Falling in love (twice) in Spain - the second time

Before we went to Barcelona, I talked to several people who had been and they absolutely RAVED about how WONDERFUL Barcelona is. I was listening to everyone talk about it and started to get irritated. I mean, how great could one city actually be. I’ve been to quite a few city in my young age – with Chicago, NY, Rejkavik, Copenhagen, and Stockholm being a top the list of my favorite cities. Granted, I still had a lot more to explore, but really, could it be that great?

The short, emphatic answer is YES! It is AWESOME!

With only one day in BCN, we knew we had a big task ahead of us: see as much of Barcelona as we possibly can in one day. On Sunday night, as James was furiously researching Hapimag and real estate in Costa Brava, I got a couple of tourist maps and started plotting our Monday. There was A TON to see and there was not a whole lot that was clustered together. It was supposed to rain so we thought we would do the 100% tourist thing and get on one of those red open-top buses. After 3 days of golf and a few hours of driving, we slept in fairly late – after 9 – but got moving fairly quickly. After a very filling buffet breakfast, we decided we would walk since it wasn't raining too bad – just a light mist.

Segrada Famlia (the back)

First stop – Segrada Familia. What a sight to see. Beautiful, gigantic, such pristine detail. We debated – far too long – whether or not to go inside the church. It was €13.50 EACH. As if that wasn’t a big enough deterrent, the line wrapped half way around the building. I would estimate that it was at least a 2 hour wait to get inside. With so much to see, we opted to wait until the next time we visited to see the inside.

Next stop: La Pedrera. I had never seen a picture of a Gaudi building much less an actual Gaudi building so I had no idea what I was in for. We took somewhat of a detour and James was looking at the map, pointed to a building and said ”that should be it.” I looked up and was completely UNDERwhelmed. I could not figure out why everyone raved about Gaudi so much. This building looked exactly the same as the others. Thoroughly disappointed, we moved on. 

La Pedrera

As we were standing at an intersection, I looked down the road and saw the most breath taking building I’ve seen. It literally made me gasp and scream in excitement – ”look at that building.” That first building we thought was a Gaudi, was, in fact, just a regular old building. We were off by one block. Very clearly, my favorite building is La Pedrera. At €20 per person to go inside and quite the long line (although WAY shorter than Segrada Familia), we opted to visit the inside another time as well. The outside was awesome. The roof looked very promising and exciting.

Casa Batllo

Next stop: Casa Batlló – another Gaudi. We ventured down Pg de Grácia which is a very cool street. When we came upon Casa Batlló, I was very excited to see another breath-taking and astonishing building, but again, at €20 per person to go inside, we opted to continue on our quest to see as much of BCN as we could.

We hit Palau de la Música Catalana, Barri Gotic, the Cathedral, Parc de Ciutadella, Cap de Barcelona, Mall de Boschi, took a cable car to Castell de Montjuic (AMAZING views), the Olympic Stadium, MNAC, Font Magica de Montjuic, Palau Guell (last Gaudi we saw and charged only €12/person to get inside though by this time we had been walking for over 5 hours and our feet were screaming for a rest), and finished by walking up La Rambla (won’t likely return there) and Rambla Catalunya where we had the most wonderful bread with vanilla filling (we hadn’t eaten since breakfast at 9:30 and it was 5:30!!!!!). The walk down Avenue Diagonal back to our hotel seemed like it was never going to end, but alas, we made it back to the hotel. James cracked me up – he literally flopped face first on the bed just to get off his feet. We both had blisters and the aches in our feet and legs were discussed at length. We got off our feet and managed to stay awake long enough to have dinner at a nearby restaurant – Piscabolis – before crashing for the night.

Pictures from the second part of the trip can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151548148199653.1073741827.755859652&type=1&l=6730708756

Thanks very much to Kyle K and his sister-in-law for the wonderful ideas of things to see and do while we were there. We got to everything except a few, but the insider knowledge was great.

I can’t put my finger on exactly what makes this city so amazing. It is a combination of so many things: the history, the architecture, the quaint cafes and restaurants, the outdoor seating, the food, the culture.......it’s all there. It’s beautiful and fun and exciting. I absolutely canont wait until we have another opportunity to visit. Hopefully it is not too far away.