Barcelona, June 14, 2019

Barcelona, June 14, 2019

by Thomas Barton, 10

I woke up to the sound of my dad telling me to wake up and get dressed for the long day ahead of us. I got up, got dressed and headed downstairs to the smell of fresh pastries and coffee for breakfast to start off the day. Today was jam packed with exciting and fun stuff because my dad took the whole day off from work. We woke up at about eight and were out of the house ready to start our adventure at about eight forty-five because we had to walk to Park Güell for a glance of how Gaudi lived in his exciting lifetime. His house was very different than most houses back then because it had only furniture he designed. The staircase was super cool because it was shaped like a dragon and had a dragon on the rail, he even designed his whole bathroom. He had a really cool garden in his backyard with trees that formed a tunnel with leaves draping over top.

After exploring every last nook and cranny in that house we left and headed toward our next activity, the Park Güell official tour. We were told all about the history of Park Güell and the reasoning on why they built it. The guy was speaking into a mic and our group had an earpiece that we listened in on while we he talked about the park. The guy wasn’t great with the microphone, because every minute he wood move the mic closer and blow my eardrums with how loud he was talking! I learned a lot about Park Güell in that tour and it had so much meaning to it. Park Güell was beautiful and it smelled so good because of all the plants and flowers blooming into their vibrant true identity. I really enjoyed walking around park Güell and if anyone goes to Barcelona you should definitely visit the park. I thought it was really cool that they built a local school in one of the old buildings from when Gaudi was alive. The kids weren’t out of school yet and we saw kids studying in that beautiful park all around and I was thinking the only place I have to study at right next to my school is in the middle of the road.

Once we finished the tour, we walked out of park Güell, and toward the Basilica (mom edit: Sagrada Familia). We had time to spare so we walked around looking for restaurants and looking inside shops until we found the restaurant that we were searching for. This restaurant was one of those restaurants that has all of the different food choices. My mom had a salad and the rest of us had a three course meal with summer salad, our main meal and dessert or coffee for my parents. We thought that the summer salad would be a salad with lettuce and vegetables like tomatoes and other common vegetables on salads. When we got it, there was potatoes, peppers, some other weird stuff, and tuna. In my family all the kids hate tuna, my dad sometimes likes it, and my mom loves tuna so my dad ate most of his food my mom ate a lot of my salad and none of the kids ate any salad. Then we got the second course and my second course was steak but the steak tasted like straight fat! I don’t know if anybody else enjoyed their second course and the third course just tasted like soft serve ice cream so there’s nothing to criticize.

After a dreadful lunch and lots of time wasting we were ready to walk to the Basilica. I was amazed it was humongous and it had so many different patterns, carvings, statues, writings etc. that I was pumped to hear the depressing voice on the audio tour. We had to wait in a long line, but I am really interested in this kind of stuff so I didn’t care. By the way this was also made by Gaudi which means we went to three Gaudi things that day, there’s a real theme going on here planners. This project took at least one hundred years and it will take about seven years from now until it is finished. There are eighteen huge towers, four on three of the sides, one on the other side, four inside of the four sides and one in the middle towering over the city of Barcelona. We got to see a model of the finished project and it is crazy how much detail is put into that thing. Gaudi designed everything on that building, inside that building and on top of that building. Unfortunately he only got too see the underground area finished before he got hit by a tram and died four days later. What I thought was cool was that every carving on that building represents a different story from the Bible. The doors were covered in clovers and plants on the backside and on the front side is an old stone door with different messages carved into it.

When I walked in I was astonished by the size and modern architectural masterpiece. It was very surprising because we went to many cathedrals that trip and none of them were modern at all and this was very modern. I was also very surprised because the exterior was old and medieval, but the interior was modern and new. My favorite part of the Sagrada Familia was the huge, colorful stained glass windows reflecting the bright sun glistening onto them. It was very cool to see the windows reflect bright colors onto the sleek white walls from the side so the air looked colorful and bright. We walked around listening to facts on our audio guides. We also saw an underground chapel where Gaudi’s crypt was showcased but we couldn’t get into that room. The opera had a huge loft with bleachers and music stands above all of the benches and the pulpit. We walked around and listened to the audio tour some more until we listened to the whole inside part and headed out the back door. We saw all of the carvings on the backside of the Sagrada Familia and went into the museum. Once we got bored of the museum we left the Sagrada Familia and found ourselves a taxi.

The taxi driver drove us to our rental house and we picked up our suitcases and drove to our hotel in a different part of Barcelona. We dropped our luggage and went straight to the Picasso museum. My mom was excited, I just didn’t want to listen to an audio tour but once again we had audio tours talking into our ears at all times. I thought it would be kind of cool to see the really famous paintings but it turned out to there was no famous paintings in there. I also thought that it was interesting to see Picasso’s growth and technique throughout the paintings. I don’t really know if I liked the museum but I probably didn’t know because I’ve seen so much other great art this trip.

After walking through the whole museum we started to get hungry and walked down to find a restaurant and get a drink. We stopped at a nice outdoor Mediterranean restaurant and my whole family got a drink. I was hungry but you don’t eat until you’re going to starve to death when you are in Spain so we didn’t eat. We finished up our drinks and headed toward the beach to see how cold water will be in Los Palamos. The water was very cold for the summertime but I’m also used to the Gulf of Mexico in Florida so the water is colder to me. We walked on the beach walk for a long time until our parents agreed that we should find a restaurant. We were in the middle of nowhere by then so it was a long walk back to the hotel. The reason we were going to the hotel is we needed our jackets and there was a lot of food by our hotel. By then all of us were very hungry and we found a nearby restaurant with decent food. The food was okay but it wasn’t great, and after dinner we once again just crashed when we got to the hotel ready to go to bed.

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