to the 4th floor

Thursday was even busier. We really tried to squeeze in so much in the 3 days we had in the city. I wish we would have had even another day to visit Parc Guell, the Olympic Park, and actually go inside some of the art museums we saw only from the outside. But, oh well. Next time. (Sans kids, of course.)

Barcelona is a city proud of their modernista art history. The main character to know is Antoni Gaudi. So we saw his work from the outside at Casa Batllo and right next door we saw Casa Amatller, which is not one of his works, but a relevant building.




Around the opposite corner from those neat looking buildings is Casa Mila, better known as, La Pedrera.


Like I said, we wanted to see so much in Barcelona and we weren't sure how our kids were going to do in art museums. We sure would have loved to go inside these amazing buildings. But, what we really wanted to leave time for was the famous Sagrada Familia.
The queue to get inside wrapped around a good part of the building, which was not very fun in the pouring rain, but Marisa loved having her own umbrella and that kept her busy while Natalie fell asleep in the buggy. So it worked out!







I must say that we were a little disappointed what we saw in the inside of the building. The real amazing architecture is all on the outside. But it was still cool to be inside such a famous building.
After we visited the cathedral we ate lunch at the children's park across the street with this as our view.


Sagrada Familia is much more grandeous than my picture can portray.
After lunch we headed to Montjuic. We first took cable cars to the top to visit Castell de Montjuic.
The view of the entire city of Barcelona was so peaceful from the cable car and quite amazing. But the view got 10 times better from the top of Castell de Montjuic.









After that we walked to Palau Nacional...


...where you can get yet another amazing view of Barcelona, the Magic Fountain, the Venetian Towers, and Placa d'Espanya from the front doors.


At this point we had no idea what to do for dinner. As I mentioned before, dinner was always hard in Spain. Spanish food is not even good and dinner is always late at night. So after a couple of days of realising this we didn't feel bad just eating pasta and pizza during our whole holiday.
Because we had no idea what was around or what was even good we found a shopping center where there was this Mexican restaurant that seemed promising. It was such crappy Mexican dinner that it actually, no exaggeration, tasted and smelled like soy sauce. We even glanced over at the cook in the kitchen and he was Asian! haha I can't tell you how much we miss Mexican food! I never thought I would say that. Dreaming of Cafe Rio...
Funny story, as we were sitting there looking around the restaurant and the various "Mexican" items they sold we noticed a Bisquick mix and Aunt Jemima syrup among the items for customers to buy. We took a picture of that with our iphones to show you, but....

Lastly, among one of my favourite moments of this trip was watching the Magic Fountain show with my little family that night. It is this half hour show of a huge water fountain that dances to music and lights. The plaza was FILLED with people yet it was so fun to sit back and take in the ambiance on a peaceful Barcelona night...






Definitely a moment I want to bottle up and keep forever.