La Sagrada Familia: Barcelona, Spain

In one word: Astounding.

Being Catholic myself, my family and I tend to visit churches when we travel around the world, whether it’s a tourist spot or just to hear Sunday mass. So I’ve had my fair share of seeing different church designs, but none of it compared to this one.

Construction of La Sagrada Familia started back in 1882 and is still going on today…that’s a total of 133 years. The amount of work being put into it is evident just from the outside.

The architect, Antonio Gaudí, built up a place like no other. The extravagant design has you looking in every crease and every corner of the place (tip: rent the guide headset if you visit).

 

There are 3 façades on the outside of the church: The Nativity, The Passion, and The Glory.

Not gonna lie, from afar it looks like sloppy blotches just pasted on…but when I zoomed in to random parts on the outside of the church I got this: so much detail.

This picture below is part of The Nativity façade as you can see Mary and Joseph on a donkey on the left side.

 

 

When you step inside it looks a little something like this:

Talk about high ceiling…

 

The ceiling:

 

 

Can you believe this was all built from donations?!?

One of my favourite features of La Sagrada Familia are the colourful windows that light up the entire place

 

Attending mass in one of the chapels of Sagrada has got to be the most special one to date. Despite not understanding anything (as it was presided in Spanish), it was a very humbling and spiritual experience.

If you’re in Barcelona, there’s no question about visiting La Sagrada Familia. Sure, there are other ginormous churches around the world, but nothing like this. There’s a museum right outside the church filled with relics and archives that’s worth visiting too. But if you’re like me and you’re on the opposite side of the world from Barcelona, it’s still worth reading about the history online.

♡ Pam

A Spontaneous Trip to Hong Kong

I was looking through my iPhoto albums and came across the photos from my trip to Hong Kong last year. So for my 18th birthday my parents booked a trip for me and my mom to Hong Kong. Now some people might complain on going on a trip with their mom, but since I’m really close to mine (and I don’t live with her anymore), I was excited for some mother-daughter bonding.

We had a chaotic start to our trip because …long story short, we thought the flight was canceled but on the day of the flight my mom received an email confirming it. So she woke me up in a panic at 8:30a.m., I literally threw random clothes in a suitcase and we were on our way to the airport by 9.

With no hotel booked and no itinerary, we were off on an adventure.

Thankfully, we found a place to stay! My mom’s old college friend was nice enough to let us stay at her place so last minute. We somehow made our way to the heart of the city (near Tsim Sha Tsui) and waited for her to pick us up from there.

I didn’t realize that property in Hong Kong was so expensive considering the apartments/houses were small. For once, another city beat the ridiculous prices of Vancouver property!

Here are a couple photos I took on our trip:

I would recommend going at night when you all the buildings are lit up so you could cruise around and see this:

Taking the harbour cruise across:

We grabbed some drinks as we were watching the light show then walked around the pier for a while. When we were taking the train at around 11pm, I thought it would be pretty quiet in the city…but NOPE. It was so busy literally I was being squished on the train because of how many people there were. 11pm?!? Really?!? HK is like the city that never sleeps (part two).

Stanley Plaza. My mom and I hopped on buses that took us hours away from the city and we just wandered wherever we pleased 🙂

I’d never traveled like this before (usually my mom plans our trips to the dot) so this was a really interesting experience. It made finding hidden pretty places all the better.

(Lol at that “staring off into the distance” look and edit though)

We went shopping around the little stalls…ah! I can’t remember what it was called but it was such a quaint place! I’ll write it in when I remember! (Edit: It’s Stanley Plaza)

This next photo is not an accurate representation of Hong Kong. This was taken in one of the busiest places where you can go bargain shopping. I think everyone decided to hide when my mom took this photo of me because in reality there were crowds of people shopping and walking around…seriously, where did they all go?!?

One thing about Hong Kong: PEOPLE LOVE TO SHOP and eat. For two days, we just went around shopping in their ginormous malls. There was even a six storey Forever 21 there! Usually I’d be overwhelmed and be too lazy to look around, but my mom offered to buy me a couple things so I had a look around 😉

But she ended up buying more stuff than me…

On the last day we headed to Lantau Island where we took a 25 minute cable car ride up to the NGONG PING NATURE CENTRE.

It’s a “village” that has a rustic feel to it, which I loved. It’s filled with tourist attractions, activities (hiking), shops, and restaurants. It also leads you to the top of the mountain where the huge Tian Tan Buddha (“Big Buddha”) is located.

We weren’t able to see the Big Buddha because it started POURING. We were soaking wet on the ride back, but we had fun exploring nonetheless.

One dessert place you have to try if you’re in Hong Kong is Honeymoon Place. They have such creative desserts and they’re really good too! I insisted on going there every night… 😀

That’s the end of the end of our spontaneous trip! Pardon the excessive solo pictures, but there was only two of us on that trip and we weren’t gonna whip out a tripod haha I think I had more pictures so I’ll post it when I get a hold of my hard drive.

Hope you enjoyed this post!

♥ Pam T.

The Eiffel Tower – Paris, France

When we went to Paris, we hung around the Eiffel Tower every day we were there. Even on days when it wasn’t on the itinerary, we would make time for it. (Because it was well worth it.)

Now I’m not the kind of girl that has an eiffel tower statue in my room or a photo pinned up to my bulletin board. I always thought it was a unique structure, but nothing more, really. When I saw that Paris was part of our itinerary I wasn’t too excited; figured we were going just because we were already so close to it (traveling from London) and for the sake of saying “been there, done that”. 

But the second we got off at the Trocadero train stop and turned the corner, I stopped at my tracks and was stunned at how beautiful it was. I know that sounds hella cheesy but that’s actually what happened. I literally froze and just stared at it for a good two minutes. Then the following 4 hours consisted of “ohmygod it’s so beautiful”, “i’m so in love”, “oUI OUI PARIS YES”, and about 500 pictures. 

My family and I were literally the biggest tourists there, but I didn’t even care. I mean…it waS THE EIFFEL TOWER!!!

Here are a few of my favourite photos: (taken on different days):

This first one is what you walk out to from the train station:

now do you see why i froze?!?? that sunset lighting and clear skies though

That last one is has been my wallpaper for the past 4 months…don’t plan on changing it anytime soon.

Hope you like the photos! (All photos taken with iPhone 5s)

“Paris is always a good idea.” -Audrey Hepburn

Je t’aime Paris,

Pam x

Tower Bridge – London, England

Am I the only one who thought this was the London Bridge? I walked on the bridge fully playing Fergie’s song in my head when I found out this was the Tower Bridge. Oh London, you disappoint me…said no one ever.

It’s pretty big I would say…

We went to the top of the bridge and there was a mini-museum all about the Tower Bridge like why and how it was made. There was also a timeline all about London’s culture.

We were really excited to be on, mainly because this was where one of the scenes of The Mummy Returns was filmed. The part where Alex was kidnapped off the double decker bus. Yup we’ve been watching that film since it came out.

One popular London site down, many more to go!

xx Pam