Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Saturday: Sagrada Familia, Magic Fountain, and Barceloneta

As promised, I'm working on catching up. On Saturday, my dad and boyfriend and I decided to hit the highlights that I'd already determined, which included the Sagrada Familia and the Magic Fountain.

We started out with the Sagrada Familia, but this time we were a bit more daring than we'd been when I went with my friend. It's supposed to be the case that there is an option for paying to take the elevator up to the top or taking the stairs for free, but for some reason (hm, I wonder why?), the free stairs option wasn't available. Well, a little thing like that never stopped us. Some people came out the exit of the stairs (even though you pay to take the elevator up, you still take the stairs down), and we made the best of the situation. It was more than a little cramped trying to get up the very narrow spiral staircase while other people were trying to get down:

But we managed. And the views were even sweeter this way:

By this time, I was starting to feel hungry and a little cranky (I didn't know it at the time, but I was starting to get sick), so we went to a vegetarian chain restaurant called Maoz which serves delicious falafels to which you can add your own toppings from their self-serve topping bar. Then we made our way over to the Magic Fountain by way of Plaça Reial, the Barcelona Cultural Center (on Las Ramblas), and a dessert place that we got to just in time to order some delicious arroz con leche (basically rice pudding, with cinnamon and sugar, literally rice with milk).

There were tons more people at the Magic Fountain this time than there were the last time I went. I'm not sure why. We got seats on the steps behind the fountain, near some nuns:

The fountain was great, as expected. Here's a picture where it looks like molten lava:

After the fountain, we decided to take the metro to Barceloneta, which is the beach area in the city. The Barceloneta beach was man-made for the Olympics in 1992, and it's not as nice as the beaches outside the city, but it has a bit more nightlife. We walked along, got some ice cream, and then called it a night. I was very ready to go to sleep!

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