“Do you know how to get to the Sagrada Família from here?”
My feet sweltered inside my winter boots as we climbed out of the Barcelona metro.
Three weeks in Russia had left us dressed for snow.
Dani smiled.
“Turn around.”
As soon as I reached daylight, I did.
The cathedral filled the street, a crane hanging over the central towers, its arm frozen mid-swing.
Below it, newer stone stopped abruptly against older stone.
We stood there in our coats while everyone around us wore shirts and light jackets.
Dani unzipped her coat.
“I’m hot.”
“So am I.”
I pulled off my hat.
Then my scarf.
Then I started stuffing them into my backpack.
Dani did the same.
Our boots stayed.
There was nowhere to put those.
~
We’d arrived an hour before opening.
With nothing else to do, Dani and I walked.
Every few steps the building changed shape.
Towers disappeared behind one another. Facades emerged around corners—one covered in flowers, the next crowded with stone figures.
“Maybe over here?”
I followed. Dani was backing up, trying to find a view that made sense.
It never did.
No matter where we stood, something blocked our view of something else.
“Do you see it?”
“I see parts of it.”
She laughed.
We kept walking.
~
We stopped for coffee and something to eat before returning to the entrance.
The restaurant was already filling.
A paper placemat sat beneath my plate, covered with little drawings of tourists.
Dani pointed to one.
“That’s you.”
A bearded man with a camera.
“No.”
She pointed to another: flannel shirt, jeans, messy hair.
“That one.”
“Pre-Hipster?”
“Definitely.”
I pointed to a woman holding a map beside a drawing of the Sagrada Família.
“That’s you.”
She laughed.
“Where’s la Sagrada Família?”
“Exactly.”
~
When we returned, only a handful of people stood ahead of us.
Behind us, hundreds followed.
Nearby, a maintenance worker repainted chips in the handrails leading up from the street.
When he finished, he exchanged his paintbrush for a broom and swept the staircase from top to bottom.
Nobody entered the gates until he reached the final step. Then the crowd began moving.
~
Inside, sunlight poured through stained-glass and painted the floor in bands of color.
The stones shifted from blue to red under my feet.
I tried following our guide. He moved us slowly through the building, explaining the symbolism of the towers.
“The facade represents…”
The windows.
The columns.
After a while, it began to blend.
People stood looking upward. So did I.
The columns rose like tree trunks and branched overhead.
Maybe that was enough.
~
On the way out, the guide said the cathedral would open in 2024—one hundred years after Gaudí’s death.
“Will they make it?”
“We hope so.”
His eyes flicked up.
I followed his gaze.
The crane still hung over the cathedral.