Hola! Nick and I just returned from our trip to Barcelona, and, boy, do I have a lot to unpack (figuratively).
October 11-12: We started planning this trip for the two of us back in June, when I found some super cheap airline tickets. We left our kids to my parents, and took off to Chicago midday on Friday. We had a red-eye direct to Barcelona, and although our 10:05 was delayed until 11 pm, we were finally on our way. We left the rainy, chilly Midwest good-bye. We arrived in Barcelona at about 2:15 pm local time on Saturday. We then waited TWO HOURS in line to go through the passport check (no joke, we got past it at 4:25 pm). Catching the bus into town was surprisingly quick and easy after that. We made out way into the glorious, sunny, mid-70s day. We got off at Plaça Espanya, walked 15 minutes to our Poble-Sec-area Airbnb apartment, and were let in. It was a great, 3rd floor apartment, with a kitchen, washing machine, and enough space for us to stretch out. We rested a bit before going to the restaurant near Paral-lel that I had booked two months ago, Bodega 1900. It was our first meal in Spain, and, damn, did we pick a good one. It was a highly rated place, and for good reason. We ordered glasses of house vermouth and chose the "surprise menu", where the attentive waitstaff would continue to bring us tapas plates on the menu until we cried Uncle. I didn't take pictures of everything we were served, but many are in the bottom third of the photo below. My favorite was the grilled fresh squid with onions caramelized in ink. Mmmm. After dinner, we headed back to the apartment and tried to find the Badger football game on TV. We ended up listening to it on the radio until we gave in to exhaustion at midnight.
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| So much good food! |
October 13: Sundays are generally pretty quiet around Barcelona, so I had signed us up for a free Runner Bean walking tour of the Gothic Quarter. We slept in past 8, then walked down to Plaça Reial to be early for our 11 am tour. We got put in a group with Jessie, an Australian woman living in Barcelona for several years. Our group of 22 weaved in and out of the narrow streets as she gave us details as to the history of Barcelona and certain sights at which we stopped. It was a great introduction to the city and area. Afterward, we headed to a restaurant she recommended, and while the food was good, the service was disappointingly slow. We did a bit more walking around the Born area, then headed back to our apartment via the waterfront. We relaxed a bit and said hi to the kids, then decided to give our legs a workout by walking up nearby Montjuïc. It was a little cloudy and we got a bit off-path, but we made it to the castle/fortification and had a look around. We had a nice view of the port and the city below. The sun set while we were coming back down, and it got dark quickly. We walked under the orangy lights to Carrer de Blai, where we found a restaurant and had our first taste of pinxos (basically, an hors d'oeurve on a slice of French bread with a large toothpick securing them together). We ate until full, then headed back to the apartment for the night.
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| Gothic Quarter tour sights, waterfront, Montjuic |
October 14: This morning, we got ready and took our first Metro ride to get ourselves to La Sagrada Familía basilica for our 10 am entry time. It was another gorgeous mid-70s day. We spent a couple of hours taking in all the wondrous details of Gaudí and other artists. I really can't explain it all in detail. Suffice it to say that it's definitely a must-see in Barcelona.
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| Sagrada Famila basilica |
After our time there, we decided to get away from the crowds for a bit. We took a walk along Carrer d'Aragó, stopping for a quick sandwich and tiny coffee. We noticed the traffic around us was getting jammed, and realized why when we crossed a police barrier. The streets around Passeig de Gràcia were all blocked to traffic, so it was very strange to walk along a multilane road with only pedestrians in the streets. We were looking at the houses on the Block of Discord (like Casa Batlló) when we realized that there was a demonstration/protest in the works and we were part of it. Backstory: Two years ago, the Catalunya region held a vote for independence. That was considered illegal under Spanish law, and the leaders were arrested. Today, they announced the sentences for the jailed politicians (9-13 years). Many locals were NOT happy about this, and took to the streets. They converged on Plaça Catalunya as we watched from the sidelines. It seems peaceful, and there were no police officers in the mix, so I didn't get a strong tension vibe. While we watched, many started pouring into the Metro to go to the airport to protest there. We decided that was the time to leave, so we walked away from it, and stopped at a German bar for a couple of beers. The crowd dispersed and we continued our walk back to our apartment. On the way, we stopped at Mercat de Sant Antoni, where we bought some bread, ham and cheese to make our dinner, and I found a necklace with a pendant shaped like the paving blocks that are all over the city. It was mid-afternoon, and we were hungry, so after dropping things off at our apartment, we went to a ramen restaurant nearby for a change of pace. That hit the spot. We got gelato for dessert on our walk back to Carrer de Margarit. It started to rain, so we decided to stay in for the evening. We had our Netflix account hooked up to the TV, and ate our dinner late while watching episodes of BoJack Horseman. In the middle of the night, I was woken by a thunderstorm moving through.
