When you’re based in Madrid, then of course you’re going to spend a weekend in Barcelona. But when? The timing was a constantly moving target. We thought maybe for Thanksgiving weekend, but then we were left with no plans for our first weekend in Spain. So, on a whim, we booked Barcelona earlier than anticipated!
Thankfully, we have awesome friends and family (like Ben, Lizzie and Melody) who gave us fabulous recommendations. Our trip went from a last-minute getaway to a fully planned weekend in a day!
We landed after dinner, so we headed straight for drinks. Our hotel, Grand Hotel Central, offered a perfect location in the Gothic Quarter and a rooftop bar!
From here, we headed to an awesome hole in the wall, known for its homemade gins. Full of young people and even some expats, the bar made us feel like we were back in Buckhead!
On Saturday morning, we grabbed a quick breakfast and headed out for our Barcelona bike tour. You should know by now how I feel about bike tours – they’re such a great way to cover a lot of ground in a short time! We have been on a bike tour with Fat Tire in London, so we felt great about using them again.
We met in Placa Sant Jaume, which houses City Hall (or Casa de la Ciutat). Our guide, Chrissy (who is actually Greek, but knows an insane amount about Barcelona and Spain), explained to us the flags above the building: one for the Catalonia region, one for Spain and one for Barcelona.
Here, we also learned about the political tensions in Barcelona. Catalonia would like to separate from Spain mostly for financial reasons. Their region produces the most money, and they feel the national government does not distribute the benefits back accordingly. As we biked around town, we constantly saw flags and signs around the independence debate.
We walked our bikes from here to the Barcelona Cathedral. We actually came back to the cathedral on Sunday, so I’ll save my insights for that part of the trip.
One of my favorite things about a bike tour is getting to see parts of the city that you might otherwise miss. The streets you pass in transit can be so interesting! Check out these crazy graffiti doors with hand-shaped doorknockers.
We made our way to the Arc de Triomf (triumphal arch), which was the entrance gate for the World’s Fair in 1888. Throughout our tour, it seemed that everything Chrissy pointed out was built for this event! It’s mostly true; Barcelona took this opportunity to add some lasting monuments to the city.
One of the largest additions that came from “World’s Fair prep” is the Citadel Park (Parc de la Ciutadella). Citizens hated the citadel, so the grounds were transformed into the city’s only green space at that time.
The Cascada (fountain) is a wonderful oasis in the park. Fun fact: Antoni Gaudí helped design this fountain when he was a young, unknown architect.
At this point, we took the long and somewhat scary path to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s church. Everything about this place was magnificent: the history, the architecture, the crowds (O-M-G), the active construction. It truly deserves its own blog post! Instead, we will revisit after the bike tour.
Our sweet tour guide crammed as much Sagrada Familia in as you can in thirty minutes (not nearly long enough… and you can’t just stand outside it!) before we moved on to our next destination. We biked back downhill to the beach!
Similar to the World’s Fair of 1888, the Summer Olympics in 1992 transformed Barcelona. Previously, Barcelona “faced away from the sea.” With the games coming to town, the city built two miles of manmade beach and put the Olympic Village on the water! To this day, the city has to import sand (mostly from Egypt) before the warm season.
We biked the picturesque boardwalk before our group settled in for a late lunch. The food wasn’t spectacular, but there’s something to be said for eating fried seafood on a patio overlooking the ocean!
After lunch, we rode our bikes around Port Vell, which is the harbor built for the Olympic games. The area is massive and is now a major tourist destination in Barcelona.
The last landmark on our tour was “El Cap de Barcelona” (the head of Barcelona), a statue by famous pop artist Roy Lichtenstein. And yes, this was commissioned for the 1992 Olympics. I enjoyed seeing American art abroad! Meadows thought it was so weird; to this day, he cannot see the face in the sculpture. Can you?
We sped back to the shop, dropped off our bikes and caught a cab back to Sagrada Familia. Thankfully, Ben insisted we buy our tickets ahead of time. If you’re planning to visit Barcelona, you should absolutely:
- See as much Gaudí as possible
- Book tickets beforehand with the audio guide (especially for Sagrada Familia)
- Go up in the towers at Sagrada Familia
Now for the history behind this masterpiece… “Sagrada Familia” literally means sacred family, so this church is dedicated to the Holy family. Funded by private donations, construction began on the temple in 1882. The project’s original architect fell out with the fundraisers, so Antoni Gaudí got the job in 1883!
