Barcelona, Spain

The day after Christmas, we managed to sneak away to both Barcelona and Paris.  We spent two nights in Barcelona and one in Paris.  We had to make the trips much shorter than I would have prefered and therefore saw less, but we decided to take advantage of how easy it is to country-hop in Europe with our visitors.

Look, no snow!

View from the top of La Sagrada Familia.

My favorite thing about Barcelona besides the weather was the architecture.  The number one thing I wanted to see while I was in Barcelona was La Sagrada Familia, a cathedral designed by the architect Gaudi.  Gaudi is a local sensation and one can enjoy his buildings all over Barcelona.  The city of Barcelona has been building this cathedral since 1882 and it is still about 15 years from completion.

Its facade looks like a mountain climbing out of the middle of the city.

It wouldn't all fit in one photo.

Construction cranes be gone!

The passion facade.

Completely different styling from the other facade.

Inspired by nature.

La Sagrada Famila was consecrated just this last Nov.

Nave with tree-like columns.

Casa Batlló, more Gaudi.

The other highlight of Barcelona was the food and wine.  Our goal was to eat tapas and pallella in Spain, which we did, but the real star of our culinary experience was Spanish sausage and wine.  After sightseeing all day we ended up in a standing room only, hole-in-the-wall restaurant and stuffed ourselves silly with delicious food while only spending about 10 Euro each.

Sangria!

Notice the yummy pile of undisolved sugar at the bottom of his glass.

Delicious dinner at Can Paixano. 

Dripping deliciousness.

We orded one of almost every kind of sausage they had on this menu.

Trying not to spill our wine in the standing room only venue was a challenge.

Later on that day, Paella and even more sangria.

Does this look like a cat being grilled to anyone else?

And because it was so weird and unexpected, here's a video of a boat we saw while walking around the water.