We went to Barcelona for the weekend to celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary. It was the perfect city to celebrate in! We arrived on a Friday night after a short flight from London. Our hotel was in the perfect location for a weekend of exploring all of the sights, just blocks from La Rambla and the beach! After checking into our hotel it was already 8pm so we headed out for a bite to eat. We found a small little tapas place called SENSI Tapas just steps away from our hotel, but of the beaten path enough to avoid the tourist crowds. We tried some house favorites like seafood paella, tuna tartar, duck and finished it off with a yummy cheese plate. We knew that people ate later in Europe, particularly in Spain, yet we were still surprised that at 8:30 the restaurant was fairly slow and by the time we left at 10pm the place was packed with a line of people waiting for a table. Dinner at 10pm would take some getting used to! We kept it an early night since we needed to be at our first walking tour by 10am on Saturday morning.
Saturday morning we went to our meeting spot for our walking tour and waited and waited and waited. There was another couple with us there, but no tour guide. By 10:15 we threw in the towel on the tour and got on with our day. Since this was supposed to take up the first half of our day we went back to the hotel to plan out our day. First, we emailed the tour company to confirm our tour of a different area for Sunday and rebooked the other tour for Monday morning. After a little research, we realized we were waiting in the wrong spot for the tour. We decided to start our day walking around the Barri Gotic, the center of the old city of Barcelona. It is a maze of narrow streets filled with shops and restaurants that open up into squares. Many of the buildings date back to the Medieval Times or further. It consistently amazes us the depth of the history we find throughout Europe. It is so easy to get caught up in our day to day lives and forget all that has gone before us. We went to the Barcelona Cathedral and spent some time inside and then took an elevator ride to the roof top. At the top we took in panoramic views of the city, mountains and beach. It was great to see the city from that perspective. While walking through the city we came upon some type of protest going on in one of the squares and police were all around in their riot gear. This made me pretty nervous so I wanted to hightail it out of that area. We asked our tour guide the next day about it and he said that is Barcelona's version of occupy Wall Street and the police are always dressed like that, so no need to be nervous.
After touring around the Gothic Quarter a bit we went in search of a cafe for lunch. It was actually more difficult than one might think to find a simple lunch place in Barcelona a 12pm because a lot of the places that were open for lunch didn't even open until 1 or 2pm, but I guess this works if you're eating dinner at 10pm. It all worked out though because the cafe we ended up at was just our speed. It was packed with locals and only a few tourists, our sandwiches were delicious and the coffee was top notch. Upon coming to Barcelona, I thought I would be able to break out my Spanish skills (regardless of how rusty they might be), but in fact they mainly speak Catalan. Catalan varies fairly significantly from Spanish, so much to my dismay my Spanish was of little to no use. However, most of the locals that we ran into or who worked at restaurants spoke English fairly well. In fact, at our cafe I tried to order our sandwiches in Catalan from the menu and our waitress kindly said "English" so I repeated our order from the English menu and we ended up with two of the same sandwiches instead of two different ones I had ordered. They were really yummy so we didn't send them back:)
From lunch we wandered up to Font de Canaletes, an ornate fountain at the top of La Rambla (the main street). There were loads of people out basking in the sun, eating lunch and lots of kids running around enjoying the sunshine. We made our way down La Rambla a tree lined pedestrian mall popular with tourists and locals alike. As we made our way down La Rambla we stumbled upon a food market that was packed with people and tons of amazing looking food...fish, meats, cheese, fruits, vegetables, nuts, candy and so much more. It all looked great, but was so crowded we could hardly move. After all of this walking around we were ready for a siesta, so we headed back to the hotel for a short rest before our dinner reservations at 8pm...when the restaurant opened:)We joked that we should have received the early bird discount! We went to another great restaurant for dinner, the food and wine were fantastic! On our way home we passed through the same square that had the protest earlier in the day and there was a band set up and playing music with a large group of people around dancing. They were doing a traditional dance called Sardana, which is performed in a circle. We saw people of all ages doing this dance all over the city during our time here.
Sunday morning we headed to meet for the Gaudi walking tour, but this time we went to the correct spot and actually got to go on the tour. This tour was a snapshot of the many buildings Antoni Gaudi (famous Spanish Catalen architect) designed or influenced throughout the city of Barcelona. We started with the Casa Batllo and the Casa Mila then we took the metro to the Sagrada Familia. This was absolutely incredible to see and learn about. The Sagrada Familia is a large Roman Catholic church that was started in 1882 but never finished. Gaudi worked on the project for 43 years until his death. The construction was slow and sometimes non-existent due to funding from private donations and the Spanish Civil War. The church is still under construction to this day. They plan to finish it in 2026, the 100 year anniversary of Gaudi's death. The design of the church is truly breath taking and the details portrayed are mind boggling. We were really glad we were able to see this. We did not go into this church because when we got there, the line was about 100 people deep. We did see pictures of the inside and it looks to be as amazing on the inside as it is on the outside.
