Friday, 16 May
A tidbit I missed yesterday, after 140 years of construction the Sagrada Familia church has no roof. When it rains, it rains inside the church and they clean it up….
Last night my sleep was interrupted by a series of loud bangs. I found out at breakfast, Barcelona won the La Liga soccer championship. This is the highest level of soccer in Spain and Barcelona finished ahead of Real Madrid. The bangs were fireworks celebrating the win. Folks with windows facing the street could hear noise from the celebrating fans.
After breakfast, I met Luis, our tour guide, to get some help purchasing train tickets from Madrid to Toledo for a day trip Dolora and I planned. Luis was not fond of the official app. The app let me choose a train that only had one seat left, I had to reenter the same info multiple times, it coughed on my credit card info, I tried Paypal and finally gave up.
A Tesla taxi zipped us to today’s sight seeing at Park Güell, a park designed by Antoni Gaudi, the architect of the Sagrada Familia. Interestingly enough, the taxi driver overheard us talking about booking a train using the app. The taxi driver told us the app was terrible and he went to the train station and purchased a physical ticket when he needed to travel…
The park was originally designed as a ritzy private community on the outside of town. The park was constructed from 1900 to 1914 and turned over to the public in 1926 after the housing development was a flop, only two houses were built. The terrace area is where most of the structures are located with the rest of the park containing many paths through the natural areas. The terrace was packed with tourists but the rest of the park was serene. We came across a trio playing music and enjoyed the entertainment. The park continues Gaudi’s Modernista style. As a big fan of Dr.Seuss, I think Dr.Seuss and Gaudi would have gotten along great. Gaudi’s designs look like Dr.Seuss drawings to me.
One of the stories goes that Gaudi visited a tile factory and saw piles of broken tiles. He inquired as to what were they going to do with the pieces. Since they were going to be thrown away, he used the pieces to make mosaics. There were mosaics today where it looked as though perfectly good tiles were shattered and reassembled to make a mosaic.
Dolora and I took a leisurely walk back and after arriving at our room, I gave the train app another try and finally success! We now have our tickets to Toledo and return. For our late lunch it was back to Bilbao Berria La Barra for a few tapas. I went directly to the hot tapas that I had missed on our last visit. This time Dolora and I had dessert. Since it was over two miles back from the park, we can rationalize our desserts.
Time for a little relaxation before heading out for a late dinner at La Flauta for tapas. Dolora went for spicy potatoes and chorizo while I tried cuttlefish, cod and pigs ear. The pigs ear was not my favorite, a little chewy with the cartilage. We had planned on dessert but were too full. We picked up a couple of sandwiches for the train ride to Madrid tomorrow.
Dolora and I noticed quite a police presence on the way back but thought it might be because we were in the university neighborhood. It turns out that a crowd was beginning to form because the Barcelona soccer team was going to parade down the street. This is like a Superbowl champion party. The crowd stood in the street and cheered. The police came through and opened the street and the team rode by in an open top bus to the cheers of the crowd. We were lucky enough to be able to watch from the rooftop of our hotel .
After all that excitement, back to the room for our last night in Barcelona. We can sleep in a little since we just have to be ready to head to the train station at ten.