cathedral | Southern European Sojourn

When we spent a few days in Barcelona 5 years ago, at the end of our Camino Portugues, we did quite a few touristy things including visiting Montserrat, La Rambla & the Cathedral, the beach near where we were staying and Gaudi’s Casa Battlo. We also ate a lot of tapas. This time, at the end of 5 weeks of travelling, we’ve seen about as much touristy stuff as we can take, but there were gaps in our Gaudi experience so we concentrated on filling them a bit.

After sorting out our rental car extension at the Avis counter at BCN airport, we headed straight to Park Guell as it was on the way to our campground. Greg has been using a very handy app and website called Parkopedia to find us parking in cities, towns and at tourist places where getting a park can be tricky, difficult or (often!) impossible. Everywhere around Park Guell was crowded, partly because it’s a residential area, but also because the day we went was a public holiday. So we headed to a parking station a few blocks away. Easy. We took our lunch to the park and joined lots of other people out and about enjoying the weather and the park. When Gaudi designed it right at the beginning of the 20th Century, the area was located outside of Barcelona. A wealthy count purchased a tree-covered hillside and commissioned Gaudi to design up to 60 houses for wealthy people in landscaped grounds, but it was a commercial flop and abandoned in 1914. It was purchased by the city in 1922 for use as a public park. Gaudi spent most of the last 20 years of his life in a house in the park which is now used as a Gaudi museum of memorabilia and some of his furniture from his home and others he designed.

The following day, Friday, we visited Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece Basilica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia The Church of the Holy Family. Wow, what an incredible place! Nothing I write could even begin to describe it, but Greg’s photos will probably give some idea. However I will just say that if you visit Barcelona and only see one thing, it should be this place. It is absolutely awesome, in the true sense of that oft-misused word.

We’ve spent the last few days camping at Camping Barcelona, which is about 35kms north of the city. It’s easily the best campground we’ve stayed at in Spain. Lovely sites, excellent facilities, late check-out – we can stay until 8pm on the day we leave. The campground offers a regular, frequent bus service into Mataro the nearest town, plus a bus to Barcelona and will organise tours to popular tourist places including La Sagrada Familia and Montserrat. They have a bar, restaurant, mini-market, nice looking swimming pool and give discounts for stays of longer than 5 days. Wifi is included in the camping fee and it’s good and fast. We paid a bit extra for power. It’s been lovely staying here.

Plenty of sign of Catalan agitation at Spain

Looking down to Barcelona from Park Guell

la Sagrada Familia showing the old Nativity gate versus the newer extension

la Sagrada Familia Glory gate, a long way from completion, it started in 2002

la Sagrada Familia the top of the Passion gate

la Sagrada Familia stained glass windows on the western side

la Sagrada Familia, the stained glass in the afternoon throwing colours throughout the church

la Sagrada Familia eastern stained glass

When the cheap hotel room doesn’t have enough chairs, table, stove, pressure cooker and more, you just bring them instead

It was the best of times, it was …. oops, wrong cities, wrong centuries.

On Friday we visited the amazing Seville Cathedral, then on Saturday we visited the even more incredible Mezquita – the Mosque-Cathedral in Cordoba. Seville Cathedral is huge, third largest Christian church in the world, the largest cathedral (because the other 2 are not the seats of bishops) and the largest Gothic church. Like many of Spain’s churches, the site was originally a mosque, and the mosque’s minaret, El Giradillo, still stands beside it. The rest of the original mosque was knocked down in the early 15th century, and when the Cathedral was completed 100 years later, it was the largest church in the world by volume. Some sources claim that it still is.

The tomb of Christopher Columbus is a major point of interest. It’s very impressive for its size and there has been a long-standing debate over whether the remains are actually Columbus’ (DNA says they are). Also impressive is the cathedral’s collection of art and treasure, including a very decorative crown which contains the second-largest pearl in the world, and is used during the Feast of the Assumption. Another surviving remnant of the original 12th Century mosque is the Patio de los Naranjos Oranges, a lovely cool open area with a large fountain in the centre.

We walked a few blocks to the Plaza de Espana and the adjoining Parque de Maria Luisa. The Plaza was built for the 1929 Exposicion Iberoamericana and has fountains, mini-canals with boats for hire and a huge curved brick & tile building showcasing Seville tilework. It was a hot day and we opted to sit under a huge Australian Grevillea Robusta in the park rather than walk around the Plaza. Then we headed back to the car via the river. We’re listening to the audiobook of Ken Follet’s Column of Fire, Part 3 of his Kingsbridge series, and the Rio Guadalquiver is mentioned several times as an important asset to Seville because ships were the main form of transport to and from the city. It has silted up over the centuries, but is still an impressive body of water.

On the way back to our Airbnb, we drove a slightly different way and came to a deserted suburb. There were tram tracks with a big bridge going to who knows where, parking area, roads, street lights … everything except houses. We’ve been through another Spanish ghost town where there were houses, some finished and empty, others never finished, but this suburb with everything but the houses was really different.

We’re heading north now, towards Madrid andSegovia, and will then head west back to Barcelona. This post is getting a bit long, so I’ll write about Cordoba later.

Southern European Sojourn

Tag Archives: cathedral

Barcelona & Gaudi

A Tale of Two Churches – Seville