Europe 2016: Barcelona

We woke up to the sound of church bells, which was beautiful but not so loud it was annoying. We ate breakfast near the apartment after a tour of Santa Maria del Mar and it was stunning! Very much worth seeing. We asked Chus, at our apartment, for guidance to getting to our destination, and she suggested the bus. Thanks to her it was easy to find it and we went north to see two of Gaudi's buildings: Casa Mila and Casa Batlo.

Neither of us are Gaudi fans so we decided to just look at the outside, and then took the subway to La Sagrada Familia, or Sacred Family. It was started in 1882 and is still under construction. We did pay to go inside here and the stained glass inside is exquisite. I'll admit that I really don't 'get' his architectural design, but it certainly is unique. We walked around for a bit and left.

We had planned to go to Parc Guell, which he also designed, but it was extremely hot and humid and we just weren't feeling it, as well as we couldn't get tickets online and would have had to wait a while in line, so we decided to head back down to the old city. We toured that Cathedral which was absolutely exquisite and well worth seeing. You could go to the top and the views were amazing!! Then we wandered around the old quarter and found the "Major" Synagogue of Barcelona. It's very small-- just two rooms. There was a short speech about the synagogue and the history in Barcelona.

This was the main of five in the old Jewish Quarter. They were not allowed to build larger than the smallest church in town, and this is 70 meters (the area currently occupied was the men's section, and the women's section was 20 meters and is now a bar.) There are now 1000 jewish families in the area, but in the 1400s all were gone-- either killed in the Inquisition, died of the plague or converted to christianity. The black plague killed around 50% of the total population in the 1400s, however, less than 50% of the jews were killed so in 1391 they burned the Jewish Quarter and forced them to convert. 70% did following riots in the area. As of 1487 or so, there were none left.

In 1987 some Jewish families moved back in and purchased back the property for the Synagogue. All of the items there were donated, including a torah from the 16th century.

We left and wandered around, getting completely lost. It was funny as we couldn't find La Rambla (a main road!!) last night for a while, and today we somehow found it far from where we thought we were! We walked a bit on it then wandered back through the winding streets.

We got a recommendation for a flamenco right around the corner from our place so we decided to go. We were unable to get tickets online but there were seats available when we got there. It was amazing! There was a woman with a very deep but beautiful voice, a guitarist, a guy doing percussion on what looked like a wooden box, a woman and a male dancer. It was so beautiful and we were glad we went.

We then went to a place around the corner where you select some tapas from trays at a fixed price, so we enjoyed a few then headed to the first place we went to for more garlic shrimp. yumm-o!! Such a fun night!

Tomorrow we are traveling a bit and planned to be early to bed but.. it's too much fun here!
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