Vacation Part II: Sacred Family

What with all the excitement of actually making it to Barcelona, I kind of forgot why it was that I had time off to begin with: Carnival! 

I happened to see these two classy ladies shortly after meeting up with Annie, Laura and Annie's friend Jenny at the metro stop near the hostel. 


After dropping my stuff off in the hostel, we caught the metro to the Sagrada Familia, which was the main thing I was excited to see in Barcelona. Way back in my History of Spain class I did a little presentation on the Sagrada Familia, so it was super cool to see the thing first hand. 

The metro.

It was pretty cool, and felt an awful lot like teleportation. Hop down this tunnel and zip! three minutes later you're in a whole nother part of the city. There were also a whole lot of buskers, not only on the platforms, but in the trains themselves, which was kind of cool, and kind of obnoxious as well. Depending on how good they were I guess.

As soon as we got off the metro, bam. Cathedral.

Or cathedral in the making, I should say. The main nave and eight of the fifteen towers are finished, or mostly finished, but there's still a lot to do. I've heard different things on when it'll be finished, but somewhere between 25 and 80 years seems to be the consensus. So, I'll just have to come back every ten years or so just to see how it's going. 

Normally I'm not a fan of those 'PICTURE OF ME WITH THE FAMOUS THING, OMG' kind of photos, but here's a picture of me with the famous thing. Hopefully it'll give you a little better idea of the scale of the thing in question. Keep in mind it's not done though. The Jesus tower (the final and tallest tower) is supposed to be about twice as high as the apostle towers, which you can see in the first photo. Once finished, there will be one tower for each of the 12 apostles, plus one each for Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

We actually didn't go in this day because the line was like this:

Stretching into the distance, you can see neither the beginning nor the end of this line

But we came back the next day early in the morning to beat the crowds and here are some of the things we saw.

The Crucifixion Façade, which faces west, opposite the Nativity Façade, which faces east and is the one you can see from the metro stop. It was also the only one that Gaudi oversaw the completion of, before he died. (he refused to wear glasses, and this may have been why he was hit by that bus.) The Crucifixion Façade is based on some of his original sketches, and follows them pretty accurately. The difference in styles between the two façades is really striking, with the nativity being very ornate and richly decorated with plants and animals, and the crucifixion stark and geometric.

The view of the nave from the crucifixion entrance. It is huge and light, unlike other Spanish churches that I have been in. There is stained glass everywhere. On a kind of funny note, there is a replica of part of the columns near the highway on my way to Fonsa, of the knobbly bit where the column branches apart. I had no clue what it was and thought it was a heart with valves coming out.

Below you can see one of the columns lit up through stained glass. Behind the railings is where the choir sits, with space for one thousand singers.

The ceiling. Notice how some of the columns are red. These are the ones closest to the altar and represent the blood of Christ.

The altar.

The doors to what will some day be the main entrance (not finished yet)

And lastly a view of the church from Parc Guell, another of Gaudi's works, which we did visit the first day, but I will talk about later.

When it does get finished, it will have been worth the wait.