Honeymoon in Spain – Barcelona

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May 12
Barcelona, Spain 

I’ll be honest. By the time we got to Barcelona, I’d given up speaking Spanish. Really, there was no point speaking the little Spanish I know (Castilian) because they speak a different sort of Spanish (Catalan) in Barcelona – a mix of French and Spanish. But it didn’t matter, because everyone seemed to speak English. Also, I trained myself to use the lisp (Barcelona as “Barthelona”), but it’s not as prominent as I’d expected.

The thing about Barcelona for me is that there are so many languages, and so many tourists, I really had no concept of where I was. I could have been anywhere in terms of the people. But the architecture is all Barcelona, thanks to Antoni Gaudi.

First on the agenda for Barcelona was to take in Gaudi’s masterpiece, the Segrada Familia. The story is quite interesting. Construction of the cathedral began in the 1880s – regarding the timeline, Gaudi said, “Don’t worry, my client isn’t in a hurry.” The project stopped in the 1920s when Gaudi was killed by a tram outside the cathedral (Gaudi was actually living in the building). He looked so disheveled, that the rescue workers didn’t recognize Gaudi and he was almost buried as a John Doe. Someone recognized him eventually and he was buried in the Segrada Familia. After his death, the project stopped. Construction picked up again in the 1950s and the structure is expected to be complete in 2026.

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