Day 6

Day six of our trip was the last real touristy day and the last real day for photos. Trevor had started to come down with a cold Sunday night, and by the end of day six, both of us were pretty sick. But this was Christmas Eve, it was sunny and 60 degrees, (perfect!) so we packed it full of lots of good site-seeing!

We made our way first to Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi cathedral. It was really one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. It's very organic looking and feeling; it seems as though there was a tremendous hunk of stone in the middle of the city, and Gaudi just carved this out of it. It rises into the air in an almost gravity-defying way. The inside was unfinished (it's scheduled, I think, for another forty years of construction), but the columns were all complete, as was some of the stained glass.







Carved into the outside of the cathedral were Biblical stories (seemingly all of them, moving upwards chronologically), which was fabulous.






We left the cathedral and walked to an apartment building Gaudi had also designed. We only saw the outside--there was a block-long line to get in--but it was really interesting.



Our final Gaudi stop was to his Parc Guell, a public park he designed, much in his well known mosaic tile style. It was just perfect there, though awfully high (Trevor cajoled me to climb every stair and hill all the way to the top. I was about to collapse, but it was absolutely worth it.). There was a group of young people having a picnic at the top, which was really pleasant, and there were dogs running all over the place (both Madrid and Barcelona were dog-heavy towns. Henry would have had a ball). On our way back from Parc Guell, we stopped to pick up sandwiches, sodas, and cookies, and ate them on a bench before we took the Metro home. Quite a lovely day.







Our last day in Spain was Christmas day, and although we don't have photos, we had a nice mini-celebration. In the late morning we took sandwiches and cashews to the beach for a picnic, and were pleased to find that the beautiful weather had brought out lots of Spaniards to the beach-front. There were families and couples--just about everyone. It was great. We were going to see 'I am Legend' ('Soy Legundo'!) that evening and meet up with Trevor's cousin again for a Christmas dinner, but I was a fluish, aching mess, so we decided to hang out in the hotel. Trevor went out and picked up some dinner and deeeelicous pastries for dessert (I'm never too sick for sweets. Ever.) topped with little Santas. Fabulous.

The next morning we headed to the airport and home. It was an excellent trip, and I'm already dreaming of where we'll go next!