November 14, 2019: A Port Day in Barcelona
	November 12, 2019: A Bus Tour to Andorra
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This morning, Fred and I are going to visit the Sagrada Familia and ascend one of the towers. The interior of the church has been pretty much finished, which it was not when we visited it ten years ago. And on that first visit, we did not have time to go up in one of the towers, so we want visit again to do that. And this afternoon, the three of us are heading down to the cruise ship port to embark on the Viking Jupiter- our home for the next three weeks.

Visiting the Sagrada Familia

We had some breakfast at the Praktik Hotel with Greg, and then checked out so we could store our luggage until our afternoon departure. Then Fred and I went outside to grab a taxi to get over to the Sagrada Familia.

Location and Exterior

Had I done a little more investigation, I would have discovered that the Sagrada Familia was only about 3/4 mile from the hotel, and thus we could easily have walked.

But we ended up grabbing a taxi for the five minute ride northeast through town to the Sagrada Familia church. I had bought tickets online yesterday for an 11AM entry time and a 1230PM time to go up in the Nativity Tower (one of the two that are open for visitors). I wasn't sure which tower was better, or if there was a difference, so I picked the one with the fewest tickets available, figuring that would be the more popular one.

The taxi ride over was pretty quick, and the cab dropped us off on the south side of the square occupied by the basilica. We had a chance to walk around outside for a while before we could get in line for our entry time. As I said earlier, this was our second time here, and my initial thought, walking around the outside of the building, was that it didn't look much different than when we'd seen it last, so I assumed that most of the changes would be inside. In that, we turned out to be right. To get to the northeast side entrance, we walked entirely around the structure. Here are some views of it:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The Basílica de la Sagrada Família, also known as the Sagrada Família, is a large unfinished Roman Catholic minor basilica. Designed by Spanish/Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926), the building is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On 7 November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated the church and proclaimed it a minor basilica. Here are some of the pictures we took as we walked around the outside of the building:

I made one movie outside the Sagrada Familia:

Sagrada Familia- Northwest side (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

The Nave and Sacristy

We entered the church from the east side of the cross plan; the nave is oriented north-south and the altar/sacristy was at our right. So when we entered the church for the first time we were in the middle of the nave on its east side.

The Interior of the Sagrada Familia (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

Fred returned to this area midway through our visit to the inside of the church and made the best movie we have of what the interior was like. His camera work was a lot steadier than mine, and as he panned around and up he took in all the architectural elements of the inside of the church.

I hope that you will take the time to use the movie player at left to have a look at his film.

The Basílica de la Sagrada Família was the inspiration of a bookseller, Josep Maria Bocabella who, after a visit to the Vatican in 1872, returned with the intention of building a church inspired by the basilica at Loreto. The apse crypt of the church, funded by donations, was begun in 1882- part of an architect's plan for a standard Gothic revival church. The apse crypt was completed before that first architect resigned and Antoni Gaudí took over, but the remaining design was radically changed. Gaudi was appointed Architect Director in 1884.

The inside of the Sagrada Familia was, to put it simply, amazing. Together with six other Gaudí buildings in Barcelona, part of la Sagrada Família is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as testifying "to Gaudí's exceptional creative contribution to the development of architecture and building technology", "having represented el Modernisme of Catalonia" and "anticipated and influenced many of the forms and techniques that were relevant to the development of modern construction in the 20th century".

The church plan is that of a Latin cross with five aisles. The central nave vaults are 148 feet high, while the side nave vaults reach are 98 feet. The transept has three aisles. The columns are on a 25 foot grid. However, the columns of the apse, resting on the original architect's foundation, do not adhere to the grid, requiring a section of columns of the ambulatory to transition to the grid thus creating a horseshoe pattern to the layout of those columns.

Walking Around the Nave (Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

Trying to make a movie in a space like this- where there are so many people that you can't focus on the camera screen but have to watch where you're going- is difficult, and my inability to hold the camera perfectly steady doesn't help.

So I apologize for the poor composition and jerkiness in the one decent move I made here in the nave- a movie that you can use the player at right to watch.

The crossing rests on the four central columns of porphyry supporting a great hyperboloid surrounded by two rings of twelve hyperboloids (currently under construction). The central vault reaches 200 feet. The apse is capped by a hyperboloid vault that is 246 feet high. Gaudí intended that a visitor standing at the main entrance be able to see the vaults of the nave, crossing, and apse; thus the graduated increase in vault loft. There are gaps in the floor of the apse, providing a view down into the crypt below.

