I'm going to pepper the first portion of this with pictures that I took on the Thursday when we were on the Bus Turistic. The forecast had been for rain that day but the morning was nice and we were pretty sure we'd have rain on Saturday.
You can click on a photo and it'll open in a photo viewer. Blogger was not cooperating with the photo alignments in this post!
We woke up bright and early on the Saturday, to dim and blah weather. Rain, drizzle, etc. Rob went down for the hotel breakfast while I tried to sleep a bit more. It was Sagrada Família day! Back story time:
However, that was Thanksgiving weekend and....I forgot. I got to a school on the Tuesday and realized. While the students were pretending to work, I started looking at tickets.
There weren't any.
Not on the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday morning. Nothing.
I nearly cried right there in the portable full of grade 9 students.
When I got home, I started checking tour sites like Viator and Booking. Nothing, except extremely overpriced tickets. I asked in a FB group about Spain, hosted by one of the YouTubers I had been watching. Someone recommended Julià Travel. I took a look and was able to find a bilingual (Spanish & English) group tour for 9am on Saturday morning. I instantly hit Purchase. $182.59 Cdn. Ugh.
It was worth it though. Mostly. I mean, I'm glad I spent it through I would have preferred to not spend that much!
I was able to convince Rob to take the Metro, since it was too early for the Bus Turistic. We went down to the Universitat station, giving ourselves lots of time. It was easy to get tickets, a little bit confusing to choose the direction (mainly our issue...I just knew where we needed to get off, not what is at the end of the line). We hopped on, got off at the 4th stop and went up.
It was starting to get light out, and it was kind of cool to be out and about in the early morning twilight. We were super early, so we walked around. It seems the fast food joints don't do breakfast. We went into Pannus Provença and got some coffee and food. It was nice. The bathroom door was interesting:
At our appointed time, we walked over to Julia Travel and signed in. The young man spoke good English and didn't look annoyed at using it. We waited for our big group to be called, and followed our guide (Josef/Joseph?) across to the church.
We had to wait while he got the tickets and then we eventually went through security. Very similar to the airport, but we didn't have to take off our shoes! We went outside and were given a headset and earbuds. We assembled up on the platform area and the guide started. My unit wasn't working so I had to run back down the stairs to get a new one.
The stories of the facade and history were fascinating. All the symbolism. I understood a fair bit because once upon a time, I did go to church every week.
The cypress tree is symbolic in the church because it's so high, that means close to God. Many think it's a Christmas tree but it's not.
One thing I found interesting was that the original plans included buying adjacent land. There's apartment buildings there, and I wonder if they were there during the initial plans? 
There was also a lot of scandal about money in the 1990s so now they don't take donations, just the ticket sales.
Eventually, we get to go in. Pictures can't do it justice.
It wasn't as bright as we had hoped, due to weather, but still spectacular.
We spent some time sitting in the quiet zone at the front. It wasn't as quiet as I thought it'd be but still very enjoyable. Despite not being religious (or a believer), the space makes you feel insignificant and irrelevant but also grand and proud, if that makes sense. I felt like I should be making the sign of the cross--the intense emotions Gaudi had towards his religion are very present and that is admirable.
After, we walked a couple blocks to an Aldi grocery store. It was fun walking around and seeing different products. It was quite small, but it did seem that there was an Aldi or a Lidl every few blocks. We got a bag of chips of an unknown flavour, a chocolate bar, and two chicken Caesar salads, for about 8€ ($12Cdn). It was still drizzling out so we walked back towards the cathedral, hoping to find a covered area to eat. We walked through the little park but nothing, so we headed up Av de Gaudí as it looked like there was a covered section in the middle pedestrian section. It was covered, but not fully. Some of the restaurants had tents up, and it wasn't really lunch time so we stood under one of them to eat our salads. It was fun!
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We then walked back to the Sagrada to get on the Bus Turistic again. We had already seen most of the route before, but this time we didn't get off at the transfer stop where we had McDonald's the day before. We stayed on to return to Plaça de Catalunya much more quickly.
There we noticed it was totally fenced in and there was a singer warming up on stage. We had seen the stage earlier but didn't know what was going on. It looked like a music festival was going to happen that evening. Google Translate told me that it's free and that the capacity of the park is 10 000 people! Wow.
We decided to go on a hunt for sunscreen, and to go to Mercat de Santa Catarina. I had seen pictures of it and it looked really cool from the outside. It was supposed to be more for the locals than the Mercat de Bouqueria. Since it was closing soon, we zoomed straight there. It was smaller and definitely more local although there was stalls out front with the same tourist crap we saw elsewhere. We actually didn't buy anything (inside or outside). I was looking at some pastries but really had hoped for the nuts and chocolates we had seen earlier. There didn't seem to be any.
On the way back we stopped at Cafeteria 365, across the street. We had a sandwich (and maybe more?) which was nice, but we noticed that everywhere, they pre-make them and heat them up when ordered. It was okay--the ingredients are all very good but microwaving is not the best.
We stopped at one or two "Farmacia" stores, but the first one only had really expensive skin care. The second was questionable. We stopped at a Super Mercat near the hotel and got a bottle of Nivea and some drinks. They are every where and seem well stocked (and friendly!).
At the hotel again, we asked about seafood options. They gave us a card and I looked it up. It was an upscale type place with the types of seafood we don't care for. We wanted more ....fish and chips style. Some Googling latter, and I found a chain called.... Fish and Chips Shop. Off we went in the drizzly rain.
The menu was small--but looking online, that menu seems bigger than what we saw. We pretty much knew we just wanted fish and chips anyway. I was a little worried about the "smokey tempura" and the Indian/Pakistani spices on the fries, but it was all really good! Just enough outside our comfort zone to be familiar but exciting, though I didn’t care for the mango chutney, I can see how it would be good with the fish. I just don’t like mangoes.
We did notice that the area changed from touristy to neighbourhoody (the Gothic Quarter to La Raval). Languages other than Spanish. Narrow lanes, people who weren't tourists or Spaniards. We were going to turn up one lane/street/alley and heard a commotion. A large man was having a rambling, angry sounding monologue with himself and people were standing back observing. We quickly scurried on and a minute later several police cars came zooming by. Although night time was probably not the best time to be exploring this area, it was a lot of fun. Being with Rob made me feel safe though.
I saw a sign for the Mercat de Sant Antoni. I had wanted to visit it but obviously it was closed. I knew we had to go "north-east" (upwards and to the right on the map, but in Barcelona, north isn't 90° to the sea, like it is here on Lake Ontario). We headed up that way a bit before deciding to break out Google Map. Then we saw a Papa Johns. Oh, that's Rob's favourite pizza! We walked over, but decided to not indulge since we knew we'd be having pizza a lot on the ship. We found our way back to the hotel easily from there.
We'd heard that there was a big soccer (football) game between Madrid and Barcelona that night, and thankfully it was in Madrid. We sat in our hotel room, with the balcony doors open, and listened to the city watch the game. We could hear when the first two goals were scored, and then I think we closed the doors and headed for bed. It was a long day! But tomorrow was embarkation day!!