As you can tell from the photos, the style is completely unique. The general plan, too, offers a very different style for a church. The building will tell the story of Christ in three major facades: Nativity (Christ’s birth), Passion (Christ’s death and resurrection) and Glory (Christ in the present and future). The Glory side cannot be viewed due to construction, but we were able to visit the other two.
Gaudí’s plan involves a total of 18 towers: 12 bell towers around the outside of the building for the Apostles (a set of four on each of the three facades) and six taller towers in the center (the tallest one is in the center, representing Jesus; four shorter ones surrounding him for the Evangelists and their Gospels; one slightly shorter in front symbolizing the Virgin Mary). I’ve included the best depiction/explanation of what the finished Sagrada Familia will look look – click on it for even more detail!
The entire structure is made of sandstone. And you can easily see when a piece of the architecture was completed based on the color of the stone (the older the stone, the darker in color).
We began on the Nativity façade, where you can see detailed carvings of Jesus’s birth. Like much of Gaudí’s work, this entrance is unbelievably ornate and heavily influenced by nature. He chose this to be the first side built and the most public side because it is the most attractive and inviting. This façade faces east/sunrise for obvious reasons.
This façade has more symbolism than I can describe. Every tiny detail contains a meaning or reference; you could spend days studying it all! The doves in the cypress near the top symbolize purity (and this is also where we stood during our tower visit).
Ok, enough talk about the outside; the inside was even more spectacular! The columns mimic trees, rising towards the sky and sprouting out at the ceiling. When you look up, it feels like you’re looking in a kaleidoscope; the light, geometric shapes and color overwhelm you!
The stained glass windows offer a much more modern perspective, featuring rainbow-like colors. The light from the ultra-vaulted ceilings pours in from above, and the room is beautifully lit.
On the Nativity/sunrise side, Gaudí employed blue and green-toned windows to cool the bright light at the break of dawn. On the opposite side, he chose red and orange windows to capture the warmth of sunset. I cannot explain how much light comes in the building and illuminates the interior.
I really couldn’t get enough of the stained glass windows!
I actually prefer Meadows’ GoPro photos from inside Sagrada Familia. Despite the fisheye distortion, his photos capture the magical and otherworldly vibes better than mine. You can decide for yourself 🙂
Having soaked up the interior, we went on our tower tour. Thankfully, they have an elevator up! I loved this part of the day because it gave us a sense of scale. We went up so high (65 meters to be exact).
We stood between two of the Apostles towers and imagined the Christ tower, which will stand almost 60% taller than the Apostles towers.
And remember the doves in the cypress tree? We were next to that statue!
We also could see some details from above that were impossible to see from below. Gaudí’s love of nature and color manifests in beautifully colored fruit all over the building.
The elevators take you up, but you have to take the stairs back down… I’m not going to lie, I got pretty dizzy by the end of this spiral staircase. The second picture is the view looking up in the tower.
A bit more on Gaudí before I delve into the other façade… He was insanely dedicated to this project. He built a provisional school on site for the construction workers’ children. In his final years, he worked on Sagrada Familia exclusively, and he even moved into the building!
As Chrissy said (although I tend to agree haha) – without a wife to help him out, the workaholic Gaudí appeared rather dirty and unkempt while living in the construction site. Because of this, no one offered assistance when a tram hit him in June of 1926. Onlookers assumed it was a homeless person and went about their business. After finally being taken to a hospital, he died three days later. He is buried in the crypt of Sagrada Familia.
Last but not least, we walked out to the Passion façade. Here, the style dramatically changes from flowery and ornate to cold and hard. Even the statues brandish jagged faces. The supports appear to be bones and lack any design or carvings on the stone.
The statue of Jesus on the crucifix leans forward to make it easier for onlookers to see.
Up above, you can see a bronze statue peaking out over the edge. This represents the ascension of Christ.
The harsh angles and rigid forms intend to evoke very different feelings than the Nativity façade. Much more somber, this architecture accurately portrays the gravity of Christ’s sacrifice. The Passion façade faces sunset.
It’s pretty clear that Sagrada Familia is still not finished. When completed, it will be the tallest church in the world! The projected/goal date of completion is 2026, the 100-year anniversary of Gaudí’s death. Today, tourism exclusively funds the construction at Sagrada Familia.
With about a million steps under our belt, we headed to the hotel to rest. Not for long though! We had to make our way to Cal Pep for dinner. We waited for a bit, and then sat at the bar (as everyone does) between a lovely German couple and the funniest couple from Florida.
