Nov 19, 2024
We couldn’t leave Barcelona without one more round of the amazing drinking chocolate we’d discovered earlier in the trip. So before diving into Gaudí’s world, we stopped at a local café for breakfast—croissants paired with mugs of that impossibly thick, rich chocolate. It was just as good the second time, and worth every last sip.
Fueled by sugar and happiness, we headed to Barcelona’s masterpiece-in-progress: Gaudí’s Sagrada Família. With audio headsets in hand, we stepped inside and instantly went quiet—no script, just awe. The light-shower of stained glass in every hue, the cathedral columns branching skyward like living trees, and the sheer scale of it all was breathtaking.
The audio guide deepened the moment, walking us through the symbolic façades—the exuberant Nativity, the austere Passion, and the yet-to-be-completed Glory—each weaving a dramatic biblical narrative. Gaudí designed 18 spires representing apostles, evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, with the Jesus Tower set to crown the basilica at 172.5 m. As of mid-2025, that tower already makes the Sagrada the tallest building in Barcelona.
We even took the elevator up the Passion Tower, and the dizzying views of the city unfolding beneath us—Sagrada’s other spires, the Eixample grid, the Mediterranean—were worth the tight spiral staircase descent.
After emerging from Gaudí’s dreamscape, we grabbed lunch in the fresh air—sitting outside on a parkway while locals read newspapers, walked their dogs, and laughed in sunbeams. It felt like we were extras in a Barcelona postcard.
Next, we made our way to Park Güell, where a guided tour was required (and a blessing in disguise). Built between 1900 and 1914 as a luxury housing project that flopped, the park morphed into one of Barcelona’s most whimsical public spaces. Today it stretches across 17 hectares, filled with mosaic lizards, serpentine benches, Doric-style “tree” columns, and winding paths that blend seamlessly into the hillside. From the Hill of the Three Crosses, we got sweeping views across the city, with Sagrada piercing the skyline.
Leaving the park, we shuffled downhill forever, wondering if the walk down would ever actually end.
From there, we hailed a taxi to the airport to collect our bags. Evan’s Spanish skills came to the rescue—he explained to the driver that we were just running inside to grab luggage and then needed a ride onward to the airport. (Safe to say his high school foreign language experience was much more useful than mine.) Unfortunately, when we got to the airport the lounge was full, so we grabbed sandwiches from a kiosk and powered on.
That evening we flew to Portugal for our overnight layover, arriving close to 11 p.m.—too late to explore. We also made the rookie mistake of assuming Spanish would fly in Lisbon. Spoiler: it did not. When Evan tried to speak Spanish to our driver, it went over about as well as cava on an empty stomach. The man was not amused, and to top it off, he majorly overcharged us for the ride to our hotel.
Not the smoothest travel day, but it made for a memorable one.
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