Barcelona

I'm continuing with this out of order trip recap. We flew into Barcelona on an overnight flight, arriving around 9am. We picked up a couple of 4-day public transit passes and jumped a bus to downtown. Our hotel, The Europark Hotel, was really great. It was comfortable, the people were helpful and it was really conveniently located. My basic process for finding our hotels was to look at the rankings on Trip Advisor and cross reference top-rated hotels with prices I could find them for on Hotels.com. Booking on Hotels.com meant paying in US dollars which saved us some fees. Also that meant the hotel was already paid for when we arrived. This particular hotel was modern, but not overly so, with a cool black and white motif. It had three subway stations within a 10-minute walk which was awesome.

This was the view from our balcony of the street below. It was surprisingly quiet at night. After our visit to Parc Guell the first day we rested for a bit and researched a place to get dinner. We decided on 4 Cats in the Eixample neighborhood based on reviews and such. It was a good choice. The place looked small when we first walked in but opened to a big central room. We took a small table for two on an upstairs balcony overlooking the whole place.

The waiter was very helpful and we enjoyed a delicious meal with a bottle of red wine. We even had dessert which is unusual for us. We didn't realize until the next day, when we were visiting the Picasso Museum, that Picasso had ties to this restaurant and we even saw the original art you see here on the menu in the museum. Crazy, huh? After dinner we wandered around the Old Town a bit.

Apparently my teeth aren't as affected by red wine as much as my husband's. Anyway, the next morning we got up early and headed out to the Picasso museum. I knew it would get crowded quickly so we arrived about 15 minutes before opening and got in pretty quickly. It was very cool to see the progression through his career.

I've looked at these photos a number of times and I just noticed the reflection of myself on the left in this one! After the museum we wandered over to the Arc de Triomf which is at the head of a large promenade that leads into Jardines de la Ciudadela, a large, beautiful park. Old men were playing bocce, people were rowing boats and kids were playing soccer, it was pretty cool.

This day became the day that we accomplished the most. After lunch we wandered down to the waterfront and saw the Columbus monument.

From there we wandered up the entire length of La Rambla checking out shops and people watching along the way.

The photo above is of Barcelona's most famous market. We wandered in briefly and Jake commented that he's surprised they haven't closed it to tourists like they have the fish market in Tokyo. It must be nearly impossible for these people to do normal business with those types of crowds.

We arrived at the Barcelona cathedral and had to make a decision whether to pay to tour it or not. I think we had less than two hours until closing time so we decided to skip it. We then wandered all the way over to the base of Mont Juic to take the funicular and the cable car up to the top to see the castle. It was pretty amazing. On our way there we passed a random book store who apparently is the largest retailer of globes in Europe.

We opted to walk back down the mountain so we could stop and see the Olympic facilities.

Upon finally reaching the bottom I noticed the large fountain at the National Museum of Catalan Art wasn't running. There was a sign though that advertised the Magic Fountain show every evening so we made a plan to come back the next evening. After all that walking we needed a rest so we regrouped at the hotel before heading out to an Irish pub for an easy dinner and soccer-watching. There was also some fun wandering around.

We repeated our early morning the next day to go see La Sagrada Familia followed by lunch and more touring of the old city.

We took the subway back over to the magic fountain in the evening for the show. When we arrived an earlier show was just ending and the fountains all along the promenade leading up to the museum were in full swing. The large fountain was dancing to classical music, it was really cool. We found a spot on a nearby bridge to watch. The next show used pop music which I didn't like quite as much but it was still really cool, similar to what I imagine the show at the Bellagio is like.

We sought out tapas for dinner and a special dessert. Our plan to stop at a third place to try their infamous cava was thwarted when they closed at 10:30, so we grabbed a bottle somewhere else before heading over to La Sagrada Familia for nighttime shots, as seen in the previous post.

We were scheduled to catch a train at 3pm to Madrid the next day so we used the remainder of the morning/afternoon to check out, do a little shopping, visit a park and have one last lunch.

Barcelona was really amazing, a great place to start our trip for sure. It was my favorite of all the places we visited though so I kind of wish we'd visited it last! I hope to get back sometime to enjoy it some more and see if they really do ever finish that big cathedral!