The interior of Sagrada Familia is as impressive as the exterior! It is enormously tall with lots of light from the extensive stained glass.
The design of the interior is based on a forest of trees. You can see how the columns split into branches that support the very tall roof. The stained glass on one side is orange and red and yellow for summer and fall, while the other side has blue and green, representing winter and spring.
Gaudi modeled the structure with strings and weights to determine where to place the columns. He hung his model upside down – a remarkably ingenious approach to the engineering well before modern structural analysis existed.
The stained glass is all modern, and contains references to saints from around the world. In the 3rd picture above, you can see seating for the choir that surrounds the main area of the basilica.
The crucifix above the altar leaves nothing to the imagination, making it very clear how painful and terrible crucifixion was.
Lighted symbology on the columns around the altar.
Statues within the basilica. The last one is dedicated to St. George, the patron saint of Catalonia.
The crypt, beneath the main chapel was the first item completed and is still in use today for mass. Gaudi’s tomb is also in the crypt. The organ pipes were near the viewing area of the crypt. The plan is to add lots more organ pipes to fill the basilica with sound.
Furniture where accessories for mass can be stored.
The Basilica of Sagrada Familia is one of the most iconic landmarks in Barcelona. We had tickets for a guided tour and the trip up the Nativity tower for the morning of our second day in Barcelona. We’d seen pictures, of course, but nothing prepares you for the real view as we emerged from the subway station to see the view shown above!
The basilica has been under construction since 1882 and was Gaudi’s masterpiece. Gaudi died tragically in 1926, so he didn’t see much of it done. He created samples and designs for those that followed to use in his stead, but civil wars and uprisings destroyed many of them and damaged the building a few times. You can see the ornate designs in the images above. The fruit at the tops of the roof depict what was available in the holy land. Each of the large towers represents a member of the Sacred Family, including the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Virgin Mary, and the largest one in the center, Jesus. The plan is to finish the Jesus tower, the largest one, by the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death next year.
The tour group met at the base of the Nativity Facade, though we didn’t understand much of the symbolism at the time. We were just amazed at the ornate sculpture that made up the facade.
The tour guide took us to the model of the how the building will look when it is completed in 2033. Click the image to see it closer. You can see how enormous the Jesus tower will be!
The tour guide showed us how this Nativity facade showed the birth and life of Jesus. Animals also played a major role in the facade. We can see the two turtles that are supporting the columns as well as the two geckos on the wall. Then we entered the ornate doorway to the interior of the basilica. I have so many interior pictures, I will make that a separate post.
The tour then exited to the Passion facade, which we stayed pretty close to because of the pouring rain. This facade was done by a more modernist artist, so many angles and flat surfaces, but as stunning as the other side. The Passion facade depicts the stations of the cross. It also has a large statue of Jesus struggling with the cross in front of the stunning doors. Above it all, we see a gold Jesus ascending into heaven.
A few more pics, some from outside the fence. The amount of detail is incredible – everywhere you look, there is something meaningful. Notice also that Gaudi didn’t like purely vertical columns. He used columns with angles to help support the building.
Sadly, the rain started coming down pretty hard as we were inside the basilica, so we weren’t able to go up the Nativity tower. The towers have an elevator up, but the only way down is 400 steps, so they didn’t want to have people slipping. Of course, Apple’s Weather app swore that not only wasn’t it raining, but there had been no rain.
We arrived in Barcelona in the morning, got to our hotel, then, after a quick nap, set out to explore. Our hotel was in a fantastic location, half a block to Placa de Catalunya, often called the center of town. We walked La Rambla, a huge street from the plaza to the harbor. Because of all the construction and the huge crowds, not to mention the jet lag, I didn’t take any pictures of La Rambla. I’m not used to walking in such crowded conditions, so wasn’t thinking of pictures.
Columbus Monument
At the end of La Rambla is a monument to Christopher Columbus. He is beloved in Spain because he brought back lots of treasure from his voyage of exploration.
After a walk back up La Rambla and through a huge market full of stalls selling nearly any kind of food and ingredients, we headed for the Museum of History, which contains the ruins of the ancient Roman walled city of Barcino. Walking through the narrow alleys and around the 13th century cathedral was fantastic.
The History Museum is terrific and well worth a visit! First, we went through the “modern” history of Barcelona, where it was a textile manufacturing powerhouse and capital of Catalunya, involved in several wars and uprisings. From a viewpoint at the top of the museum, we could look out at the Gothic Quarter and beautiful nearby buildings. The plaza shown in the 4th picture turns out to be more important than it appears. The Roman ruins, roads, and city walls of ancient Barcino were discovered under that plaza. Each generation in Barcino built over top of what existed before, then as the city expanded, a church and much more were built on top. The ruins were excavated early last century, so from the museum, we went down underground and saw the ancient roads, shops, and more. The laser lines in the photos show the road boundaries, while other photos show wine-making vats and walls of 2000 year-old buildings.
