A double decker bus, cathedrals, and museu de la xocolata

Yesterday was a day of adventure. We started off wondering through as many back alleys as possible, looking for breakfast. After eating we wondered through Paca de Catalunya, which is a big tourist shopping area. It was nice, but we were in the mood for sight seeing. So we got tickets and hoped onto one of these double-decker buses:

These are the kind of sight seeing buses where, once you have bought tickets you may get on and off at any of a number of stops along the way. The bus goes past many interesting sights. My favorite, a side from castles, are cathedrals.

 
Barcelona has a particularly amazing cathedral, de Sangrada Familia. It is the dream of Antoni Gaudi, one of Barcelona's most influential architects. It takes up an entire city block, is really tall, and is only about halfway done despite having been steadily worked on for the last 130 years. We only walked around the outside. You can get tickets to go in, but when we got there the line was literally half way around the building (it looked like it translated into 3 hours of waiting in line). The outside is still amazing, I particularly liked the difference in appearance between the rear facade (maybe 20 years old) and the front facade (about 130 years old).

We saw many other landmarks, including a few other buildings designed by Gaudi (the only one I got an okay picture of was the dragon gate, one of his first designs) and Barcelona's football/sports arena (which I believe they said was the largest in Europe). I learned it is really hard to take a picture with a tablet while riding a bus (even if it is stopped).

We did get off and walk the 10 minutes up hill to Park Guell, a park designed and then dedicated to Guadi. We wandered around the free area for about an hour, enjoying the architecture and the amazing view of the city (non of which I got a picture of). Unfortunately, by the time we got in line for tickets to the section you pay for, they were announcing than no more people could go in until 4pm (16:00).

After the bus, we took a little rest back at our apartment before heading out again to Museu de la Xocolata. Why, yes this is a museum all about chocolate! This city just keeps getting better and better =D. Your ticket is a chocolate bar, there are huge chocolate sculptures, there are three short films on the history of chocolate, and the gift shop is (of course) a chocolate shop.  We enjoyed thick Spanish style hot chocolate, with a sponge cake type finger cookie for dipping. It was delicious!

 

I would say that despite the jet lag and not getting in to the inner part of Park Guell, it was a wildly successful day.
Today, we are on the buses again (we got a two day pass). This time we will be exploring the southern part of the city with it's parks and beaches.

Till next time,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee