Stone forest

My third time in Barcelona, and each time I'm never sure if I'll ever be back. This time I wanted to make sure that I saw more than the outside of the Sagrada Familia. That meant queuing for an hour, but it was sunny and I had a book to read. An hour passed quite pleasantly.. and I was inside at last.

As you probably know, the building is not likely to be finished until 2026, the centenary of Gaudi's death. So the outside is dominated by cranes and scaffolding. The inside is much nicer, flooded with light and colour from the stained glass windows.

The supporting pillars, made of granite, basalt and sandstone, are made to resemble trees and branches. Images drawn from natural shapes are everywhere. Gaudi himself wrote 'The great book, always open and which we must make efforts to read, is the book of Nature'.