The patterns and tiles were still clearly visible in some areas, which is remarkable!
Placa del Rei
As we left the museum, we exited into the plaza above the ruins. The plaza took on a whole new meaning for us once we saw what was underneath.
I went to Barcelona for business but took some time to be a tourist with my wife beforehand. I’ll post pages with pics as I get to it, and all will be linked through this post.
The last stop on our Autoventure was Cedar Breaks National Monument. We stayed in Cedar City, UT, and took the short 20-ish mile drive up to Cedar Breaks with a bit of road construction to slow us down. The park seems not to be very well known despite the spectacular scenery. It looks a lot like a mini Bryce Canyon, yet all above 10,000 feet! It is closed in winter, and nearby Brian Head has several ski areas which looked nice. The main visitor center was closed, but a temporary visitor center and store was set up just near the park entrance.
We stopped at the Sunset View Overlook for our first view of the amazing geologic formation below.
We then drove through an alpine meadow to stop at Chessmen Ridge Overlook for even more spectacular views.
We went on to the North View Overlook to see everything from yet another angle.
After a picnic lunch at the campground, we headed back to the Chessmen Ridge Overlook parking to take the Alpine Trail, a loop that took us to an algae-filled lake. We took the upper trail first and got to walk on snow for the first time in many years. The upper trail was fairly easy, but a number of trees had fallen and were blocking the trail, and the path down to the lake and lower trail was steep, muddy, and had lots of snow.
The lower trail was a fair bit more treacherous than the upper trail, with more fallen trees, more snow, and lots of mud. But, it was close to the edge of the canyon, so we got amazing views on the return journey.
We left Zion Canyon and Springdale and drove North on I-15 to Kolob Canyons. This is a lesser-known area of Zion National Park and was not at all crowded but is beautiful and offers nice hiking and picnicking. Our first stop after entering the park gave us great views of massive rock faces and deep valleys. Unfortunately, with all the sunscreen I was applying, I seem to have smeared the lens on my phone, so many of my pics from Kolob Canyons have artifacts, as can be seen in the right pic below.
From this viewpoint, we could see the road heading up and around.
We drove quite a distance along the road, past trailheads and small overlooks to get to the Kolob Canyon’s Viewpoint. Here we got spectacular views of enormous rock faces, as this panoramic view shows.
We then took the Timber Creek Overlook trail, a short, not too difficult trail that led to a high point with great views for many miles.
While it wasn’t nearly as hot at Kolob Canyons as it was in Zion Canyon, it was still pretty hot, so shade was important!
Ahh, relief!
Once we reached the end of the trail, we could see distant ranges, but also could look back at the rocks across the valley from the trailhead. It was a beautiful hike!
We visited Zion National Park over 2 days, with the first day in Zion Canyon. Because of overcrowding, shuttle buses take visitors up the canyon road to the various trailheads and sightseeing destinations. Even the buses were crowded when we visited, with lines to get on the bus, standing room only onboard, and lots of people at each stop. The photo below shows the line when we arrived, but I’m sure it only got worse for the next couple hours.
A problem we encountered was the closure of the bridge at Zion Lodge to get across to the Emerald Pools trailhead. I had the brilliant idea that we would start our hike at The Grotto, visit the Emerald Pools, then hike past the bridge that was out of commission, and get back to the road at the Court of the Patriarchs. This added a couple miles to the hike, but how bad could it be?
It was bad. It was over a hundred degrees F, I am pretty out of shape, and the trail markings are terrible (more on that later). Luckily we brought plenty of water, including my fancy new hydration backpack, which had a bite-and-suck mechanism to drink, which doesn’t work that well when one is struggling for breath. It doesn’t work that well for me, in my opinion, but I don’t exactly have a better idea. Plus the water tasted very plasticky, despite my attempts to clean the thing beforehand.
In any case, we set off with our hiking poles and water and made it to the lower, then the middle Emerald Pools, but were pretty beat at that point. So, we started heading down the trail to the broken Lodge bridge. At that point, the heat was getting to us, but there was no way we were going back up to the Emerald Pools to get back to The Grotto. We should have.
