Ryan and I recently had a fantastic trip. This all started a few months ago when Ron Hughes asked Ryan to return to Madrid with him at the beginning of November to teach at a seminary there. Ryan's done this a couple of times before, and really enjoys this trip. He typically goes in February. They moved the trip around though so I could join him. We were both very excited about that! Then we started thinking that our 20th anniversary is coming up in January. We knew we wanted to take a trip to celebrate, but we just weren't sure what. This gave us the idea to add a special anniversary trip on since we were already going all the way over to Spain. We found a wonderful cruise with Norwegian which left out of Barcelona and cruised around parts of the Mediterranean. It sounded perfect for us!
We left on a Thursday night and flew overnight to Amsterdam; we had a couple hours layover before flying on to Barcelona. We were able to get to our hotel mid-afternoon. We knew we needed to keep moving and not fall asleep in order to adjust and beat jet lag. We walked around a good bit, and walked through a shopping mall. We especially like the food hall section of this as we started seeing all sorts of yummy treats! It was early evening but we were starting to fade quickly. Unfortunately, most places don't open for dinner until much later, so we just went back to our hotel for a bite. We stayed awake for a little after that, but then we both fell fast asleep until Saturday morning.
Saturday was gorgeous. We had arranged a walking tour from 9-1 with a local tour guide. Jim is an American professor who married a Spaniard and moved over a decade over. He was able to give us a ton of historical information as he showed us some interesting architecture around town. We saw several of Antoni Gaudi's famous works which was really neat.
We walked to the famous monument to Christopher Columbus. I loved on the outside of the Tourism Board building are Pablo Picasso sketches. No big deal.
We visited a couple of cathedrals which I always love. They are so different and yet they are typically so beautiful. This was the Basilica of Our Lady of Mercy. They were actually holding mass, so we just stayed in the bag to observe for a moment.
After that we visited the Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar which was lovely.
An excavation site found lots of Roman ruins which I always find fascinating.
After saying goodbye to Jim, we found our way over to the famed Sagrada Familia Cathedral. We realized the timed tickets available meant we couldn't go in for a couple of hours. We almost decided not to wait, but decided against it. We walked around the area and found a sandwich shop for lunch. Then we stopped for some fabulous churros topped with Nutella, and we enjoyed them in a cute little park. So yummy!
Our ticket time came up, so we headed on over to go in. We were so thankful for another beautiful day to be out and about!
We really weren't fans of the outside of this cathedral. It reminded us of a drip sandcastle! The inside though was absolutely stunning. It caught us both by surprise. Your eyes can't help but be drawn upwards towards Heaven. I could have stared at the stained glass for hours. This was truly breathtaking.
The four main posts near the alter held these mosaics at the top to represent the four gospels.
As you walk out of the cathedral, there's a lovely etching on the ground showing Palm Sunday in Jerusalem. Here's half of it.
The doors on the way out are pretty amazing. Each is hand carved, and it tells the passion story from John on them.
The passion story is told through carvings on the outside too. It was too big for me to get in one picture! To the right of this was the outside of the cathedral, and I thought it was a very pretty section of the building. Under this section was a museum that told more about Gaudi and how this cathedral has been built. It started in 1926; they are hoping it will be completed later this decade which would mean it will take a little more than 100 years to build.
It was such an enjoyable day in Barcelona. We loved exploring this city as neither of us had been before. When evening arrived, we walked down and found a delicious hamburger joint. As we walked back to our hotel, we stumbled into a town square. It was filled with people eating outside together and kids playing in the square. It was so vibrant and filled with life; it was great to see after the craziness of the pandemic. We stopped for some gelato and enjoyed it while people watching in the square. It was the perfect way to end the evening.
Sunday morning arrived, so we packed up our things and jumped on the shuttle to the port. We had an easy check-in process for the Norwegian Epic and went to our room. The balcony had a great view of Barcelona for us.
We were ready to start the cruise!
