Spain - day 8 - Barcelona
At this point in the trip I'm getting tired but I wanted to get as much of an experience from Barcelona as I can while I'm here. I can see the end of the trip as I'm flying back to New York tomorrow. I wanted to see Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished sandcasle-like temple, and do a few hours of walking around added photos to a few street series' I've been working on in Spain. I rested up in the morning and decided to take the T4 Tram up Diagnal Mar up towards the Sagrada Familia area.
The Tram goes past a huge phallic shaped structure called Torre Agbar built by a Frenchman Jean Nouvel. Apparantly most people refer to it as the penis building or the big condom. I don't know much about it, just walked by it and saw it from a far but it definitely takes a prominent place in the skyline of Barcelona. Riding the tram itself was interesting as I was thinking of the olympics which I assume was the purpose of building it. The final stop is the olympic village. You buy a ticket at a kisosk they have near each stop for 1.25 euros. They seem to use the honor system as you swipe the ticket after you get in and their are signs that warn of a minimum 40 euro fine if you don't punch the ticket.
I got off the tram and wondered around for awhile towards the Gaudi building which can be seen on the skyline. The unusual towers poke up across the other buildings. This was a different area of the city than I'd been to the previous day but still had a nice energy about it. I passed the Barcelona bull fighting arena and took many of the street photos I had been hoping to find.
I finally got to the Sagrada Familia and it turned out to be a huge tourist draw. They charged 8 euro to get in and all kinds of people selling things outside the gates. I fought through the people and walked all around the outside and inside of the temple. They were doing a lot of construction on the inside as it appears they are still working on finishing Gaudi's vision which is a huge undertaking. Once you get in you realize you can get up to the top but the lines are 45+ minutes to get into the lift that only holds 5 people at a time. I was trying to decide if I wanted to wait that long and walked around taking some long exposure movement photos of the stained glass on the interior, not too much unlike the technique I recently used for fireworks in NYC. I first took a few regular ones of the interior but they felt very boring to me so I wanted do something different and was happy with the results. I found a second line to get up in a different lift to the top that was only 30 minutes. When you get up there they charge an additional 2 euros to get in. Typical tourist trap maneuver. It was worth it however once you get to the top. The building had very narrow winding walkways and stairways. Open air views of the Barcelona skyline which were quite impressive. You have to walk down many narrow winding stairways to get down. At the bottom it leads you into some museum type of area but at that point I was ready to find the salida as soon as possible. However, it was definitely worth going.
I wandered through the streets back and forth finding my way back to the tram. I wanted to get several solid hours on the beach on my last day. When I got back to the hotel I found Brandon there and he wanted to go also. We helped ourselves to a few complimentary cocktails at the executive bar before going. The hotel in Barcelona was great as we had unlimited access to the executive lounge which has a great free breakfast and complimentary drinks and an amazing open air balcony area overlooking the city and the the Mediterranean.
The beach turned out to be amazing this day. The sand at Barcelona was a little more course than in Ibiza which was nice as it doesn't get stuck to you as easy. The swimming was outstanding, water perfect temperature. As always in Spain, the people on the beach were beautiful. I was thinking how great it would be to have these miles of great beaches so easily accessible in a city you live in. The public transportation can quickly take you there from anywhere in the city. We couldn't help but watching this couple spooning on the beach. On a scale of 1-10 the girl was probably a 9 or 10 and was only wearing a small bikini bottom. Oh goodness.
We got some good sun and swimming in. I wrote a few postcards which I still haven't mailed yet and read some magazines. We did not want to leave the beach and would have liked to stay there a week longer soaking up the sun but we knew that we had all the the sun a few pale skinned guys from New England could take for the day. We headed back to the hotel to relax and get a a few more complimentary beverages and figure out what we were all going to do for our last night in Spain.