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| Protests! Buildings! |
October 15: The rain overnight washed the city clean and revealed a marvelously clear day, again in the mid-70s. We had some time to kill in the morning, so after we got ready, we walked through El Raval to La Rambla. There, we visited the Mercat de la Boqueria. There was an amazing variety of food (and people) there. So interesting and so many selfie-sticks. We caught the Metro from Liceu to Lesseps, hiked our way up to Park Güell, and arrived within our appointed half hour. We spent the next two hours wandering all over the park, looking at the Gaudí tilework, and the incredibly clear views from the hill towards the sea. We've got super calves after that excursion. We were hungry for lunch after, so we found a little hole in the wall place that definitely didn't cater to tourists (no English anywhere), but where we got a delicious Iberico ham flatbread with arugula and beers. We walked back to Passeig de Gràcia, found we had just missed another protest, and walked to see the Arc de Triomf. I liked that there were sculpted bats on it. More walking, back through El Born and into the Gothic Quarter, where we stopped for a pint of Strongbow at an Irish pub. Walked through the very diverse El Raval area to our dinner spot for the night - L'Amfora, where we had seafood paella and a delicious bottle of local white wine. Decided to walk to the Magic Fountain, which, unfortunately, was not running. The MNAC was lit up instead. We walked back through the Poble-Sec neighborhood under the orange lights back to our apartment.
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| Park Guell and a bit of La Rambla |
October 16: Today was our first day waking up with the sunrise - 7:45. We headed to Plaça Catalunya to be there before 9 am. We were booked on a Montserrat tour and wine tasting experience. We were put into a group of 13 with Agnes, and there were two tour groups headed on the same excursion. We all boarded the coach bus and headed out of the city north towards the mountains. The other guide, Pol, gave a detailed description of local history and the history of the Montserrat Monastery. It took about an hour to get up to the monastery, on some very windy roads. Our bus was among dozens of other buses there, so many, many people. Agnes gave us about a half hour tour of the different areas of interest around the monastery, the history of it and some interesting things that are done now (like there's a boy's choir, and the monks make liquor). We got an hour of free time, so we bought a variety pack of the liquors, then walked along a windy, steep path to a place where we could get a great view of the monastery, the valley below, and all the way to the sea. After our free time was over, we got back on the bus and headed toward a quaint, quiet winery. It was about 2:30, so Agnes skipped the tour and took us straight for the tapas and wine tasting. Nice flow of conversation about the wines and life in general among the variety of people on our tour (a few midwesterners like us, two Canadians, a Danish couple, two women from Australia...). After the tasting, we got the brief tour and an opportunity to try the winery's cava. We did that while talking to one of the Australian women about the size of the spiders they have there. That was a pretty unique experience overall. We headed back to Barcelona and started our walk back. We stopped at La Boqueria market for food, and left with a cone full of whole, breaded fried fishes (not sure if they were sardines or anchovies or something else), and fried baby squiddies. Yum. We walked back to our apartment and relaxed... until we learned that the general strike planned for Catalunya was going to impact our flight plans for Friday. @#$%. Nick got on the phone with the airline while I looked up alternatives. They offered us a flight home on Sunday. I found an overnight bus for Thursday night that would take us from Barcelona to Madrid, where we've be able to get our scheduled transatlantic flight. We went for my plan instead, and bought those tickets. That was a bit of a curveball... Apparently, the protests have been getting rowdy during the night, burning things and clashing with police. We didn't see any of that during the day on our walks, but read about it the next day.
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| Montserrat Monastery |
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| Can Bonastre winery |
October 17 - Our last full(ish) day in Barcelona. We had pretty much done all of the things around the city that we wanted to do, so it was a matter of let's-not-miss and better-rest-up. We first headed back to the Barcelona Cathedral for a look around. It was honestly pretty dark and stuffy in there. Nick said he felt like something in the air was affecting his sinuses. We didn't stick around too long after that. We walked to yet another market (Santa Catarina's), then walked back toward La Rambla. We found a bar off the main street with 30 beers on tap. Stopped there to sample a few local brews and get the requisite bread-with-tomatoes tapas to tide us over. We walked back to the apartment, checked to make sure everything was okay with our flight from Madrid, then walked up to explore more of Montjuïc. Another gorgeous day. We wandered through gardens, along paths, past museums. We found ourselves by the Olympic Stadium. It was open and free, so we took advantage of that. Quick look around, then back outside. We found the "path of fame", where the footprint of various famous early 1990s athletes were made into large bronze disks set into the pavement. Nick has the same size feet as Michael Jordan :o) We walked back to the apartment and decided to rest. But it's not easy to rest when there's a helicopter hovering that you can see from the window... We learned that while we were out walking, protesters had blocked the Paral-lel road in both directions and the helicopter was watching it. Oh boy. We packed up our stuff, watched some shows, then headed to Carrer de Blai for an early dinner of pinxos. We ate (me, nervously so), had glasses of vermouth, then headed back to the apartment. We killed time watching BoJack, then left the apartment for good at 9:30. We took our bags and headed to the Metro. I was concerned about protests impeding our travel to the bus station, but we didn't have any problems heading there after all, thankfully. We got to the bus station, waited with many other people, got our assigned seats, and left at 11 pm. Gotta love the people on the bus who have no issue crinkling plastic bottles in the middle of the night.
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| Barcelona Cathedral & Montjuïc |
October 18: We managed to get a few hours of sleep before arriving at the transit station in Madrid at 6 am. We caught a bus to the airport and got to our terminal at 6:30 am. We got checked in to our flight, and made the long trek to our terminal. It was surreal being the only people in the terminal for a couple of hours. We rested on the uncomfortable seats, got kicked out of the gate area in order to go through yet another passport check there an hour later. Ugh, but whatever. We were the first in line for the economy class check, and therefore were selected for the random bag check. As were about a third of the passengers. WTF. The flight was long, but left at about 11:45 am local time and got us back to Chicago a bit after 2 pm CDT.
Some other collections of pictures of things we saw:
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| To market, to market! |
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| The drinks we drank |
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| Details, details |
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| Strange and unusual sights |
