice shot of the exterior of the building.
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| Outside Sagrada Familia. |
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| In and around Sagrada Familia until futher notice. |
After spending some good time exploring the church and the museum, as well as taking a lift up one of the spirals, we moved on to Barcelona's version of Arc De Triomf. It was a little different to the usual, mostly the colour, and the location was nice with a path leading through it and down towards the park. Quite surprisingly, there was about four fantastic comic book stores in the area, even selling some good stuff in English. I found a great Saw t-shirt with the guy on his tricycle, but it was only in large. That's the worst thing about anime and comic book stores, you have to get lucky with the sizes they have in stock- and I'm guessing the larger sizes are in higher demand...
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| No good city is complete without one. |
With the Barcelona Card we had, one of the free entry passes was for the Chocolate Museum. It wasn't so much a history of how to make chocolate, or even a short film about the land of chocolate, but rather things made out of chocolate. They had some cool displays, my favourite is shown below. The neighbourhood nearby is known as Barri Gotic and the streets have a nice old, gothic feel to it as the name suggests. Also they are quite small and narrow, but generally they go in a straight line.
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| Chocolate Tintin on the Moon. |
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| Gothic Quarter. |
This leads on to La Rambla or possibly Las Ramblas, a long mall kind of street which is heavy on tourists. Headed down towards the sea, passing through Placa Reial and eventually to Port Vell. Amir had run out of energy for the day, so while he headed off I turned back in the other direction and went up La Rambla to explore some more. I came across a great market called La Boqueria which has lots of fruit and drinks and stuff like that, as well as one neat confectionery store which was selling these great range of lollies that looked like fried eggs, tennis balls and other things.
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| Mirador de Colon. |
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| Transbordador running from the mountain to the beach. |
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| Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria. |
I continued up and then across one street to Passeig de Gracia to hunt down some more Gaudi architecture. I found the Casa Mila by accident and then the more well known Casa Battlo. Both fantastic, they should just design everything like that. I ended up back down down at the bottom of La Rambla and found out the little Columbus Monument they had there had a lift to go up to the top. It was so squashed at the top though, only about eight people could fit up there and everyone had to move around at one time otherwise you'd just be stuck. When the door for the elevator had to open it made it even worse, but it gives a good view of Barcelona from close up at least.
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| Casa Mila. |
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| Casa Battlo. |
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| La Rambla on the right. |
In the evening I tried to suggest a second course of tapas, but instead we went to a sports bar to watch England vs Wales European qualifier.
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