Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but Sagrada Familia, the incredible Catholic Church in Barcelona designed by architect Antoni Gaudi, is probably the most visited site in the city. It has been undergoing construction since 1882 and has a few years to go before completion. I certainly don't visit every church in every city we travel to, but this was an exception. I had been outside the church a few times before, but had never gone in, deterred by time and long lines. This trip, however, my wife made reservations so it was not difficult to get in and spend some time in utter amazement, a lot of it looking up. Neither words nor photographs do it justice as it must be experienced in person to appreciate fully. For a number of these photographs, I used my 10-18 wide angle lens, especially for the "looking up" shots. The difficulty with this approach is getting the symmetry correct because of the inherent distortion of any super wide angle lens. For some of the shots, I made no attempt to correct the distortion in software, preferring to let the columns stretch up into the sky, so to speak. I included a shot of people sitting in chairs to give a sense of scale, but it doesn't really tell the story. I'm glad I waited to go in until now because the interior at least looks to be finished, even though there's still a lot of work to be done.