What a day!

The day begins with a trip to Montjuïc to look down at Barcelona then a walk through Barcelona including Parc de la Ciutadella before we arrived at Sagrada Família which is something I have wanted to see for decades so it is wonderful to finally step inside it and amazingly it defies all my expectations.

From the many, many photos online I studied whilst looking for inspiration for the project I would design for this trip, I expected it to be dark and all the decoration to feel heavy and oppressive above our heads but it was exactly the opposite.
Inside is wonderfully light and the very high ceilings feel so airy and light - a wonderful surprise. I was also shocked how colourful it was (our trip was perfectly timed for the perfect light inside for the maximum colour as the sun pours in through the stained glass).

This is truly an amazing place to visit and I'm so glad I got to do so and really recommend that if you can you do so too - I'll never forget it.

Next up was lunch sitting outside a nearby restaurant and that's when things began to get weird...

The restaurant said they had a power-cut and couldn't cook food (but then they realised they had gas so could cook us paella) and we figured it was just them. Then we realised the other shops/ restaurants by them had the same issue... and then we realised the metro station right by us had the same issue so we figured it was a local thing and enjoyed our lunch in the sun...

When our guide returned he excitedly took us around the corner where we now had the perfect view of the star which was added atop the Sagrada Família in 2021 which the project we were beading was inspired by and as we took our photos he told us that the power was out in all of Spain, and also Portugal and we realised that it was more of an issue than we first thought...

Soon we realised that we also didn't have any mobile phone or internet connection and that all the traffic lights were also out and suddenly we appreciated how being out of contact with no way of discovering the news etc was quite scary as the only text I managed to get also told me that it affected parts of France and without knowing more your mind can't help but wonder if it was just a power cut, or something more, but thankfully we were safe and our day continued until we knew more.

Next up as a visit to Park Güell who incredibly, even though it is all outdoors and early afternoon, wouldn't let anyone in so our wonderful guide instead took us around the area and and showed us as much of the park from the outside as he could. He was fantastic, knowledgable & funny and made a crazy day fun.

Trip over we made our way back to our hotel (wondering if we'd even be able to get into our rooms but thankfully we were) but knowing we were very lucky to have transport as the trains weren't running.

Thankfully about 6 hours after it went out we got power back on (thankfully before it got dark) and worn out I went to bed realising how lucky we all were and what a crazy & wonderful day we had experienced.