No visit to Bar­celona is com­plete without a visit to the Temple Expi­atori de la Sagrada Família. Love it or hate it, but hands down: this is one of the most impress­ive build­ings on this planet!

They’ve been build­ing over 100 years on it now — appar­ently it’s just over 50% done now. Should take another 20 to 40 years (note the pre­cise estim­ate). The whole thing is just gigantic, and mind bog­glingly intric­ate.

I’m not going to elab­or­ate on how crazy this church is. Steffi and I spent a whole after­noon there (that’s not count­ing the queuing to get in), and you should also try to visit it at some stage.

The photo here shows a detail of the Nativ­ity Facade, which is ded­ic­ated to Jesus’ birth. To pick out Maria, Joseph and the Little One from the over­whelm­ingly detailed, almost “over­loaded” facade I chose to use my latest toy: the Lens­baby. It’s basic­ally a lens designed for imper­fec­tions, the dis­tor­tions you see are all pro­duced by the lens, there was no “Pho­toshop­ping” involved at all as many people would think.