Part 9?!?! My goodness. Aren’t you sick of hearing about this trip? Time to wrap it up, I’d say.

Picking up where I left off last night, I will show you a few pics from going up into one of the towers at Sagrada Familia. An elevator was provided for the up. But you had to walk the stairs to go down. I could do that, right? Note that the central tower of the cathedral is still very much under construction. This is one of the smaller, older towers. Up top, you find yourself with beautiful views of the city as well as a glimpse into how a full construction site could be supported that high above ground.

And then the long, step-by-step journey down. There was only one way to go – a circular stairway, about 3 feet wide. Occasional windows and gates out to the exterior of the building were present, but kept carefully secure by locked access gates. There were also three different places you could push an emergency button for help from staff. I suspect they could take a terrified tourist out via one of the service/construction elevators if needed. I gritted my teeth and started down — so very glad I was not visiting in the summer when it would likely be packed with people. I was able to take my time.

Eventually I hit that bottom step. Ah, out into the light of the cathedral’s interior!

From there I went to the underground museum and then back to the hotel for recovery. Dropping my bag and extraneous layers, I took the elevator to the rooftop lounge (making sure the elevator would take me both up and down) and wrote and wrote and wrote about Estonia. While sitting in the Barcelona sun.

On the next day, I enjoyed a more relaxed start to the day, packed up my stuff to store at the hotel’s front desk and headed out for the requisite hop-on/hop-off bus tour. I’m SO glad I did that. Traveling around the city by foot or taxi, I saw mostly this:

And this:

And this:

Barcelona is very dense, with lots and lots and lots of multistory buildings forming tall canyons through which you move. There are a few open squares, but they are not large nor do they give you the opportunity to see beyond them. Only by going up at the Sagrada Familia and to my hotel’s rooftop lounge did I gain a sense of how the city lay across the landscape — where the ocean was, that there were mountains on the outskirts, that the port and architectural monuments provided a framework by which to “get” the city. A bus tour helps you take all that in. Barcelona is so large that there are two loops: a west loop and east loop. I opted for the west, climbed aboard (and up to the top) and prepared to get oriented to the city. Barcelona did not disappoint.

So riding around, this is some of what I saw!

By 2 ish I was back at my hotel to meet up with this lady.

Timi lives just a half hour north of Barcelona (by train) in a former fishing town called El Masnou (in Catalan, pronounced Muss-now). Most of the small beach towns outside of Barcelona have fused together into more or less continuous city. But each retains a separate identity and separate square or plaza. Most of the people living in El Masnou have family there, grew up there, live and work there.

I spent my first day at Timi’s sweet little apartment doing absolutely nothing (other than laundry). But hey, this is the view from her living room so why not?!?!?!

At Timi’s bed and breakfast (as I jokingly referred to it), the vibe was relaxed, the coffee strong and the conversations inspiring and fun. For the next few days, I explored the beach and town of El Masnou, went with Timi into the city to do some more adventuring, stocked up on groceries to see us through the Christmas holiday and ventured north up to another seaside village for exploring. Here’s some of what I saw:

The day after Christmas, Timi took me on the train to Barcelona, then made sure I was on the correct bus to the airport. What a wonderful host(ess). It was truly a beautiful week.

Of course there is much more to see in Barcelona. I’ve got some ideas about what I’d visit next time: some of the museums, a visit up to Parc Guell and DEFINITELY the Torre de Corserolla tower atop the mountains. But for a first visit, I’m well satisfied. It takes time to get to know a city — to know it more deeply than the typical running-around-from-one-tourist-attraction-to-the-next, that is. I may get the opportunity to do so in Barcelona; I may not. But I’m glad to say I at least made its acquaintance.