Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts

Sagrada Familia Up Close

Tuesday, April 8, 2014



Sagrada Familia is one Antoni Gaudi's works.  It is not yet finished until now but the architects that took over continued the work after Gaudi's original idea.  Currently, this church is one of the symbols of Barcelona.

When the church is finished it will have 18 towers: 12 dedicated to the apostles, 4 to the evangelists, one to Jesus and another to Mary. [The Sagrada Familia website]

Sagrada Familia


From Park Guell to Sagrada Familia

We took bus 92 from the bus stop by the Carretera Carmel-Park Guell stop.  It does not actually pass by Sagrada Familia but there's a stop a few blocks away from it.  We informed the driver where we're going and he dropped us off the nearest bus stop to the church.  A map would be helpful if the driver doesn't understand English.  We've seen the top of the church while we're aboard the bus and got weary as we're already past it.  We asked other passengers and we were assured that we have not missed our stop.

When we got off (it must have been the Dos de Maig-Rossello stop), we took a street going to the right (facing the direction our bus is headed) and just walked straight (I think that's Carrer de Provenca) until the we see the church towers.

Bus 92 Route
The street we passed has parking in
the middle of the street

Finally, we saw this!  This was on the side of Placa de Gaudi.
There's a Sagrada Familia metro station so maybe you could take that if coming from other parts of Barcelona.



Placa de Gaudi

We got to the site via Placa de Gaudi.  There are lots of people there on a Tuesday, probably because it's almost siesta time when we got there.  We noticed most of the people are looking in one direction, and we saw some elders playing a game.  We're not sure what this game is called but they have these "big marbles" (at least it looks like a game of marbles to us).  Me and my friend called it "Jolens a la Espanya", hahaha!
 
"Big Marbles" game at Placa de Gaudi
There's also a pond in the plaza where one can see the reflection of the church.
The Nativity facade of Sagrada Familia and the
church's reflection in the pond at Placa de Gaudi


The Church

Ticket to go inside Sagrada Familia costs Euro14.80 per person.  If not for the long line for the tickets, we would have gone in.  I guess it's better to buy tickets online to reserve a slot for a specific time.  Since we do not have the luxury of time, we just took some pictures outside and went back to the hostal.

Looking closely at the towers of the Passion facade, it shows the names of some of the apostles
Sagrada Familia

[Update] I just got information from a fellow PExer that the "big marbles" game is called Petanque.


Immaculate Conception Cathedral [Puerto Princesa 2013]

Sunday, April 7, 2013



Since it's a Sunday, we reserved going to the Cathedral today (instead of Saturday), so that we would also be able to attend mass.  After taking some rest, we readied ourselves for the 6PM mass.  We took the multicab going to town proper (PhP8/person) and got off at the end of their route, which is the cathedral.




After the mass, we planned to have dinner at Balinsasayaw.  However, the tricycle driver told us that it's closed on Sundays, so is Ka Lui's.  So, we went to Kinabuch's.  I guess we should have made a reservation before going here.  The place is full, plus it's raining hard (on a summer evening) so they had to move some of their customers from the open area to the covered area.

After waiting for some minutes, we decided that we should just have dinner at one of the fast food chains.  We hailed a tricycle at the other side of the street (PhP8/person; tricycles right outside the restaurant charge higher fare) and just went to McDonalds.


FYI: 
- The tricycle terminal in the cathedral has higher fare (PhP20/person).
- Tricycles from outside the restaurants (i.e. Kinabuchs) cost a bit more... I think at PhP50/trip.
- Ka Lui and Balinsasayaw Restaurant are closed on Sundays.