The waiter asked how many courses we’d like and if we had any allergies or aversions to food. Our response (“The more courses, the better. And no limits on food.”) was a recipe for success! We had clams, peppers, tuna, hake and even more that I can’t remember. And yes, Meadows loved it all!
After dinner, we bopped around the shops and bars in El Born. It was the best.
On Sunday morning, we crossed the street (we were so close!) to Barcelona Cathedral to see the Sardana dance. Every Sunday, locals perform this dance outside the cathedral!
The cathedral began construction on the site of previous churches in 1298. In the 19th century, however, the cathedral transformed with a neo-Gothic façade and central tower. It’s pretty neat – you can see where the old façade of the church wasn’t covered next to the current exterior.
My brother warned us that we would be obsessed with Gaudí, so we pre-booked tickets for Casa Batlló. Thank God. After our afternoon at Sagrada Familia, I needed more modernist architecture.
Antoni Gaudí built the original structure that is now Casa Batlló in 1877, but it was classical and lacked the necessary flare in this affluent neighborhood. When the Batlló family (wealthy from the textile business) bought it in 1900, they sought to design something unique. They chose Gaudí after having seen Park Güell. He began in 1904 and completed the house in 1906.
I’d say the Batllós got exactly what they wanted! This house looks like something out of Alice in Wonderland. The exterior features bone-like pillars and skull-like balconies. The round-shaped windows ebb and flow like rippling water.
While the outside is pretty weird, the inside is downright genius. Gaudí didn’t simply create a structure with rooms; he solved problems, created efficiencies and accommodated in every way possible. For example, he ergonomically designed the handrail on the staircase (as well as all door handles in the house) to fit a hand most comfortably. It also resembles a spine!
Gaudí expanded the light well in the middle of the house and covered it entirely in glazed tiles. The tiles are darker at the top where the light comes in and lighter at the bottom, creating an even distribution of light. Similarly, the windows are larger at the bottom than at the top. Connected to the light well, he installed wooden vents to allow the family access to fresh air.
As with Sagrada Familia, the house reflects the beauty of nature. Gaudí installed tortoise-inspired skylights and swirl-encased light fixture to give a feeling of the sea. The giant windows let light flow into this grand room.
One of the coolest Gaudí creations was the adorable fireplace. This mushroom-shaped haven would have been a cozy spot for a couple, providing two benches: one for the couple and one for the chaperone.
As the girl who actually thought she could create fonts and logos for a living (Annimations – trademark pending), my absolute favorite aspect of the house was the custom script Gaudí developed for Casa Batlló. You can see it on each of the doors.
As we worked our way to the top of the house, we got to the loft. A service area, the loft offered laundry and storage. With 60 arches and a stark white design, the loft truly feels like you’re in an animal’s ribcage! Maybe the dragon’s? (Read on…)
Our final stop of the tour was the rooftop. Covered in colorful mosaics, even the chimneys are beautiful at Casa Batlló!
At the front of the house, we could see up-close the colorful spine/back that is thought to be that of a dragon. One common theory is that the white tower/cross is Saint George’s sword stabbing into a dragon. (Saint George is the patron saint of Catalonia, and legend says that he slayed a dragon.)
After we left Casa Batlló, we ate a fabulous late lunch at Tapas 24. Sad that our weekend was over, we drank wine and ate gelato. With full brains and bellies, we went to the airport and flew back to Madrid.
If you’re still reading, I’m sorry. I actually have a few more random notes:
- Whenever Sagrada Familia is completed, I’m 100% going back.
- Casa Batlló does a really great job with their tour. You get a large-screened smart phone that you can point in different directions and get the original view of each room. This is especially cool because Gaudí also designed furniture for the house. So when you wave this phone around the room, you can see the house as he designed it in its entirety.
- I bought the neatest Christmas ornament from Sagrada Familia that looks like the ceiling!
I was in Barcelona and Madrid this summer. I loved the bike rides in both cities even though riding between the lanes in Barcelona at times was daunting. And Gaudi—loved his home tour too. Keep writing girlfriend—you make the words and pictures come alive!
Hugs to you both!
becky
This could be your greatest post ever, which is high praise. Marg and I didn’t have time to go up into the tower at Sagrada, and I can see that we really missed something. From your description, it is apparent that you savored all the incredible design features of this fabulous monument. Many thanks for sharing your insightful description and your beautiful pictures. Dad