Instead, we followed the last sign we saw on the trail. It pointed us towards the Court of the Patriarchs a couple miles away via a horse trail. We saw people wading across the river and decided we didn’t want to do that, we’d find a perfectly fine bridge after a long walk. There was a lot less shade along this trail, particularly with the midday sun overhead, so it was quite punishing. Sure there were spectacular views, but who can appreciate them when you’re exhausted?
As we traveled south, the trail finally split, with one heading left towards the river and (hopefully) the Court of the Patriarchs. No, it just had even less shade and eventually met back up with the other trail, so we made our journey a bit longer and more miserable. With the lack of signage, we had no idea how much farther we had to go. And there was no cell reception, so maps wouldn’t load. (Yes, I had downloaded the map in the National Park app, and that would have helped, but in my exhaustion, I forgot). We could see the Court of the Patriarchs by that point, and once again, there were people wading across the river at a shallow point, so we decided to do the same. Had we known that walking another 1/3 mile might have taken us to a bridge, we would have done that, but again, no signs on the trails.
We caught the shuttle back to the visitor center, with the intention of going back to the hotel to rest, but by a happy accident, we got on the wrong shuttle and went back up the canyon. We stopped off at Zion Lodge for a well deserved rest and several bottles of the most spectacular tasting expensive water ever. And the view!
We spent a couple nights in Springdale near the entrance to Zion National Park. The town is nestled in a valley with spectacular views all around. These were from the window of the hotel room.
As we arrived at the hotel, a tour bus full of people arrived too. The next morning, the breakfast seating area was completely full of those tourists who seem to have set their alarm clock to the same time I did. Therefore, I had to sit outside on the deck. As you can see, I wasn’t suffering at all. 😄
There are loads of hotels along the highway in Springdale, and a very convenient bus runs the length of them and right to the entrance of the park. We and many others boarded the bus just near the hotel and, after 4 more stops, it dropped us at the park, which I’ll cover in another post.
We had a terrific dinner at the Bit and Spur, which has both indoor and outdoor seating. We chose to eat outside, because it had cooled into the 90s by that point in the evening and there was a pleasant breeze. The drinks were moderately priced, the service was great, and the food was delicious, including these yummy sweet potato tamales, one pork and one mushroom.
It was already hot when we left Las Vegas, and it was really hot when we arrived at Valley of Fire State Park. When we pulled up to Atlatl Rock for a quick picnic lunch, we saw a bit of commotion. Some bighorn sheep were searching for shade and perhaps some water, so lots of people were photographing them (including me, obviously).
Atlatl Rock has a bunch of petroglyphs high up the side of a rock face. Some scorching hot stairs climb up to these marks made by ancient people. I was intrigued with the lichen growing on the rock face as we walked to the stairs. Sadly, some graffiti “artists” have defaced some of the petroglyphs, but they are still spectacular.
After our lunch, we drove on to Arch Rock and parked to look for it. We walked around a rock formation and to a clearing and then looked back and there it was! Had we only crossed the road, we could have seen it. There also were fascinating holes eroded into the rock beneath the arch.
After that, we decided it was too hot to spend too much more time at Valley of Fire, so we’ll have to come back next time we’re in the area. We had to get to Zion National Park, and we knew we would lose an hour when we entered Utah because of time zone differences, so we headed out the east entrance and up to the I-15 for our trip towards St. George, UT and on to Springdale and Zion.
The reason for the trip was because I needed to go to the InfoComm trade show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Hiperwall didn’t have a booth, but our partner Sharp NEC was there, and I had a meeting set up on Thursday. While at the show, I visited booths of other partners, potential partners, and LinkedIn colleagues. I also walked around the show to see all the great display technology being offered. LED is everywhere, for both inside and outside. Much of the LED systems shown were fairly large pitch, so more for signage than control rooms, but several of the higher end vendors, especially Sharp, had finer pitch LED systems that would make great control room video walls!
InfoComm was spread across several of the Convention Center’s halls. I started in the Central Hall, but eventually made my way to the West Hall, where the display vendors were. Because of construction, there was no indoor route between the two, and the temperature was over 100 degrees F. Shuttle buses were provided, which I took, but that mostly involved waiting followed by a short drive. By the midafternoon, my phone said I had walked for 5 miles, mostly on the trade show floor – it’s a big show!
Based on advice from a colleague, we stayed at the MGM Signature hotel, which was great! The room was excellent, and the view spectacular, as you can see below. It was also convenient to the monorail, which I took to the convention center for the show. The MGM Grand has a great Italian restaurant, Luchini, where we had fantastic food and great service. I was able to have gluten free pasta and it was delicious. This may be the only trip I can recall where I had lots of exercise and activity, yet still probably gained weight – we ate very well!