In the picture of the front of the nave (above, right) you can see that there seems to be a chandelier-like affair hanging from the ceiling. That's what it looked like, anyway. We couldn't get closer to it, as there was a service going on, but Fred was able to take a couple of pictures of it with his great zoom lens, and you can make out just what it is and how it is constructed if you look at his pictures of it here and here.

The columns of the interior are a unique Gaudí design. Besides branching to support their load, their ever-changing surfaces are the result of the intersection of various geometric forms. The simplest example is that of a square base evolving into an octagon as the column rises, then a sixteen-sided form, and eventually to a circle. This effect is the result of a three-dimensional intersection of helicoidal columns (for example a square cross-section column twisting clockwise and a similar one twisting counter-clockwise).

The interior of this church was the most amazing that I have ever seen- without doubt. Here are some more views of the interior architecture at the front and sides of the nave:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

Essentially none of the interior surfaces are flat; the ornamentation is comprehensive and rich, consisting in large part of abstract shapes which combine smooth curves and jagged points. Even detail-level work such as the iron railings for balconies and stairways are full of curvaceous elaboration.

Stained Glass

There is not a lot to say about the use of stained glass in the Sagrada Familia- except to say that there is a lot of it. Certainly there were many sets of windows on either side of the front of the nave, but because there was a service going on, we didn't wander around that part of the church much.

But behind where the rows of seats were set up for the service (I do not know of permanent pews will be installed, but from the looks of things I don't think so), the area was open, and we could walk around and have a look at the stained glass which was everywhere along the walls.

Stained Glass at the Rear of the Nave

There certainly was a lot of it, but the bad part was that the glass itself began fairly high up, and so it was difficult to get close enough to get good pictures of some of the individual panels- something we've been able to do in some of the other churches and cathedrals that you may have seen in this photograph album.

Most of the sections of stained glass consisted of symmetrical sets of windows. Each set had a rose window at the top and then two "columns" of windows underneath. Each column had three circular windows in a triangle at the top and then underneath three rows of windows, with each row consisting of three tall, rectangular windows, with a row of three circular windows on top of them. You can see this pattern repeating in many of the pictures that we took of the windows. I apologize that the pictures aren't as clear as I would have liked, but I think you'll get the idea of how stained glass is used in the Sagrada Familia if you look at the pictures above and click on some of the thumbnails below:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

The Rear of the Nave

As I said, the back part of the nave (the end opposite the sacristy and altar) was basically a large, open area. There were no chairs set up here, and people were just milling back and forth, looking at the structure from the inside, admiring the stained glass, looking at the "front entrance" of the church, and reading some of the signage about the construction. In the "back" corners of the nave, there are beautiful spiral staircases that I at first thought went up into the towers; but after looking at them, I am not so sure. (Certainly we didn't go up them when we visited the Nativity Tower).

The Back of the Nave

The fact that there were no chairs or pews in this area allowed us to wander about and admire the elements of Gaudi's design; as I have said already, they were very much unlike anything we'd seen elsewhere. Take a look at some of the best of our pictures:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

After looking at some of those pictures, you may have formed your own opinion of the interior of this, Gaudi's most well-known and most-visited project. (I find the exterior way too "busy" for my taste, and thought the same when we visited here for the first time ten years ago.) So what do the "experts" think?

The art historian Nikolaus Pevsner, writing in the 1960s, referred to Gaudí's buildings as growing "like sugar loaves and anthills" and described Gaudi's penchant for excessive ornamenting of buildings with shards of broken pottery or tiles or, as is the case here, carvings, as possibly "bad taste" but handled with vitality and "ruthless audacity". (I am not at all sure if that's a compliment or a criticism!)

In general, the design of the Sagrada Familia has been polarizing. Assessments by Gaudí's fellow architects were generally positive; Louis Sullivan greatly admired it, describing Sagrada Família as the "greatest piece of creative architecture in the last twenty-five years. It is spirit symbolised in stone!" Walter Gropius also praised the Sagrada Família, describing the building's walls as "a marvel of technical perfection", while Time Magazine called it "sensual, spiritual, whimsical, exuberant". On the other hand, George Orwell called it "one of the most hideous buildings in the world", James A. Michener called it "one of the strangest-looking serious buildings in the world" and British historian Gerald Brenan stated about the building "Not even in the European architecture of the period can one discover anything so vulgar or pretentious."

