I saw perhaps the third wonder of my Spanish world today in Barcelona: La Sagrada Familia. It's the child of Antoni Gaudí, a famous Catalunyan architect whose weird curvy buildings are all over the city. He died many years ago, but construction on the unfinished temple has been continued in his absense. It's a huge mess of cranes, statues, and towers, with two of the three fascades finished, one in the late 1800s, and one more recently with weird Fountainhead-like cubist figures of Christ.
So we decided to climb the 300-some stairs to the top of one of the towers. Half of it is this weird, winding staircase, and the other half is an equally skinny staircase with stunning views of the city thousands of feet below. Remind me to never bring my dad. "Get away from the edge!" The whole time we were behind this roudy group of Italians who I originally thought were speaking Catalán... but they kept making jokes and laughing, and they affectionately adopted us into their groupo and talking about California (and talking to us) even though we couldn't understand what they were saying. They invited us to visit Rome which they said is better than Barcelona because there aren't so many stairs... I think I will. But Barcelona is a beautiful city and it's so nice being with an old friend. :-)
(that's after I got my hair cut)
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