We didn’t out of the B&B until late morning 11:00 am or so.

We walked passed ST Paul’s Hospital complex which looked like it contained at University, a major Art Museum as well as a hospital. We only got lost a couple of times. We were glad to have our Ipad Google Maps to show us where we were and that we went the wrong direction again. It was about a 45 minute walk.

Walk to Sagrada Familia

When we got near this Holy Family Church, there was a Jazz Festival in process on the street in front of the Church. We listened for a while before getting in line for tickets. There were no tickets left for the Towers so we got a general admission ticket for 3:45 PM. We went to the McDonald’s across the street for lunch. While we were there, we made a 6:30 PM reservation to go to Gaudi’s Parc Guell.

Sagrada Familia

We entered the Holy Family Church of Sagrada Familia at 3:45 PM.

To say we were impressed is an understatement. As Milly told me “Now I know where the term Gaudy came from”!

After visiting all the Ancient Churches in Rome, Greece, Istanbul and Naples, this was modern, different and very differently inspiring.  This was the capstone Church of our trip – no doubt about it.

We are so grateful to Sherwin Goerlitz who first suggested we go to Barcelona to see this Church and to see Gaudi’s other works. Our daughter Kim also loved Barcelona and confirmed Sherwin’s suggestion. We came, we see and we love!

Another Taste of Gaudi – Park Guell

After leaving the Sagrada Familia, we walked using our Ipad Google Maps to guide us through the streets to Park Guell. This park was designed by Gaudi for his friend Guell. It was designed to be one of the first planned housing communities for the rich. It is quite an impressive design. We saw how Gaudi fashioned trees of rock to hold up walk ways.

Italian Taste in Barcelona

Our landlord had suggested we go to this italian restaurant  up the street. We arrived about 9 PM, a little early for dinner in Spain. No one spoke english and again no menu with english in it. We forgot out Ipad with its translation App tht we could have used.

The staff there were wonderful. They assigned someone to help us with selections as best they could. We must have had 4 people wait on us. The chief even came out to see how we liked our meal. Milly had an Sir Lanka Clam dish that was excellent. Fred had roast beef that was good as well as some spaghetti that was excellent, We shared dishes. We polished off bottles of red and white house wine.

We noticed that no one else had come in. We were there only customers. We actually had a broken english conversation about how this group was trying to get the restaurant established in this area.

The Catholic Answers group had a farewell party on 10/16/2014 from 8 to 9 pm before we pulled into Rome and departed the cruise ship the next morning. It was fun to say a fond farewell to about 100 people with whom we had dined, attended lectures and walked with on many shore excursions.

We left the ship at 6:45 Am, took a shuttle bus to edge of Rome’s cruise port -Civitavecchia. From there, we walked to the train station, bought train tickets to airport. We took a train to major train hub –  Trastevere. From there we connected to a train to Fiumicino Airport. When we got to airport terminal 3, we had a little trouble finding where to check our bags for our Vueling Airlines flight to Barcelona. We caught our 2 pm flight, arrived in Barcelona at 4:30, took a cab to our B&B.

We are staying at El Faro BnB, Carrer de la Vinya 3, 08041 Barcelona España.

For the price, this is a great place! There are 3 rooms sharing common areas. Everything is relatively small but comfortable. We have only met the people in the other rooms as they were leaving to go out. We have had the place to ourselves when we have been there.

We got advice on a good spanish restaurant for our first night’s dinner. We walked following the general directions we got looking for a red lobster sign. When we finally found it, it was very crowded even though we were early at 9 pm for dinner. We decided to find something else. We ended up at an Asian Restaurant. They spoke no english and had no english on their menu. We managed to order a typical chinese dinner. The Rice was good! The rest was passible.

We got a good night’s sleep. We languished in the morning. We didn’t head out until late morning, almost noon. We needed a break I guess and we both knew it.

Our B&B Barcelona

Our “home” in Barcelona was  close to our first place to visit – Gaudi’s Holy Family Church: