The Strangest Place that I have Been This Year

I looked to see what I wrote on this blog on New Year's Day last year, and part of it was this:

I haven't travelled nearly enough, for various reasons, and I hope to remedy that a bit this year too. I've never left Britain in the winter to travel to somewhere hot and the idea seems really decadent - but I plan to try it

I can't believe that I said that! At the time I had no real idea that I'd be able to do any such thing. And yet, this winter, I've been to Barcelona and also to Florida.

I've been very lucky this year and visited some fantastic places. The Yorkshire Dales (wonderful), London (wonderful), Tenby (wonderful), Barrow-in-Furness (wonderful), Paris (wonderful), Barcelona (wonderful), Florida (wonderful, and in many ways more foreign to me than either Paris or Barcelona), Normanton (really not wonderful at all. In any way. If you live there, sorry. Really, do leave. Everywhere else is nicer).

But the strangest place I've been all year is here.

You see the two right-hand towers? In between them, impossibly high up, there's a little footbridge across, and I WAS THERE.

It's the Sagrada Familia, the Temple of the Holy Family, in Barcelona. If you want to know more, click on the link, but really all you need to know is that it was originally designed by the mega-famous Antoni Gaudi, and they've been building it for ages and ages and ages - over a hundred years - and it still isn't finished: completion's scheduled for 2026.

Inside, the columns are based on trees, branching out as they go up:

There are workmen everywhere, carving things and making things, even up on the roof:

To get up the tower - - perhaps I should more properly call it a spire - you go in a lift. It goes up for ages and I expected the next stop to be the Moon.

Once you get out of the lift you can climb across the footbridge and look down. Tall building? Until I went up there, I didn't know the meaning of the word. If you get vertigo, I suggest you sit on the floor before looking at these pictures.

some Gaudi-like ceramic decorations, not quite finished:

High up. Really high up:

After you come out of the lift, you can climb further up the spire. You can feel its narrowness and look out of the windows - it feels as though you're climbing up the inside of a very tall pencil that reaches to the sky.

I wasn't quite sure what I think about the Sagrada Familia as a whole - I'm not sure whether it's a stunningly beautiful demonstration of man's creativity and skill, or the most kitsch thing I've ever seen. Of course, it could be both. I want to go back there and have another look.

I have loved all the travelling I did last year, and - almost - all the places I visited. The most peaceful was the narrowboat in the Dales. I loved just wandering round London with Silverback being tourists with no fixed itinerary, and a film premiere to go to later on: this and the airboat ride in Florida were the most fun things I did. The most carefree was wandering round Paris on a sunny autumn morning. The most awe-inspiring was swimming in the Gulf of Mexico with pelicans fishing nearby. The most exciting was the Kennedy Space Centre, a place that Stephen and I have always wanted to visit. The most unexpectedly stunning were the Miami skyscrapers. The most comforting was the beautiful view across Tenby that I've known most of my life.

If you'd said to me on January 1st last year that by the end of the year I would have seen all these places, I would have been totally amazed. I've loved it. Many, many thanks to those who have helped.