Lip Parade: Hola España

The afternoon after our big night out Ray and I visited this underground museum which displayed the excavated ruins of the ancient Roman city of Barcino. This museum was recommended to us by our walking tour guide, who told us it was free on Sunday afternoons. This was lucky as if we had paid for it I would have felt severely ripped off. The thrill of looking at ancient ruins wears off after the fourth sign that says "this is a brick that could have been part of a wall that was used for this purpose, but we don't really know"...

/Ruins of Barcino

That night was definitely our best in Barcelona (or at least a close second to Bon Iver). We attended a cooking class that involved eating tapas and drinking sangria while you learn to make paella, then proceed to make your own sangria and keep drinking free sangria until you pass out or are asked to leave.
Luckily our case was the second. Well ok, maybe we weren't ASKED to leave but by the time they start charging you for your drinks and you knock over the fifth glass of the evening all on the one table you sort of sense it in their tone. We weren't drinking alone which hopefully makes it less disgraceful. We met two couples our age, one from Zurich and the other from Adelaide, all of whom joined in on multiple drinking games and drunken deep and meaningful conversations.

/Tapas /Paella making and eating /New Adelaidian besties

Needless to say we needed another sleep-in the next morning. After lunch we had planned to take a walking tour of the various buildings of Barcelona designed by Antoni Gaudi. But because the tour didn't start until 4:30 pm and we had 2 hrs to spare we thought we would jump ahead to the Basílica de la Sagrada Familila, probably Gaudi's most famous building, so that we could do the inside before we went on the free walking tour which would only take us past it. When we got there the line stretched all the way around half of the building but we found what looked like an ATM that was actually selling tickets through Ticketmaster. Perfect right? Well it would have been if the thing wasn't so damn confusing that the four people in front of us all took about 10 mins each before getting their tickets. When it was finally our turn we had equal difficulty, as the only time slot that we couldn't seem to book tickets for was also the only time slot that we could make in time after our tour.

We abandoned this endeavor to race back to where the tour was scheduled to start but all of our messing around meant that we were 10 mins late and had missed it. We decided to head back out to the Sagrada Familia anyway and go to the tour in the morning. This time there was no line at the ATM thing and we booked for the current time slot, allowing us to walk in past all the suckers waiting in the heat. People really need to get their acts together and get on the Internet for this stuff. It's about the third place I have been to in Europe where I have booked tickets online and walked in past hundreds of people queuing to get in the same place.
The basilica was AMAZING. Some of the most amazing architecture I have seen in my life and the lighting cast around the pristine white interior by the stained glass was magical. It's one of the benefits of seeing a building that despite being commissioned over 100 years ago is still being completed- it makes you imagine what places like Notre Dame would have looked like when they were new.
As well as using up all the battery on my digital camera, I used a whole roll of film on my Diana and I can't wait to see how the pictures turn out.

/Not even close to being all of the photos I took in the Sagrada Familila

The next morning it was time to check out, and we hurried to try and get ready for the 11am Gaudi walking tour. But with so much else needing to be done we again missed the timeslot, so we carried on to the Parc Güell independently of the tour. We were joined by another Australian guy who was staying in our hostel who was really nice and had been on a bike tour the day before, so he was able to narrate a bit of the history for us.