We got a couple lunch ideas from our tour guide and headed towards the beach area for paella. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for sitting out on the patio for an afternoon lunch. We found a restaurant that was crowded with locals (always our cue that we want to go there!) and a great patio. We enjoyed fresh mussels and seafood paella. It was so great to watch all the locals come in with their entire family and sit down for a long Sunday lunch. What fun!
After lunch we went in search of a gondola that would take us to Muntanya de Montjuic, a mountain on the coast of Barcelona with Castell de Monjuic on top. The gondola ride was great! We could see the entire city and point out different places we'd been so far. We also had a perfect view of the coastline and clear blue waters. The Castell de Monjuic was first built in 1640 and has seen numerous attacks throughout its history. We stayed at the top for a bit just taking in the views.
Once down from the Muntanya de Montjuic we took another stroll around the Gothic Quarter and took in the buzzing atmosphere. As we were walking around we heard music that kept getting louder, so we followed our ears until we found a marching band going through the streets playing music and dancing. Everyone was in the streets dancing and having a great time! It is such a vibrant culture and so great to be around.
We decided to go in search of dinner and ended up at another restaurant by our hotel that received high ranks on trip advisor. Upon arrival we were quickly seated at a table by the bathrooms and when I say by the bathrooms I mean a two-top table in a small hallway literally outside the bathroom. We both looked at each other and figured with the 100's of restaurants in Barcelona, we don't need to sit in front of the loo. We kindly told our server we intended to leave because of our table and he quickly whisked us to a table in the bar. We thought, this should be fine....after waiting for 10 minutes without any service whatsoever, we decided to move on. We thought we'd just wander through town and pick something that looked good. While walking through the streets a guy gave us a flyer for a restaurant and said you get a free glass of Cava (Catalan Champagne) upon arrival with the flyer. Jon had read good things about this restaurant online as well. We were greeted at the restaurant and told it would just be a few minutes and to have a seat at the bar. We enjoyed our glass of Cave and watched the bar fill up and watched almost everyone who arrived after us get sat first, so I said something to the bartender and we were quickly seated...and left to sit without service for 10 minutes until we finally got up and left again! Third time was a charm though because we ended up at the perfect spot and it was well worth the wait. We ended up at a very unique tapas restaurant where everyone stands at the bar or tall tables and the tapas are all around the bar and you pick which ones you would like, each tapas has a toothpick in it and at the end they count your toothpicks to know how much to charge you. It was really a fun experience and the perfect relaxing atmosphere to end our busy day.
Monday morning we started our day off with the tour we were supposed to take on Saturday morning. This tour was of the Gothic Quarter. Although we'd been walking around this area for the past two days we had no history or context for much of what we were seeing. This tour was really amazing, we walked ALL over the old city taking in all the sights and history it has to offer. We've done several of these walking tours and highly suggest them to anyone traveling, they are a great way to take in the city you are visiting. At the end of the tour we were pretty tired (2 1/2 days of walking 10 hours a day will do that:)) and hungry and just wanted a relaxing place to rest our tired feet. We found a little cafe serving sandwiches and crepes and sat outside for lunch enjoying the afternoon sun.
While walking around picking out our souvenirs and such, we kept seeing mosaic ceramic lizards everywhere! We asked someone where it comes from and there is a park north of the city that has a large version of it and a beautiful view of the city. We didn't have a lot of time left but we wanted to try and see it...so off we went to Parc Guell! It was a fairly short metro ride to our stop, but upon exiting we missed our turn and ended up taking a 15 minute detour in the wrong direction. We finally got back to the right street and proceeded up 5 blocks of really steep stairs and eventually made it the park. The Parc Guell has awesome views of the city and coast and has a wide range of different Gaudi artwork/designs. When we finally found the lizard, we only had time for a quick photo before we had to get going back to the hotel to grab our bags.
I can't say enough great things about this city! It's full of life, love and history. It was a perfect choice to celebrate our marriage.
We only had one unfortunate incident on our journey...Barcelona is famous for pick pockets (I know you all know where this is going). We were both extremely conscious of this fact throughout our trip. However, on our trip home sometime between leaving the hotel and arriving in London, my wallet was stolen out of our backpack. We just can't figure out when because we were both really paranoid about it and kept a close eye on our bags at all times...I guess next time we should keep our good eye out:) It wasn't the end of the world as I had no money it, just my ID and credit card...which we easily replaced.
Here is the link to our pictures and once again, you have to copy and paste the link in your browser. I can't seem to get the link to work on this blog!
http://www2.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=8165481007/a=53561785_53561785/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
