Barcelona is beautiful. It seems to have everything going for it – wide boulevards, dedicated biking lanes, trees, mountains, beach, and architecture.
In the one week we spent in Barcelona we were able to walk everywhere. No need to rent a bike, hire a cab, or take the metro. All of that walking had an added advantage of helping to prepare us for walking the Camino de Santiago that we are doing right now – If you haven’t checked it out yet, please take a look at our challenge to you.
As you can expect, by my opening description of Barcelona, we spent nearly all of our time just walking and looking. We didn’t really do much else, though we certainly could have.
For example, there seems to be a pretty hopping night life. Every night between 11:00 pm and midnight, the patrons and staff of our hostels (we stayed in three) would finish showering, put on some cologne, and head out for drinks and dancing. In the morning, all reports gave us the impression that they were having plenty of fun, but we never joined them. Partly because partying just isn’t our thing anymore, and partly because Central America got us too used to going to bed at 9:30pm and waking up at 5:30am.
Though in retrospect, it may have been better to join them to avoid the 3:30AM, lights on wake up calls when everyone finally stumbled back to their beds. Nowhere else have I seen so many people act so inconsiderately in dormitory beds. And it wasn’t just one night, it was every night at three different hostels.
That’s my only real complaint about our time in Barcelona. Everything else was great. Especially the food. There were the chocolate croissants (I still think they are better than anything we had in Paris, Ashley disagrees), whole wheat baguettes, and the snack like dishes called tapas. At the recommendation of our friend Uri, we tried Patatas Bravas – a type of tapa that reminded me of buffalo chicken wing sauce poured over potato wedges. Delicious.
Aside from the splurges eating out, we ate our other meals in. I think we were trying to make up for our overindulgence of desserts on the cruise ship. It also helped to keep our European budget from exploding by taking advantage of our fully stocked hostel kitchens. Even after becoming vegetarian, we still love to cook.
Anyways, enough talk about food… it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes of this post – just what did we see in Barcelona?
Montjuic:
A hill overlooking the harbour of Barcelona. One of the nicest park areas we’ve seen in a city, with plenty to see.
La Rambla
One of the most famous streets in all of Spain. We’re not sure why, but there were a tonne of people on it every day.
Gaudi
One crazy architect from the very early 1900’s. His work is all over the city, and really quite neat to see.
We saw a lot more in Barcelona than I could fit in this post. If you want to check out more photos, see our photo album.
I just returned from Barcelona and it was amazing. Though, I agree about La Rambla. I spent an hour there and couldn’t wait to leave.
Cheers to that!