Rise and shine to the bakery! We followed our noses to find an insanely cheap and delicious baked goods that we defiantly loaded up on. Now we had a few hours to kill before our afternoon walking tour started. We went down Las Ramblas, the main shopping street, this area is also know for street performers, street vendors and pick pockets. Holding onto our things we wandered through the streets and ended up going all the way through to the La Boquiera. It is the largest outdoor market here in Barcelona. I can say that it is by far had the most fresh fruit and juices that I have ever seen anywhere! There were so many fresh fruit juices in any combination that you could imagine for only a euro! I was impressed that the prices were so reasonable, usually such tourist attractions have raised prices catered to tourist, but it seems like the vendors in La Boquiera didn’t support this whatsoever. We both bought a few juices and fresh fruit for lunch to make our way out of the crowded market and each our lunch outside before our tour started.
Our tour was focused around Gaudi and Modernism architecture, and our tour guide was amazing! The tour guide joked that people only know of Guadi and his work because his name is easy to remember and pronounce to foreigners. I think he might be onto something! Also his explanation of modernism architecture is the combination of different materials and asymmetry. He lead us through the city focusing on the gothic quarter and showed us some stunning buildings with an amazing explanation of their backstory. Some things that really stood out to me is that on the bottom of some patios there were mosaic tiles arranged in beautiful patterns. Now depending on how wealthy you were the more colours on the mosaic you had. Also along the sidewalks of some wealthy streets there were benches again in mosaics. The things is that the bourgeoisie thought it was too cold in the wintertime to go and sit on them, so they were built to have burning coal go inside and warm the whole bench! Clever right? We walked by some of Guadi’s famous buildings, of course you have to pay to go inside. One of the buildings that stood out to me was the Casa Battlo, apparently the whole interior of the house is a dragon. So as you work your way up to the top floor you go through different part of the dragon such as the stomach and heart. The tour ended outside the Sangrada Familia where he explained to us why he thinks the building will never be finished. Apparently it is suppose to be completed in the next 25 years for the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death, but there are still a few towers that need to go up. Here in Spain building do not have to pay taxes as long as they are under construction. Another interesting thing is that shareholders privately own the church, so once is was finished they would have to pay millions every year from their generated revenue.
After the tour Andrea and I lined up to go inside and enter, since we planned ahead his time and bought our tickets online. It was like walking inside a rainbow! There is no other was I could describe how stunning it was. The stain glass throughout laminated the interior white walls in a canvas of colours. The columns in the middle looked like tree trunks and up at the ceiling were beautiful patterns that looked like flowers, which I think were suppose to be the tree’s foliage. We sat and just gawked for about 30 minutes. Once we finished up we made our way back to our hostel, but not before picking up some beach supplies for tomorrow!