As for me, I am not fond of the building at all. I would call it "indulgent". I think it represents a colossal waste of money and energy- both of which could have been put to much better use. (Of course, I will freely admit that I feel the same way about most ornate religious buildings; beautiful as many of them are, I find it unconsionable that so much money and effort has been poured into them- in direct contravention of the teachings of the figures they were intended to honor.) In any event, the distinctive silhouette of the Sagrada Familia has become symbolic of Barcelona itself, and the site draws an estimated 2.5 million visitors annually.

The Apostles

Four of the Sagrada Familia's towers represent the four Apostles, and inside the building there are four markers and accompanying signage. I think these markers are temporary, but I am not sure.

Mark	The Evangelist Mark's tower will be topped with a lion. Tradition has always associated this animal with strength, courage, and royalty.

The gospel according to Matthew begins with Jesus' genealogy, highlighting that he was human. This is why he is symbolized by the most perfect creature- man- made in God's image. As all the symbols of the Evangelists have wings, the symbol o fMatthew can also be interpreted as an angel.

Matthew

Luke	The tower of the Evangelist Luke will be topped with a figure of an ox- a calm, docile, humble animal.

The Gospel according to John is the most theological of the four. This is why he is represented by an eagle, which contemplates the world from on high.

John

The information above was taken from the signage for each of the Apostles. On each sign, the information was repeated in Spanish, English, and Catalan.

At left and below are two more pictures of this part of the interior of the Sagrada Familia.

Our ticket for today included the Nativity Tower, and that ascent was at a particular time. So just a few minutes before, we headed back to the east side of the church and past the doors where we'd come in and then around to the right to the queue for the elevator that would take us up in the tower.

At the Top of the Nativity Tower

Antoni Gaudí envisioned the Sagrada Familia with 18 monumental spires. Twelve of them are dedicated to the Twelve Apostles and are placed on the three façades of the Sagrada Familia. The other six spires are dedicated to the Four Evangelists, Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. Of the 18 spires, eight are completed. These correspond to the four Apostles of the Nativity Façade and the four Apostles of the Passion Façade. The tallest of all the 18 spires will be the one dedicated to Jesus Christ. It will be surmounted by a giant cross and will have a height of 560 feet.

When I got our tickets online, I also got tickets for us to go up in one of the completed towers. We had not had the opportunity to do this the first time we were here, and we very much wanted to. The views were supposedly fantastic; and I have to say that we were not disappointed. I chose the Nativity Tower.

The View Northeast from the Nativity Tower

In case you're going to the Sagrada Familia, you might want to know if we thought the extra $17 each was worth it. Simple answer? Definitely. First, visiting the towers doesn't take long- about an hour if you spend a fair amount of time at the top taking pictures (like the one at left). However, be sure to buy your tickets ahead of time so that you don't have to wait in the elevator line very long (since the elevator only carries 6-8 people at a time). We arrived right on time and only waited about five minutes.

Going up is, of course, effortless, and coming down is a real trip. That's because you don't take the elevator down; rather, you come down via spiral stone stairs. (These stairs are enclosed inside a tower, but they are narrow and fairly steep; for this reason kids younger than six aren't allowed entry to the towers, so you might take that into account.) On each facade, One of the four towers has an elevator inside, and the one next to it has the stairs. A stone bridge connects the two at the top (and it's from this bridge that most people take their pictures). Don't worry; even though the bridge is in the open air, there's wire mesh to keep you save as you cross it. Be careful with your camera, though!

Another reason to add the tower ticket is that the Towers were an integral part of Gaudi’s design as he had 18 towers planned, out of which only 8 are complete. The very reason the Sagrada Familia is taking so long to near completion is the complex design of the Towers, so you can rightly call the Towers the highlight of his design. Moreover, Gaudi himself built the 4 Towers of the Nativity Facade, so visiting these come close to experiencing Gaudi’s Sagrada.

The View Southeast from the Nativity Tower

Once you make the decision to go up in a tower, you next have to decide which one. For the foreseeable future, your choice is between the Nativity Tower (on the east side Nativity facade) or the Passion Tower on the west. I didn't know which to pick when I was buying the tickets, so I picked the tower with the fewest tickets left for today, figuring that would mean that the hive mind knew which one was better. In that I was right, for I have since learned that the Nativity Tower is, generally, the one you want to choose. Why?

