It’s time to go.  So long, farewell. We’ve had a fabulous whirlwind 7 days onboard the Celebrity Constellation, but if we’re honest, we’re ready to be stepping into the next adventure – Barcelona!

So because when you finish the cruise, they kick you off at the crack of the last day which meant that once we dropped off our suitcases to the hotel, we were free to start exploring – except in Spain, people are smart and don’t get up until late, meaning that the shops and whatnot don’t start/open until about 10am and then they have a siesta in the afternoon.  Fliss commented that perhaps I should be living right here!  I think she may have something.  Nevertheless, we soldiered on with a bit of window shopping until we came across this:

I’m just kidding – it was this:

The Casa Batll0, a building by Antoni Gaudi and it was quite amazing!  Just a small note, apparently you pronounce his name Gaudi by putting the emphasis on the ‘ee’ sound at the end rather than ‘ow’ sound in the middle.  You’re welcome.

It was amazing!  A little bit like walking through an Alice in Wonderland house that had been built for a movie set.

Beautiful mosaics everywhere.

And check this out – they give you an audio handset which is just like an iPhone 6 plus and when you hold it up to the room you’re in, it shows you what it would’ve been like furnished or with the fire burning, etc…. very cool.

It was just beautiful – and everyone looked like they were searching for Pokemon!

Our next stop was La Pedrera – another of Gaudi’s magical works of art.

People still live and work in this building – so they must be wrapped about 20,000 people traipsing through their building every day!

These sculptures on the roof top are meant to be a representation of the TV antennae that you see on the roofs of other buildings.

So this is pretty cool.  What Gaudi used to do is hang rope or chain from a metal plate so the loops would hang in a dome shape, then he’d look at the reflection in a mirror so he could see how it would look right side up – genius!

When it was time for a drink stop – we stopped for a drink.

Then once we stopped and looked on the map to see how far it was to walk to the Sagrada Familia and decided immediately to catch the hop on/hop off bus.  Everyone was happy with this decision.

Once we got there though and saw all the people, our hearts sank a little as we stupidly thought that we would just be able to walk in and get a ticket.

The Sagrada Familia – Gaudi’s life work.  He worked on this cathedral for 40 years up until his death…. it’s been going now for 130+ years and it’s still not looking like being finished any time soon.

We managed to purchase some tickets for later in the day, so off we went to walk around hot Barcelona some more – this time heading for St Paul’s – and old hospital which was running as a working hospital up until 7 years ago.  It was such an amazing set up with this main building and several separate buildings for surgery or specialist medical services.

Then after a much needed siesta (that’s right, I got Felicity to take a nap in the middle of the day!) we headed back to Sagrada Familia for our time slotted visit – and it was well worth it.  I came to Barcelona back in 2008 and had a look inside the Familia – but most of it was fenced off and scaffolded, so didn’t get to see that much – this time was much different.  There’s been a lot of work done in that time.

We managed to nab the best time to see it in all it’s afternoon sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows.

We we first headed into the front doors, everybody was looking up and taking photos of the ceiling….

… and then we realised why – it was quite incredible!

and the more you looked around, the better it became.

As much as you should look up in a Gaudi building – you should also appreciate the well thought out pieces of art that are lower to the ground… I’m not quite sure where he was going with this piece, but the colour just popped right there in front of me.