Santa Maria del Mar and beaches

Thursday we get moving a little earlier, but still not up and at em early enough.  We are walking through the Barri Gothic today and it’s a warren of little alleys and walks, shops, bakeries, and you can pass right by the Cathedral

 you’re meaning to stop at if you don’t pick the right road to go down at the right time.  Which we completely pass and have to come back at, the whole time promising Oscar that he can have a donut when we find the right pastry shop.  He has to have his “phone” to take a picture of the unicorn gargoyle for a school mate who loves unicorns and starts to ask again when he can see his class on the phone.  John goes in the Cathedral while Oscar and I 

 walk around a little market and of course, this is the one square in all of Barcelona without a bakery….we get accosted by a street performer trying to get Oscar to accept a balloon animal.  We’ve coached him on this though and he says no, so she wants me to take a picture of him with a balloon heart around his face and I pay her to make her let go of Oscar and then demand the balloon sword.  But he doesn’t want it anyone and gives it back to her after a few minutes.  You can tell that she is not happy with me, but I’m not

 very happy with her either.  We move on down the street to Santa Maria del Mar.  Another gothic church and this is the one that Cathedral by the Sea by Falcones was written about.  I’ve been wanting to see it for a while because the workers carried the huge stones on their backs down from the mountains.  That was one thing that didn’t really hit it with me and Sagrada Familia.  This is the first cathedral in the world that is going to be finished and funded by the public instead of church monies.  They are expecting to finish in 2026 because of everyone that is spending 20 euros on 

an entrance fee.  We saw the workers too and they’re definitely not carrying blocks of stone on their backs to the site.  I’m not saying that you have to in order to give the church meaning, it just seems to lose some of the history of other cathedrals….plus, going in Santa Maria del Mar costs nothing to go inside.  We walked on down to the beach which was our original plan, but like all things you’re trying to get to, it keeps receding into the distance.  We keep at it and eventually make it to the beach, where Oscar gets his 

  shoes wet trying to get the perfect rock.  We find beach glass, worry stones, and sand castle artists that are more to Oscar’s liking as a street performer.  We were going to make this a light day, but it turns out we walked more today than any other day we’ve been here as we make our way up La Rambla through the meat market with a child who might make it back to the house before he has to go potty.  He makes it at least….but has said that there can not be anymore churches on this trip.  We told him that was going to be a problem because churches were kind of on the agenda with daddy’s studies….