First, the Nativity Facade was built by Antoni Gaudi himself while he was alive and hence most people prefer watching the architect’s original work than the work of those who followed Gaudi’s instructions and designs. Second, only the Nativity towers are connected by an arched stone bridge, and it's from the bridge that you get the panoramic views of Barcelona. (On the Passion facade, the stairs down are in the same tower as the elevator.) Third, the Passion Tower is newer and is still under construction; this results in obstructed views due to the construction equipment.

Fourth, the stairs used to descend from the Nativity Tower are said to be slightly wider than the stairs of Passion Tower. If you’re claustrophobic or skeptical about climbing down 504 narrow stairs, you might as well choose the slightly wider one. Also, while you are coming down the Nativity Tower stairs, you can stop at numerous balconies for a detailed view of the Towers and peep out to see bird’s eye views of Barcelona; the Passion Tower stairs don't have these balconies (at least for now).

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The last reason why the Nativity Tower is preferred is a subjective one. While the views from either tower are pretty spectacular, most photographers have said that they get better shots on the Nativity Facade than on the Passion Facade. I can't speak to this, of course, as we didn't go up in the Passion Tower and so I am unable to compare the views.

What I might suggest, though, is that you take the sun into account. That is, if you are planning on going up in a tower in the morning, you might want to pick the Passion Tower so you aren't taking pictures into the sun. Similarly, you might want to pick the Nativity Tower if your visit will be in the afternoon. In the middle of the day, or on cloudy days like today, of course, it probably doesn't matter much.

So what about those views? Well, they were indeed pretty neat, and we took quite a few photos. Some of them we framed with towers; others were just cityscapes. Some looked down at the park below the church on its east side, and others we took showed the continuing construction work on the ornamentation of the outside of the basilica. I am sure you will want to see the best of our pictures; since there were quite a few of them, a slideshow is the easiest way for you to look at them. That slideshow is at left. Use the little arrows in the lower corners of each picture to go from one to another (backward or forward). The index number in the upper left of each image will tell you which picture you're on. Enjoy visiting the top of the Nativity Tower with us!

There actually wasn't a lot of room on the bridge, and there was a pretty continual stream of people moving from the tower with the elevator over to the tower with the stairs down. This made it hard to take a panoramic view with my camera. But I did try one such view, and here it is:

Descending the Nativity Tower Stairs

When we'd taken all the pictures we wanted from the bridge between the two towers here on the Nativity Facade, we came down off the bridge and went inside the tower to which the bridge was connected, and there we found ourselves at the top of the spiral stone stairway leading back to ground level. As you will see in the pictures we took on the way down, these stairs weren't simply one continuous spiral of enclosed stairs. No, sometimes they came to little balconies you could go out on, and many times they passed windows of varying shapes and sizes through which you could take pictures (of both the church itself and of the cityscape to the east). Actually, the stairs were only totally enclosed during the last couple of spirals near the bottom exit.

Fred Near the Top of the Stairway

At left you can see Fred near the top of this stairway, just as we started down.

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As we spiraled around and around, getting lower all the time, we took a good many photographs of whatever seemed interesting, and I have put the best of these pictures into the slideshow at right (in the order we took them). If you'll go from one picture to the next in the show, you'll see what we saw as we descended from the top of the Nativity Tower.

Use the little "forward" arrow in the lower right corner of each picture to get to the next one in sequence, and refer to the index numbers in the upper left to tell which picture you are on (and when you get to the end of the sequence).

I wasn't sure exactly where the stairs would let us out, as I hadn't seen any obvious exit when we first entered the Sagrada Familia earlier. Of course, since we were coming down a different tower, the exit point wasn't adjacent to the elevator, either. As it turned out, the exit was just inside another church entrance a bit north of where we'd entered. I tried to take a picture of Fred at that exit, but there was a continual stream of people coming out and walking by that I couldn't get one worth including here.

Going up in one of the towers was one of our primary objectives for returning to the Sagrada Familia today, so once we'd come down from the Nativity Tower we were ready to head back to the hotel.

The Nativity Tower

On our way out of the complex, we stopped to look back at where we'd been. In the picture at left, you can see the bridge that we crossed between two of the Nativity Facade towers.

