Roof trees

The last time we visited the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona was in February 2001. It was basically a building site: even the roof was not yet in place, and much of the interior was inaccessible because of the building works. I remember wandering around a bit baffled by it all, and thinking, "Well, maybe it'll be nice when it's finished."

So it was quite awe-inspiring when we went inside this time. Especially as, to my pleasure, the PA system happened to be playing the wonderful mezzo aria from Duruflé's Requiem. One of my abiding memories from our last visit was of a mass of unfinished stone columns, and a phrase of Gaudi's saying that the nave would be like a forest. And it is. This photo is not exactly great technically -- it's crying out for a tripod and HDR -- but I chose it because it shows the organic shapes that Gaudi drew from nature. The nave is immense and light-filled: some clear windows, shedding pale winter light onto porphry floors, and some stained glass, making patterns that move with the sun. My nearly blip was the light shining onto the organ pipes.

We went up the tower as well. This was a bit of a letdown, as now that it's finished you can't actually see that much from the top -- I remember the view being better last time, when there was less stonework in the way. I did like the snail shape of the spiral stair though. I'd have liked to spend longer getting a better photo of it, but there was a queue of people waiting to come down.

In some ways the cathedral is less startling now that it's almost finished -- it seems almost conventional compared to the Casa Batllo -- still my favourite Gaudi work of the ones I've seen. I've made a Flickr set of my cathedral photos.

Again, we didn't have time to do much else -- after the cathedral visit we had a rather non-Catalan lunch of hamburger for me, eggs Benedict for S, in a bistro in the Barri Gotic, before ambling back to the station and getting a tediously slow train back to Flaça.