A Day in the Life of Gaudi

       The next morning we headed out to see the famed church of Gaudi, La Sagrada Famili or The Sacred Family. It has been in the construction phase now for over 100 years. You can see when another decade occurred just like the rings in a tree. The stone becomes lighter. The amazing thing about this church is that it is fully funded by private donation. This is why the church has taken so much time to complete. Jenna made the remark that the church looks like wet sand slowly melting into the earth. I wonder if this church will be finished within my life time. As a souvenir, I bought a tile with the church engraved into it. I have been doing this quite often. I have built up a nice collection of tiles. Maybe one day I will use them to decorate my kitchen. Afterwards, we decided to break for lunch. We found a nice little Tapas Bar. Ali protested because she didn't want to try something she knows she will not like because it is not American food. (I want to make a point here. You never know until you try.)

She didn't want to try something that she wasn't familiar with in her America diet??? She found a KFC to have her lunch. KFC? You can get that at home. We are only here once for all we know and will never return abroad. You need to try food before you say no. I think that the international market of American Fast Food Chains has ruined the experience of foreign food for not so adventurous Americans. On the other hand, Ali would never try anything not American. This is her nature. This nature will fail her to gain the most out of this experience. For me, I would try even the craziest of things if I had the chance over eating a "heart attack" on a bun sandwich.

copy right: Emma Coleman

    We then headed to the famed Parque Guell also designed by Gaudi. We had walk up this steep walk way.....scratch that......We had to climb this hill to enter the park. The park is located on one of the highest hills in Barcelona. It was a pure cardio work out.  Matt, Nicole and Brittany were here two weeks ago. They made this video of them struggling to get to the top of the hill. We almost felt like doing the same. I do have to say that when we did arrive to the park it was like entering a dream. Gaudi was a master of twists and turns with exotic patterns and colors. As we walked around the park we noticed that every single corner had a thoughtful design and layout. Exiting the park, we stopped to enjoy a flute concert.
      We then headed down to the beach that we were trying to find yesterday. It was one of the longest walks ever to the beach but it was one of the cleanest beaches the girls have seen. For me, this was my first time seeing a beach. I have never walked on a beach before. I have never enjoyed the sand between my toes or the peaceful nature one feel just sitting in their own make shift armchair made from sand. I have also never experienced the wide variety of nudity. bahaha Some people should never sun bathe nude. It isn't meant for us all. I was enjoying every moment. Jenna was laughing at me because I looked like a five year old visiting the beach for the very first time. We ended up sunning at the beach for about two hours. An alarming thing at first was that this was a nude beach. Every so often we would walk past a nude sun bather or topless woman taking in the sun. The girls and I had a walk through the waves. We wondered why no one was in the water. Well, we found out why no one was in the water. It was ice cold. The sun, on the other hand, was a welcoming warmth to us. We found a nice spot and parked ourselves to enjoy the view. These guys behind us were trying to roll beers down a make shift sand hill to us. I think that they were trying to invite us to play this said tennis game. They were about our age and probably were interested because of our exotic Ohio Accent. We decided to leave the beach before the sun started to set. We wanted to share pyaya, muscles and blue cheese pizza at one of the restaurants along the beach for sun set.
      Ali again chose to order a hamburger and fries. She did not even want to try a bit of our pyaya. She missed out on a quintessential meal of Spain, especially Barcelona. 

     The next morning we started our journey nice at early at the ripe old hour of 6:30AM. We had to travel to Girona airport three hours away. When we arrived we begged for the border patrol to stamp our passport. They thought that we were childish for wanting it stamped. I talked to this guy for 5 minutes in Spanish telling him about why Americans like to have their passport stamped. In the end, we had to end the conversation because Ryanair decided to change our departure time and move it up. Then they changed the gate three times. Needless to say we looked like a "Home Alone" movie running all over the airport.