Our first stop on today’s tour was on Montjuic (Jewish Mountain) with beautiful views of Barcelona. In this picture we are with our friends, Ruth and Liisa, who joined us on our trip. The gentleman is simply a fellow who came along and photo bombed our photo. Pretty funny! The sculpture behind us is of people doing the Catalonian Sardana Dance.
Montjuic is home of the Olympic Stadium used in the 1992 Olympics. The Miró Museum (Fundació Joan Miró) is also on Montjuic, which we visited after our half day tour. Below is one of his sculptures with the city view in the background. In a distance you can see Mount Tibidabo, the highest point in Barcelona and the site of the Church of the Sacred Heart.
One of the highlights of the day was our visit to the Sagrada Familia. Gaudí became involved in its construction in 1883 taking over the project which began combining Gothic and curvilinear Art Nouveau forms. In 1926 Gaudí died at the age of 73 with less than a quarter of the project completed. Sagrada Família's construction progressed slowly, as it relied on private donations and was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, only to resume intermittent progress in the 1950s. Construction passed the midpoint in 2010 with some of the project's greatest challenges remaining and an anticipated completion date of 2026.
If you look carefully, you can see about 5 specks of blue. Green Peace was staging a protest by hanging on the spires of the church. We never did find out what they were protesting.
Above is a view of the Passion façade and below is a photo of the inside the church.
We ended our day with delicious paella at a lovely restaurant on the waterfront. As we started our long walk home, we were treated to this lovely sunset.
Beautiful! -Lila
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