Part of the Nativity Facade

In the picture at right, you can see a more expansive view of this side of the Sagrada Familia- part of the Nativity Facade.

Much has happened here since our last visit. It was announced in 2015 that construction is 70 percent complete and has entered its final phase of raising six immense steeples. The steeples and most of the church's structure are to be completed by 2026, the centennial of Gaudí's death; as of a 2017 estimate, decorative elements should be complete by 2030 or 2032. Visitor entrance fees finance the annual construction budget of $30 million. Computer-aided design technology has adopted and used to accelerate construction of the building. Current technology allows stone to be shaped off-site instead of being carved by hand.

The main nave was covered and an organ installed in mid-2010, allowing the still-unfinished building to be used for religious services. In 2010, the church was consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI in a ceremony attended by 60,000 people, 100 bishops, and 300 priests. Starting in July 2017, there has been an international mass celebrated at the basilica on every Sunday and holy day of obligation; other masses are also celebrated, and these require an invitation. Visitors may, of course, pray in the chapels.

The basilica has a long history of split opinion among the residents of Barcelona: over the initial possibility it might compete with Barcelona's cathedral, over Gaudí's design itself, and over the possibility that work after Gaudí's death disregarded his design. Describing the Sagrada Família, art critic Rainer Zerbst said "it is probably impossible to find a church building anything like it in the entire history of art", and Paul Goldberger describes it as "the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages". The basilica is not the cathedral church of the Archdiocese of Barcelona, as that title belongs to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia.

Boarding the Viking Jupiter

The taxi ride to the cruise ship port didn't take but about twenty minutes, even though there was a fair amount of traffic.

You can see that it wasn't very far- particularly when I tell you that an inch or so is about 3000 feet, making our trip a little over two miles.

The new cruise ship port here in Barcelona is on an artificial island, and is about fifteen years old. We have been through this port four times now, although this is only the second time that we have embarked through this port. There is a beautiful bridge that connects the mainland to the port; once you get there, ships are lined up as if they were parallel parked (which, of course, they are).

At right is an aerial view of the northern end of the artificial island that is the cruise ship port. The bridge from the mainland is at the top, and you can see how the ships are docked. In that aerial view, you can see that when the picture was taken, there were ships docked at Terminals A and B. Our ship, the Viking Jupiter, was docked at Terminal C- down towards the bottom of the aerial view. This view should give you an idea of what the port area was like. There are four terminals on the island, and so four large ships can be berthed at one time. (This happened to be the first time we'd been at Terminal C; the Celebrity Century that we took in 2008 was docked at Terminal B here in the same port.)

Looking North Towards the City

The actual boarding process was very easy. We just dropped our bags off curbside and then took our documents inside to the reception desks for our cabin assignments and to pick up our cruise documents. We also dropped off our passports here; on this cruise, the purser kept them throughout the voyage, giving us shore documents in the few ports that required visitors to carry them. I thought this was a good idea, as it eliminated the possibility that you might lose your passport while on a shore excursion.

Once on board, we went directly to our cabin to drop off our carried luggage, and then we met Greg at the pool bar cafe for a snack. The pool bar cafe is open, as we discovered, from lunchtime through the afternoon until about an hour before dinner, and is where we could go for something to eat between meals. More about dining on the Viking Jupiter a bit later.

After that, we took a quick tour around the ship, just to get the lay of the land (which actually took a day or two), and to take some pictures. The pictures we took of the ship itself I will put with all the other pictures of the ship on a page devoted to the Viking Jupiter, and that page will be coming up a little later. But with the afternoon having turned quite nice, we were able to get some good pictures of Barcelona's harbor area today, and those I want to include here. I wanted to get to a high point, so we first tried Deck 6 Forward- the deck on which the bridge is located. However, at the front of the ship we found glass windbreak panels that made it hard to take good pictures, so we went up to Deck 7.

There we found the highest outside forward point on the ship- the observation area forward of the Explorer's Lounge. (There is a Deck 8, forward, but on that deck you can't get outside.) Above, left, is a few that looks north along the dock, and you can see the graceful bridge in the distance that connects the mainland to the cruise ship port.

