La Sagrada Familia

1/15/09

            Forgot to mention last time, and I know my thousands of faithful readers are dying to know: we lost the Gymkhana by a HALF A POINT. Rigged.

            After class today I went with Shane, David, Chessie and Brett to go see La Sagrada Familia. We got on the metro near our center and it only took us like 15 minutes to get there. The church is beautiful, although of course it is still not finished. They have been building it for over 200 years and it’s still under construction because when it was first being built it was decided that all the money would come from donations; so big cranes and everything were at work when we were there. It is really large already and what we were looking at are only the lateral facades and the smaller spires, I can’t imagine how huge it is going to be whenever it is completed. We didn’t go inside because it costs 11 euros, but we plan to go back for a mass this Sunday. You can go to masses without paying, you just don’t get access into the spires, or the museum.

            After we did that, we walked out of the touristy area in search of a cheaper lunch. We ended up finding a place where the cleanliness was questionable but the price was right. There were 6 of us, and for 5.98 each we got 2 bottles of wine, bread (which generally doesn’t come free with a meal here), 2 courses each (Cuban rice and tenderloin and potatoes) and dessert (flan). Of course, at these prices, this was not a high quality cuisine... in fact quite low quality cuisine, but it was cheap and a lot of food.

            When we got back to the center, Chessie and I decided to sign up for a walking tour of the city (because we really needed more walking…) that was at 5:00. So we show up at 5 with no idea what this tour is. Guess where we go. La Sagrada Familia. At first I was all, been there done that, bought the T shirt (that’s a saying… I didn’t actually buy a Sagrada Familia T shirt) – but it was good because we were able to learn more about the history of the building. We also walked up la avenida de Gaudi, which was a nice walk, and went to see a beautiful hospital that was built (at the same time Gaudi was working on La Sagrada Familia) by the number 2 top ranked architect of the time. It was dark by this time so we couldn’t see all the colors of the tiles so we plan to go back.

            Tonight Antonia made us tortilla de patatas… which I think you can translate but j.i.c. – “Potato Tortilla”. It was reallll good. Ironically has nothing to do with tortillas except maybe the shape, but she said it has eggs, potatoes and onions mainly. It tasted kind of like cheesy potatoes, kind of like potato pancake, whatever it was good. We also had pan con tomate, which is bread with tomato guts and olive oil, a pretty popular dish here, and a salad. Best dinner yet. Still she doesn’t eat with us, but she talked to us the entire time telling us about her family and herself. Apparently all the paintings hanging in the living room were painted by her, she is an amazing artist but she says she doesn’t paint anymore since she started having students live with her because she doesn’t have time… womp womp, sorry senora. Antonia is.a.talker. she speaks fairly fast and she speaks a LOT. I love it though because 1) I feel cool understanding everything she says and 2) She has pretty interesting things to say.