First Day

Our hotel was in the Eixample neighborhood. It was a giant neighborhood that had buildings that all looked similar to these. The Eixample is The Expansion, and is the area where Barcelona expanded when it could finally grow beyond the city walls.   The traffic moves really fast on these rather narrow streets - and is completely unforgiving to pedestrians.

We arrived about 10am on the first day and in order to stay awake we walked 3 miles to the Sagrada Familia, a church that is not yet finished by the architect Gaudi.  There were thousands of people in the area around the church.  We were so tired it was very disorienting.  My cell phone ran out of battery power there, so we had to figure out how to get back to our hotel using old fashioned maps (which was rather difficult after being awake for about 35 hours).