Barcelona Day 13

Today we slept in...until nine...and a teacher had to come knock on the door...and the bus ended up leaving at 9:10...so at least we got ready fast! :) Mandi and I accidentally wore the same shirt and seven people pointed it out. But everyone said we looked great for just waking up!!

We got to Barcelona and picked up our guide, who was extremely annoying. She laughed at everything she said and not everything she said was funny. Actually most of the things she said weren't funny. She also talked REALLY slow, like we were in first grade, and repeated herself a lot. But I learned that Spain has 40,000 residents and 4,000 of them live in Barcelona. Also, that Spain's main industry use to be tiles or something and is now tourists. She said China's prices for tile are way lower and Spain couldn't compete with China's low quality cheap tile. Well her repetition was annoying but I learned something.

This is called the Temple of the Holy Family. It is the most visited place in Spain and will be finished in 2026. It has been under construction since before World War I. The man who created all the blue prints for the Temple died before it was finished. The instructions he left for how to finish constructing the Temple were burnt in a small fire that had happened in the temple. Now the workers are using computers to find ways to finish the final design that was left from the fire. Pretty incredible, I will definitely be visiting this when it is completed.

Also, this temple is owned by the people and none of the money used for building it has come from the government or religious groups. So the temple is being built for everyone, no matter what religion, age, or ethnicity. I think this is the best thing about the Temple's creation.

The guide told us, three times, that this building was based on a dragon. The roof represents scales and the white chimney looking thing is a sword that killed the dragon, saving a princess that isn't represented from what I saw (Maybe she was the side walk.).

So we got to visit this really cool site that was going to be an area for the rich and famous, but it was never finished and is now a Heritage Site.

This is underneath the REALLY long bench!!! I know! Crazy! The ceiling of this construction is all tile and has some colorful scenes. It was B-E-A-UTIFUL! :)

So we were stuck with her until 1:00 and then Mandi and I finally got to explore Barcelona on our own.

We saw the creepiest statue on our way to the Market, which had tons of fruit, fish, and CANDY, and there was another guy sitting without a chair!!!! The market had tons of fruit and Mandi decided on pineapple, kiwi, and strawberries for 2.50 and I got slices of mango! YUM! The mango was A-FREAKING-MAZING, so I only shared one piece with Mandi. :)

We walked all the way to the beach in Barcelona and ran across this HUGE lion. Mandi decided to climb on top of it and once her bare skin touched it she yelled, "IT'S FREAKING HOT, TAKE THE PICTURE!!!". Hilarious. :)

The best part of today, maybe the second best, was Mandi and I both found SHORTS!!!!! What is way surprising is Mandi found JEAN shorts and she hates jeans!! But she said they are way comfortable and she looks cute in them. :)

It was time to go so after the lion, lunch, and candy we walked back to our meeting place. While we were waiting for the bus to take us back to the hotel there were some boys that were muy CALIENTE!!!!

On our way back to the hotel Mandi and I were talking, I know - who would expect that, and she wanted me to tell everyone that she made a to-do list for the next time we come to Europe and Marine Land is at the top.

We went swimming tonight and it was WAY colder than last night. But we still had a lot of fun and we remembered to bring a camera to take pictures!!

I know...bad tan line. Tonight is our last night here and tomorrow we hope to catch some breakfast, I heard it was delicious. :)