Friday, March 6th
In line with our not wanting to miss out on any traveling time (and because early flights are cheaper), we booked the earliest flight on Friday morning. This, of course, meant we needed to leave the house at 4:45, which was just awesome. We made it to the airport without any hiccups, and our new Rick Steves' travel backpacks were perfect for fitting all of our stuff in a carry-on. The flight was great, especially the landing, as you fly in over the ocean/beach and downtown area of the city, so the views were great.
Our first stop was our lodgings - our first experience with a hostel. We played it pretty safe, staying in one of the nicer ones where we had our own private room and bath, and it was pretty nice. It was actually run by 2 girls originally from the US, so we were able to get some good info from them and they made it feel a little more friendly. We freshened up a bit and went out to hit the city. We first walked along Las Ramblas, which is the main street running through the city. It is mainly pedestrian, with two small lanes running on the sides for cars. the central section is completely packed with people, street performers, and surprisingly, pet stores. There were probably 20 stands with birds, turtles, rabbits, and even roosters. For some odd reason, we didn't take any pictures of this.
We then headed over to the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter), which is the main historic section of the city. It is full of very small winding cobblestone streets that seem like they haven't changed in several hundred years. It is also the home of the city's main Cathedral. This was our first main tourist attraction and the first bit of evidence for why this post is subtitled "Under Construction". Here is a stock photo of the outside of the cathedral that I got off the web:
And here is the photo that we took:
As you can see, the entire main facade was covered in scaffolding, which just happened to also be a huge advertisement for the local telephone provider, which you love to see on the Church. The Cathedral was pretty nice on the inside as well. It was a lot like the ones we've seen all over Europe, so not too much to mention. The only interesting things were 1) the cloister (garden area inside the church walls) where they have kept several geese for hundreds of years; and 2) the electronic votive candles (lots of churches we've been to have allowed for purchasing a candle and lighting it. As a 21st century church, here you just drop a Euro into a slot and a fake candle lights up). Awesome.
We left the museum, and called it a night after our busy day.
Saturday, March 7th
We had a pretty big day planned, so we got started relatively early with a pastry and juice from a local shop. We headed to the "central park of Barcelona", partly because it is supposed to be nice, but also because there was supposed to be this amazing fountain there. Once again, the architecture was supposed to be great, and you could climb to the top and get some great views over the park and the city. Here is the stock picture from the web:
Notice all of the cool sculptures, nice foliage. And now this is what we saw:
Now it was nice that they had the fountains running, but of course, it was also under renovation, so we missed out on the full effect, and couldn't go to the top of it.
It was amazingly sunny out, which was nice, but it was still only in the mid 60s, so we had a little more clothes on than we're used to wearing to the beach!
After a little break, we headed to to see Montjuic (big hill/small mountain), which is where they have an old palace (converted to a museum) and the actual stadium of the Olympics (now going mostly unused). It started off with a great view of the palace from the foot of the mountain. Here is the picture from the web:
And here is the picture we took (of course with scaffolding):
Even with the construction, this was very cool. The entire approach is full of great landscaping and fountains and it all leads up to this very impressive building at the top. We've uploaded a lot of photos, but they really don't do it justice.
After about a 2 mile hike up the mountain, we discovered that the view was not very good at all. The picture below is from when we started and were smiling. There aren't any other pictures of us from the rest of the hike.
We were both super tired to begin with, and this just added to it, and put us in a pretty bad mood (one of us more than the other!). Luckily, we found a bus to take us back down the mountain to the museum (where of course we walked around for another hour). The museum was fine, but probably not worth commenting on (either that, or it was awesome and we were just too wiped out to care).
We left the museum and started heading back down the mountain, walking past the "Magic Fountain", which turns out to be just a normal fountain that lights up and they pipe out some music. We stuck around there for a while, took about 100 photos, and then headed to the subway to go back towards our hostel for some dinner.
After getting off the train Jenna explained what happened and was going through her purse in detail, making sure everything was there, and as the platform cleared off we saw another couple looking around with a lost look, and overheard the guy talking about how his wallet was gone, so apparently the guy found a less vigilant tourist to prey on.
For dinner we had the other famous Spanish dish - Tapas. We've had these elsewhere, and you can find them at various places in the states, but the general idea if you haven't had them is that they are small portions of dishes which are meant to be shared. So Jenna and I shared 4 different entrees. We've actually had better tasting tapas before, but this was okay. After dinner, we were exhausted and it was time to head off to the hostel and to bed.
Sunday, March 8th (Gaudi Day)
So there is this architect named Antoni Gaudi. He lived and worked mostly in Barcelona, designing and building several buildings and other structures throughout the city. His style is very unique and incredibly ornate. It is hard to explain in words so you have to see the pictures. Most of what we did on Sunday focused on him. Here is a picture of one of the buildings we stopped at on our first night walking the city:
After this, we headed to the real masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia. This is a church that was started in the late 1800s, and of course, is under construction. This one gets a pass, though, because it has just never been finished. Gaudi died in 1926, and they are hoping to finish by the 100 year anniversary of his death. The pictures we have are decent, but you really have to go to understand the massiveness, and why it has taken over 100 years to get it where it is now.
I have tentatively marked down in my calendar a repeat trip to Barcelona in 2026 for the sole purpose of revisiting this place.
After we left, we went to Parc Guell (pronounced Gooey), which was also designed by Gaudi. It is the central gathering area and entrance to what turned out to be a failed housing development, but all of the park was completed. It is very interesting - reminiscent of Dr. Suess. Not much else to say about this place (the pictures do a good job), other than the fact that once again, we had to walk about 1.5 miles up a ridiculous hill to get here, which added to the crazy total of 24 miles walked between destinations in our 3 days (not counting walking in museums, etc, just to and from everything).
The park was the last thing on our agenda for the day, but we still had a few hours to kill before needing to head to the airport, so we went back down to the beach, grabbed some ice cream, and watched the sunset before grabbing our bags and getting on the plane home. We had a great time in Barcelona and are so glad that we were able to go. It was nice to see the sun again for three straight days after not seeing it for several months!
So our trip should have ended Sunday night, with our return to London at 11:30pm. Of course, we were delayed 20 minutes, which made us miss the train we needed, which meant we had to catch the 1:05am train, putting us back home just before 2am (which made for a wonderful week of work!). That was the not-so-good finale to an otherwise amazing trip. And to finally end this post - Thank You for taking the time to read the whole thing, which literally took me a week and a half to write.
2 comments:
LOVE LOVE LOVED this post :) I studied so much about Spain in High school Spanish classes and it's so cool to hear your first hand experience of all those cool places! Yea! Thanks for sharing!
Incredible trip! I could almost feel as if I were there, which of course, I may never be! Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.
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