We also went amidships portside and up to Deck 8- the level above the main pool. There, on each side of the ship, are unobstructed views to either side of the ship. (It is on this deck that most of the joggers do their thing.) So we went portside (the ship was docked with the bow to the north, which meant that the left side of the ship had the land view). There I took the panoramic view below:

The View Northwest from the Viking Jupiter

While I was taking this panoramic picture, Fred was zooming in on a couple of the buildings we could see from the ship. He zoomed in on the castle atop the hill and also an interesting building that he could see on the side of the hill, just above the bright white roof structure at the left end of the building right at the base of the hill directly in the middle of the picture.

Montjuic Castle

Montjuïc Castle is an old military fortress, with roots dating back from 1640, built on top of Montjuïc hill; it currently serves as a Barcelona municipal facility. The foundation stone for the basic fortification was laid out in 1640. A year later, in January 1641, the fort saw its first battle, during the Catalan Revolt when the Principality of Catalonia challenged Spain's authority. On orders from the King of Spain, Pedro Fajardo, heading an army of 26,000 men, proceeded to crush the revolt. The Spanish recaptured several cities, but they were defeated at the Battle of Montjuïc by Catalan, led by Francesc de Tamarit.

Fifty years later, in 1694, new bastions and battlements were erected and the fortress became a castle. In the Siege of Barcelona (1705) the fortress was captured by the British 6th Regiment of Foot led by Lt. Col. William Southwell, paving the way for the siege of Barcelona itself. Southwell was afterwards made Governor of the castle.

The old fort was demolished in 1751 by the Spanish engineer and architect Juan Martin Cermeño, creating the current structure, still standing. The final shape of the castle took form during 1779 and 1799, when major construction works took place in order to improve the castle and accommodate changing needs. It was also during this time that the castle was equipped with 120 cannons.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the French Army entered Barcelona, and, on orders from Napoleon, they also captured the castle without firing a shot as the troops guarding the castle were ordered not to fight the French. In the last 350 years Montjuïc Castle has played a decisive role in the history of Barcelona, becoming a symbol after the Catalan defeat to Spain in 1714, a date that has become of significant importance. Since then the Montjuïc cannons have bombarded the city and its citizens on various occasions, and Montjuïc has been used as a prison and interrogation center repeatedly.

The castle is infamous in Catalan history books because of its role in the civil war from 1936 to 1939 when both sides of the conflict imprisoned, tortured and shot political prisoners at Montjuïc, among them Lluís Companys, who was the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Companys was executed upon orders from the Spanish State at Montjuïc Castle in 1940. Later in the 20th century, the castle became a military museum. In June 1963, Francisco Franco inaugurated the Military Armor Museum, the official name given to the institution.

Montjuic Lighthouse

In April 2007, the government transferred the castle to Barcelona City Council. Following discussions over the next months, the castle became a municipal facility. Subsequently, in 2010 the museum was closed and the City Council started a project of restoration and waterproofing of the roof and a watchtower. The current plans for the castle are to use it as a museum and for cultural activities. The castle can be accessed by the Montjuïc cable car, a gondola lift that has its upper station near the castle entrance and connects, via the Montjuïc funicular, with the Barcelona Metro.

The Montjüic Lighthouse, shown at right, is here at Barcelona Port. It is not used nowadays, nor is it accessible by your average tourist. In fact, if you walk to the lighthouse from the fortress, you'll find it chained closed, although you will see old railroad tracks that used to transport merchandise to and from the port.

The lighthouse was first constructed in the mid-1800s, and was a more traditional lighthouse-type building than the one we see today. In 1915 its lamps were replaced with a 3000-candlepower incandescent lamp visible from a distance of over 30 miles. With the lighting sorted, in 1917 the final project was approved and commissioned to engineer José Cabestany; for years works had been delayed as it had become increasingly difficult to award a project that never made it first on a list.

Alterations that resulted in the structure we see today began in 1922 and the new incandescent lamp was lit for the first time in 1925- flashing two beams every 10 seconds at a 26 mile range. The lighthouse went out of service towards the end of the twentieth century.

So, we are aboard the ship for this evening, although it will be staying in port tonight. But the "cruise" has officially begun. On our first full "cruise day", we will be taking a shore excursion here in Barcelona- an excursion that comes included with the cruise. But more on shore excursions, and on the Viking Jupiter itself, a bit later on.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	November 14, 2019: A Port Day in Barcelona
	November 12, 2019: A Bus Tour to Andorra
	Return to the Index for 2019