Barcelona, Spain – Tuesday, January 4

Last updated on January 15th, 2022 at 06:06 pm

Iconic Barcelona

Discover Barcelona’s most iconic landmarks on a relaxing drive and a leisurely walk around this impressive city. You will pass the Columbus Monument and Port Vell, the seaside cultural and shopping complex. Admire the Arc de Triomf, a stately remnant from the 1888 World’s Fair and take in the breathtaking Parc de la Ciutadella, once home to the garrison that protected the city. Next, you will alight your motor coach and walk into the historic center, stopping to view the stunning neo-Gothic Barcelona Cathedral. The facade of this 14th-century marvel is adorned with many sculptures including a wide range of animal and mythical gargoyles on its roof. After a short-guided walking tour though the Gothic Quarter, you will return to the ship.

Link to the La Sagrada Familia website to see the history and take a virtual tour.

We got to Barcelona overnight, as we usually have as we’ve traveled from on port to the next. Somewhere along the line, our included tour of Barcelona was moved from morning to afternoon, so that provided us with the opportunity to get a little bit organized for disembarkation tomorrow morning. In fact, our luggage that we want Viking to transport from here to the airport has to be out in the hallway by 10:30 tonight. Joyce did some laundry, Alan worked on getting pictures sorted and organized as well as identifying which of the many documents we’ve received need to stay with us, and which can go with us as virtual images. We had a leisurely breakfast and lunch along the way.

Our Iconic Barcelona tour was a mixture of a bus tour and a walking tour. Bus tours have been somewhat hit or miss, and in the bigger cities, they are not our favorite thing. Getting oriented as to where we are is difficult, and many of the attractions are right up against the streets, so if they are on the other side of the bus, forget seeing it, and if they are on your side, it’s often difficult to make out what we are to see. When you sit toward the middle to the back of the bus, it sometimes gets frustrating when the guide, sitting in the front and seeing out the big front windows, describes something that we will never see from our vantage point.

This excursion started in much the same way. We heard about boat-building structures that were utilized several centuries ago and have now been adapted for new uses. We came around the Christopher Columbus monument that was to be an anchor for those exploring on their own (which we would not have time for with an afternoon tour). We drove along the ocean front, and saw public, outdoor gyms, to encourage fitness in an amazing setting. We also saw a number of buildings that were used for various purposes during the 1992 Olympics, including the athletes housing. Barcelona has some innovative, modern architecture, and we went by multiple buildings of all shapes (some suggestive!) and sizes, with a variety of building materials. Mixed in throughout were statues, sculptures, and fountains.

We made our way toward our first stop, a walk to the Catholic basilica, La Sagrada Familia (the Sacred Family). Near our exit point, we drove past the bull-fighting arena, adorned with lots of blue and white tile, but again, close to the bus, and unable to be as appreciated as it probably deserved. Bull fighting is no longer legal in Barcelona, so the structure is used for things like trade shows and concerts.

We had about a 10-minute walk from the bus drop-off to the church. The streets were fairly crowded with auto traffic, but the sidewalks fairly wide and in good condition, and the buildings looked to be largely from the mid-20th century.

The façade of the church rose above the buildings and we caught several glimpses of it as we walked. Dominating the skyline was a huge crane that towered above the spires, which dominated the rest of the sky by themselves. When we were told that this was a church under construction, the crane reinforced that. From a distance, the building had a brown, almost adobe look to it. Once we were right in front of it, a lot of that impression changed.

We were first in front of the Nativity Façade. Antonin Gaudi, the genius architect, took over the project a year after the original neo-Gothic design was proposed, and cornerstone was laid. That was 1883. Gaudi was described by our guide as an amazing architect, artist, and theologian.

His vision resulted in a church that is unlike any we’ve seen before. A mixture of marble, limestone, statues, and mosaics grace each side of the structure. It was very clear that there was an enormous amount of thought put into the placement and content of each of the sculptures. In the same manner of the medieval churches we’ve seen throughout Europe, the sculptures and paintings are designed to tell the stories of the Bible, even if you don’t know the written/spoken language. There are also a number of other symbolic aspects, many of which we simply didn’t retain as we heard so many different things. Clearly, a return visit is in order!

