Cruise The World With Us 2026

Wednesday – January 7, 2026 – Barcelona

Today’s featured photo is of the Southwest face of Basilica Sagrada Familia (sacred family). It is Antoni Gaudi’s final architectural work and his residence at the time of his death. If you wish to know more about Gaudi, check here.

On last year’s cruise we visited Barcelona but did not have time to see Sagrada Familia inside and out. The excursion from MSC that would take there this year was booked so we needed to make our own arrangements. While in Marseille, our table was joined by Margarita and Oscar from Mexico. We told them of our plans for Barcelona, and they suggested we look into using Viator – a service of TripAdvisor. We went online and booked a guided tour for 2:30 in the afternoon.

We left the ship around 1:00 and caught a taxi for a charge of 33 Euros. The driver gave us a card to call when we had finished the tour for transport back to the ship. This would be helpful as the “all aboard” time was 5:30 today, our tour would probably end around 4:00 and it took 30 minutes to get from Sagrada Familia to the dock. For all our Hawkeye fans…all the taxis in Barcelona are painted BLACK & GOLD! Our meeting point for the tour was a souvenir shop directly across the street from the church. We had a few minutes to look around before 2:30 so scoped out books and t-shirts for purchase later.

Our tour leader was named Dan and spoke U.S. English. He gave each of us a sticker (so we could pass through the security gate) and a receiver/headset to wear during the tour so we could clearly hear what he had to say. Our group was around 15 people. We walked to the church and went through the security scan (like an airport) to reach the entrance on the Northeast side of the church.

Sagrada Familia is not positioned (relative to compass directions) like other churches. Gaudi wanted the windows of the church to take full advantage of the sunlight throughout the entire year so he positioned the foundation to do just that – and the results are spectacular! Volumes have been written about the history of this church, and you can find a bit of information here if you’d like background. In summary, this is the largest unfinished Catholic church in the world with work beginning in 1882. It is entirely financed by private donations so there is no estimate of the completion date. When we were here in 2025 it was thought that the tallest tower would be completed in 2026 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Gaudi’s death (he is buried in the church crypt). That does not appear to be something that will happen.

I won’t begin to try and explain what it is like inside the church – there are so many details that describe the construction. Dan provided much useful information on our tour (which I can’t remember now). For me, the colors of the many, many stained-glass windows were impressive, and the structure of the supporting columns was a work of art. Gaudi designed a church like no other I have seen. I took plenty of photos and probably put too many of those on our website for you to view. Gaudi did not include many statues in the church as he wanted it to emphasize the Holy Family. The statues in the church include Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Saint George (Catalonia’s patron saint – Barcelona is located in Catalonia).

We ended our tour around 4:00 and went to the souvenir store to select a book about Gaudi’s creations and a t-shirt for each of us. We called the number the taxi driver had given us and waited for him to arrive at the spot where he had let us off earlier in the afternoon. When the taxi did arrive, it was driven by a different driver. Our first driver called one of his associates and asked him to take us to the port – didn’t matter to us as long as we got there before the ship sailed.

This evening, I took a photo of Margarita and Oscar, and you’ll find it in the day’s photos. They told us they had actually requested a table for 2 at dinner and were assigned to our table until a 2-top was available. Margarita will be 70 this year and Oscar is 84 (I don’t think he looks it).

This evening’s entertainment was a Spanish dance troop. They were entertaining. I included a few photos of their performance in today’s photos.

If you’d like to see photos from today, click here.