Day 7 - Barcelona. Long overnight drive including a 6-hour sleep stop at a rest area (I am learning, this one went perfectly). Now to explore Barcelona - half day today, likely 3/4 day tomorrow. Then final stop is Madrid with another overnight drive most likely. I book a hotel that is advertised as 'rooms' - it's a building in a residential neighborhood some distance from the center but close to a couple subway stations. This would be kind of like if I lived here. Another cramped parking garage for the car, then I'm off to explore on foot.
A big (primary?) part of all the traveling and experience is learning. About everything. When visiting St Michaels cave on Gibraltar the day before, my reaction was 'it's a cathedral. this is what they are all based on'. Now seeing Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in person, the influence is obfious to me.
Right down to the stalactites and even the color of the rock. Whether it was that particular cave that provided the inspiration, I don't know. Overall, the structure is impressive. It's been under construction for almost 150 years and is still not quite done. Just the project management across multiple generations of builders is amazing to me.
The original plan was to tour the interior today, but not everything goes according to plan. I ended up having to buy the ticket twice. You have to download the app, which is easy. It asks for name, email, phone - presumably for spam later. Then you select times and pay. What I didn't realize is that instead of just downloading the ticket like every other app, this one emails you the ticket rather than just load it as you would expect. So you need access to the email from the phone, and I gave them one that I don't have phone access to. There is a way to stand in line and print a paper ticket if you have the confirmation code - but I back-arrowed in the app looking for ticket download without taking a screenshot of the code. Oh well. On the upside, the ticket that I actually got to use is tomorrow at 9 am, right at opening. Should be far less crowded. Off to explore in the meantime. I get a hop-on-hop-off bus tour ticket, and hop off at the first stop. It's an old hospital that is now a museum, but appears to have some ongoing operations as well.
There is even a 100 year old X-ray machine.
Then I end up waiting 40 minutes to 'hop on' back on the bus, which is supposed to come every 10 minutes or so. Not wanting to risk further delays I just stay on for the rest of the loop, and then change to the other loop and complete that too.
As the sun sets and wind picks up, it gets really cold on the open upper deck of the bus but I tough it out because the view is better. Bus tour completed, I buy a 48 hour transit card and catch the metro back to the hotel to warm up before heading out again.
Now layering up and grabbing a windproof outer shell, I take the metro to the harbor which looked interesting from the bus.
Quite tired from all the walking, but I'm now more familiar with how the public transport works and take better advantage of it. Tomorrow is another busy day.
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