Barcelona: Churches, cathedrals, and more churches!

We made it into Barcelona and ate like a Spaniard! Okay, not as catchy as walking like Ramses... Anyway, we had paella at restaurant recommended by a cop at 11:30pm. I had the seafood variety with squid, octopus, clams, mussels, lobster, and crab. Sudha had the more pedestrian vegeterian variety, but it was still good. Huge portions and kinda pricy -- it's not easy to eat cheap in Spain if you want to try things at decent places.

We got a late start and didn't get out of the hotel until noon. We didn't actually have a destination in mind, so we just wandered until we finally hit a couple of churches. Now I remeber one thing about my last European road trip -- you quickly get church-ed out!

Nonetheless, we continued on to La Sagrada Familia, mostly because it was touted as one of the last works of Gaudi. Gaudi is a Barcelona famous for his innovative style using mathematical shapes and contours (e.g. hyperboloids and other conic sections) as well as incorporation of various objects of nature into his works. Admission to the church was ridiculous -- 11 euros (we paid 2 more for admission into a Gaudi park which we'll go to tomorrow). As it is admission to many attractions here in Spain is ridiculously expensive. Here, I don't think it was even worth it. The church is still under construction, particularly in the interior, and you can see a lot of it from outside. And then they try to charge you more (2.50 euros) to take a lift up the towers, which we passed on. While it was interesting to see the work close up, especially once we learned about what was behind the designs, it wasn't worth that much. Turns out, though, that two other Gaudi buildings we passed on the way back were even more expensive! Anyway, here's a pic of the Sagrada as well as another Gaudi building. We'll probably have a lot more Gaudi tomorrow.

The rest of the day wasn't too exciting, just a lot of walking. We went down the shopping street which felt like 5th Avenue in NY. I peeked in Zara; the weak dollar could really be seen as everything was so expensive. We ended up walking 8 miles today, made a bit more due to my indecisiveness in picking a dinner place -- tapas aren't as exciting when you're the only one choosing meat ones...

Tomorrow will be another busy day! A lot to see, but we'll see how much we get to. We'll be off in the evening on the night train to Granada...