Barcelona, Spain - Sunday October 26, 2014

Our hotel, the Jazz Hotel had a great package online, that included breakfast.  After our eggs, bacon, toast, cake, juice and coffee, we were on our way by 10 AM.  Today we were walking to the famous Gaudi Church, The Sagrada Familia. We took a slow walk, passing many shops, but all the shops were closed today .............. Sunday.  Along our stroll we passed two more great buildings designed by Antoni Gaudi.  The Casa Batllo and La Pedrera.  The lines to visit inside both buildings were incredible......we are amazed at the amount of tourists in Barcelona at this time of year.  Since we are in Barcelona for only two and a half days, we were not going to spend hours waiting on lines.  I took some photos of both buildings from the outside and we continued on to the Sagrada Familia.  We did not have to contend with lines here, since we had already purchased our tickets online.  Both the exterior and the interior of this church were magnificent.  The building of this Gaudi designed church began in 1882 and is still not finished.  The building continues, using Gaudi's original ideas.  As I had said yesterday, one has to actually visit and see this structure to really appreciate it.  Words cannot explain what one sees here.  In addition to visiting the inside of the church, we took an elevator to the top of one of the main towers.  The view of the city of Barcelona was magnificent as was viewing parts of the church.  After our visit here we walked back to the hotel for some rest and to pack and get ready for the beginning of the cruise tomorrow.  It is hard to believe that we have already traveled for three weeks in Spain, renting a car for two of them,  and now ending in Barcelona.  We had a super time traveling around the major cities of Spain and seeing the countryside, but we are definitely looking forward to relaxing for two weeks on the cruise.  The ship has five port stops in Spain before crossing the Atlantic on the way to Fort Lauderdale.

This might actually be the last major post for the blog, since Internet access on the ship is somewhat limited and very, very expensive.  Perhaps if I can access wifi in some of the ports, I might be able to update the blog briefly.  If not, I will post some notes, thoughts and photos once we arrive back in Florida.  For those of you that followed our trip, I hope you enjoyed reading the blog and seeing the photos as much as Gail and I enjoyed traveling for the past three weeks.

Adios for now!