Gaudi died in 1926, but before he died, he implemented a construction schedule that almost guaranteed that his wild plans would have to be fully implemented. He did this largely by building more from the outside, in. This would discourage stopping short because there was a fully functional church inside, and the unusual exterior would be out of place if the whole vision wasn’t implemented. This plan took a hit during the Spanish Civil war in the mid-1930’s, when the structure was vandalized, plans and photographs burnt, and plaster models smashed. There were enough plans and photographs salvaged that construction could resume in 1939. By 1952, the Nativity façade was completed enough to be lit for the first time.

On the opposite side is the Passion façade. While the Nativity side shows episodes from the angel’s announcement to Mary to the birth of Jesus to the escape to Egypt, the Passion side has sculptures that depict the scenes from Jesus’s final week, including the Last Supper, Gethsemane, the trials, the crucifixion, and the resurrection and ascension. The Romans were often portrayed by very angular figures. Again, there was something significant to see, no matter where you looked.

Above it all are many towers and spires. Many of them are topped with colorful mosaics, something we had never seen before. The towers for Jesus and Mary finally surpassed the height of the towers on the Passion and Nativity facades in 2020. There was a pause in construction for Co-Vid 19, and when work resumed, all the efforts were put into finishing the 2nd tallest tower, for the Virgin Mary, at 138 meters. On December 8, 2021, the star of the Virgin Mary was in place and lighted for the first time.

The final façade, representing Heaven, is yet to be completed. Our guide estimated that the whole project might not be completed before about 2035. I guess we can plan a return trip when we are 80!

We didn’t get the chance to go inside (return trip!), but we did stop at a nearby restaurant for a provided beverage and bathroom stop. We did a little souvenir shopping to commemorate our visit to Barcelona before heading back to the bus.

On the bus, we went through some combined shopping and residential areas of mostly 4 to 7 story buildings, many built in the 19th and 20th centuries. In Barcelona, it is expected that your apartment will have a balcony, and most all did.

We had one last dinner in The Restaurant with Doris and got to say farewell to Made and Jane who took such good care of us there. We did our final packing, got our luggage in the hallway, and settled down for a short night’s sleep before disembarking at 7:30 am. Christmas decorations were still present in a lot of locations. One of the outstanding buildings was a Gaudi apartment building that had a flowing, almost organic look to it, with the balcony railings made out of twisted, completely unique metal shapes. Even the wrought iron street lamps had stone mosaic benches built in as a part of the base.

We made our way past the brick Arc de Triompf, a remnant of the 1888 World’s fair, as well as more fountains and sculptures, some very modern. This was quite a contrast to how we started the trip in Greece!

We got off the bus again near the Post Office, and in front of Little Caesar’s Pizza! Off we went, down what I would have called an alley, but was very typical of streets in the Gothic Quarter. We passed men enjoying conversation and coffee sitting in the tiny squares, children playing on scooters, FedEx deliveries made by bike, and small bodegas and other kinds of retail establishments. The streets were amazingly clean, with some graffiti as we had seen throughout the Mediterranean.

We eventually came to a larger square that had the City Hall on one side and the Catalonian government building opposite. We saw lots of yellow and red flags, and learned some about the split in the Catalonian people about continuing to be a state of Spain and to become and independent republic. We learned about a special Christmas-time treat, a bar nougat-like candy as well as a store dedicated to Catalonian footwear, espadrilles.

We were making good time, so our guide took us to a square outside a church and church school. We looked at the main doors and the apparent bullet marks all around. Our guide told us that for a number of years, the story was that this was a location that Franco forces had brought dissidents to be executed. After WWII, the true story came out that the square had been bombed by allies of Franco in 1938, and 42 children from the school who had taken refuge in the tunnels under the square had been killed by the blast. The marks on the wall were actually from bomb shrapnel. Apparently killing children was considered more heinous than killing dissidents.

We continued on our way to the actual true cathedral of Barcelona. While not as grand as La Sagrada Familia, it was still an impressive structure from the outside, with many carvings and windows, though not nearly as impressive as the basilica. This church was near the medieval castle and residence of the king, as well as the building that had been the prison. We made our way back to the bus passing a number of old buildings and seeing some of the remains of the old city wall. It was clear that an effort is being made to preserve the old, making it useful to modern citizens, as well as incorporating old materials into new spaces.

There was a beautiful sunset as the bus made its way back to the ship.

We had one last dinner in The Restaurant with Doris and got to say farewell to Made and Jane who took such good care of us there. We did our final packing, got our luggage in the hallway, and settled down for a short night’s sleep before disembarking at 7:30 am.