Tuesday 5th June: Barcelona Adventures, Part 2

The best moment of the Marathon was turning a corner and being confronted with Gaudi's cathedral, the "Basílica i Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família".  It was the most cosmic vision and gave me a real whooosh of spine-tingling energy to spur me on.  That's going to be a monumental memory forever.

The following day we walked down stairs backwards and waded in the John Wayne style walk (from the aftermath of running 26 miles) our way back to the Sagrada Familia to see inside.  It was a million times more inspiring than I could have even imagined.  The sunlight flooded in thru spectrum stained-glass windows and lit the humongous cavernous cathedral in a hazy ripply rainbow.  It was unbelievable how saturated and intense the colour was.  To say it was emotional would be an understatement.  I always find religious buildings trigger an unexpected flow of untapped feelings but this really struck a chord............. especially the chrome organ pipes which reflected the colours in an optical illusion as if they were iridescent. 

The whole story was explained in an exhibition in the catacombs which went into every detail of how nature had been the reference point for each point of precision in the engineering.  The twisted towers were built extruded in this cough-candy shape in the way that stems shoot up to the sun in a spiral so each layer of leaves get maximum sunlight.  All these factors just blew my mind.  I had always imagined that Gaudi was Gothic but not at all.  So many elements were graphic and geometrical, based on the science in fractals and crystals.  The very top of a spire is even a dodecahedron which is my favourite polyhedra of all time!!!

Here are my interior shots and snaps from the exhibition showing the models explaining the build.  I couldn't get an exterior shot of the whole thing properly because its just too vast!