Hard to believe that today we are already on day 7 already of our tour, in saying that, we have already crammed a lot in and have travelled about 2,200kms by bus, not a bad sleep for some of us, and am for others I'm sure there will be a few sore heads this morning, and others... Well, others still needed am to still get to sleep. A number of the guys stayed out all night and where still up when I got up. I'm impressed they have managed to stay up so long. Had some breakfast and after spending a frustrating 30 or 40 minutes trying to book tickets to see the Sagrada Familia in the afternoon. Kat, Katie and I headed off to Park Güell to take a look around and see the great works of Antoni Gaudí, a famous architect and the face of Catalan modernism. To get there we caught the metro to the station and then walked down the street to what seemed like an endless set of escalators to the top of he hill where the park began. The park was built between 1900 and 1914 and was officially opened as a public park in 1926. In 1984, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site under “Works of Antoni Gaudí”. Most of the basic parts of the park were free so you could take a look around the gardens and check out some of the works around the gardens. Bands playing music along with performers / buskers made the visit even more enjoyable. As we headed up to the top we passed a man cutting out silhouette figures, these weren't just random either, they were of people that he stopped as they walked by, if you didn't like it, you didn't pay, so... We couldn't help but get one each and this guy was quick too, just doing it all by sight and cutting away at the paper he would be done in about a minute from the time he started. After getting our cutouts done we proceeded to continue to look around the park a little more before making our way to our scheduled times entry point to take a better look around at more of the park which is closed off unless you pay to get in. While we waited, we noticed all the people selling stuff around the park grab their stuff and walk up the hill a little way, unsure why, it was pointed out the cops were coming. As the cops drove past, the salespeople started to walk down the hill again, only to find the cops turn around and start heading back, so once again the people had to head up again. The cops can quite clearly see the people selling stuff, but I assume would rather disrupt their selling rather than having to fill in paperwork and fine them. We got let into the monumental section of the park which is section of the park which you have to pay for (Kat brought the tickets online) and made our way around the park. We arrived at this large square which was originally called the Greek Theatre, but has since been renamed as Plaça de la Natura (Nature Square). The original name was due to the fact that it was planned for staging large open-air shows that could be watched from the surrounding terraces. Although Gaudí always respected the lie of the land, this large square is artificial. Part of it is dug into the rock, while the other part is held up on top of the hypostyle room. Upon reaching the Nature Square, I couldn't help but think that it reminded me of the park I saw in Lima (El Parque del Amor), I wondered if it was created by Gaudí as well. Turns out it wasn't, however El Parque del Amor was actually inspired by Park Güell so it's good that I was able to see the similarities in the two parks. We then took a look around the porter's lodge which is formed by two two pavilions, the one of the left as you entered the park from the street (we came from above) was used as a porter’s lodge, with a waiting room and telephone booth, while the one to the right was the porter’s residence, thus the name Casa del Guarda, though it is today part of the Barcelona History Museum. Both have very beautiful roofs, built with the traditional Catalan clay tiles covered with “trencadís”, a mosaic made of tile shards, to be honest though, from a small distance, both places really look like gingerbread houses. Lunch time, a rather late lunch time seeing it was about 2:30 or 3pm by the time we left the park, but I guess that's why it tasted so good despite my lunch just being a ham and cheese bread roll. Off to the train station and I left the girls to carry on to the hotel while I made my way off to the Sargada Familia so I could take a look inside. I'm so glad I did, while the outside looks a bit of a mess with different styles of architecture, and stone work started in 1882, the inside of the church is beautiful and consistent with its design and cleverly incorporates some modern style into the design. This first thing you notice as you walk into the church is the height of the ceilings followed quickly by the beautiful stain-glass windows everywhere, colours of red, blue, green and purple, it is truly a sight to be seen, especially in the late afternoon when the light is passing pass the windows and shines through showing the colours sprayed across the walls and floors. Unfortunately the photos just don't do the place justice, you really have to see it in person to be able to appreciate it all. I headed back to the hotel and took a couple of minutes power nap before quickly getting changed and heading out to dinner with the others for Tappas. We got a range of different options each and we all enjoyed them along with the sangrias for our evening dinner drinks with the total bill for two of the three tables adding up to 191 euros and I suspect the third table was about 100 euros as well. Expensive meal but really enjoyable. After dinner we headed back to the hotel where most of us went up to the roof bar and had even more drinks, I put a 20 euro bill into the machine to get tickets and instead of popping out 2 euro coins for the change, I was left at the machine waiting for my coins to pop out as 50 cent pieces is all it was issuing, for a moment I thought I had broken the machine or won the jackpot. The bar on the roof closed at 10pm, so it was downstairs to the common area where we sat and finished off our drinks while Ryan played Foosball with Fabian, after which Ryan challenged a couple of other guys, 2 vs 1. It was a close game with Ryan getting 2 and the other guys getting 6.