BARCELONA 6/15-6/18
Just another day in the life of getting off a train in a new country. And this time, Spain!! First city: Barcelona. We used the metro (it's really easy to get around Barcelona with the metro) from the station to get to our hostel, Yeah Hostel. It's popular and really nice, especially since we had a 4 person room to ourselves with us and our two special guests! We did get sassed a bit by the front desk when we asked if there was free breakfast and got the response "Why would it be free?", we asked if towels were included and got the response "This is a hostel," and when we asked for A/C, we were told "The window could be open during the day." But other than that, it was clean and pleasant!
We met up with our first guest... drum roll please! NIKKI STEIN! After hugs and dropping off our things, we rushed over to the Picasso Museum for our ticket time, quickly grabbing small sandwiches before entering. We had paid for audio guides so we would learn something, but there was a lot of information we did not really want. As opposed to our tour of the Uffizi Gallery where we were taught about the paintings, the audio guides talked about the background of the painter and the painting. First we saw Picasso's early works, which were really amazing portraits. Then we saw how he changed and painted more abstract drawings. Namely, we saw Picasso's versions of Las Meninas and The Wait (Margot). We wanted to see Guernico, forgetting it is in Madrid.
We then left to head back to the hostel to pick up our second special guest... drum roll please! JACKSON BELCHER! The MB crew is back together! We still had 30 minutes until we could get our room, so we went to get churros, a common dessert in Spain. After getting into our room and changing for the beach, we headed to Botegella beach for a few hours. Finally, sandy beaches! It was pretty crowded because it was Saturday. We left to walk around Las Ramblas, a famous street with markets and people selling things. We really wanted some good food and went to get tapas at Bar Celta Pulpería (thanks @Jackson’s friend Johnson for the rec!). We ordered bread, manchego cheese, croquets de jamón, chicken skewers, calamari, steamed shrimp, potatoes with aioli, and amazing Sangria!! Super yummy and a great place to go (although we messed up and didn’t get the octopus which is the thing to order there).
We headed back to the hostel after dinner to nap since we were dragging Nikki and Jackson into the Europe nightclub scene. So we did our nap until 12:30 am and then headed to Club Opium. Barcelona is crazy at night. A ton more people and a lot bigger than what we just experienced in Marseille. We left at 5 am :) in search of food. We found nothing! We even made two subway pitstops to walk around in search of ANYTHING. Even McDonalds let us down. We were all tucked in by 6:30am for a good 3 more hours of sleep! It was light out. Why, Europe, why??
With exhaustion, we woke up to get bagels and go to the Sagrada Familia. The bagel place let us down being closed; we were so looking forward to it, tired of croissants. So instead we had to grab croissants and then walked to Gaudi’s famous Basilica. It looks like a giant sandcastle. We rushed inside to make our ticket time for climbing one of the towers. We went up the Passion side and saw great views of the city and views of the outside of the building. We didn’t have to climb stairs- we were pleasantly surprised that there was an elevator to take us to the top! You could see the whole city and were close to the other columns of the building. Back downstairs inside, the stain glass windows were amazing letting in lots of light and coloring the walls. Nikki noted that the glass did not depict religious images. The architecture was amazing with high ceilings. Outside the entrance and exit, there were many sculptures on the wall of Jesus and the apostles. We have to note that they were not naturalistic @Dr. Piercy. The building is STILL under construction even after it had been started 100 years ago. If you look online at what they're planning to do, it's pretty amazing though. They think they'll be done by 2026...
After visiting the Sagrada Familia, we decided to see more Gaudí and check out the other houses he designed. We took the metro to the right area and started walking down Passeig de Gràcia, a famous street with the houses. We first saw La Pedrera and then Casa Batlló. They were all conveniently located on the same block. We didn’t go inside any of them, but the pictures looked cool so maybe next time we find ourselves in Barcelona we will. As we walked farther down the street, we got to Las Ramblas, the busy street we had seen the day before. This was a Sunday, so unfortunately most of the shops were closed. We were planning to check out La Boqueria Market also, but it was closed. We continued walking to our lunch spot- Bo De B (@Maddie for another rec!). It’s a fast food sandwich spot that is pretty popular and had a decent line. It takes awhile because they cook the meat of the sandwiches once you order it. The signature part of it is all the toppings and sauces you can add to the sandwich. It makes it delicious!! We were very hungry and scarfed it down but it was huge and very filling. We then headed back to the hostel to take a nap after the long night we had.
After waking up, we got ready for dinner but first headed to Ayre Hotel Rosellón (thanks @Johnson for the rec). We went up to the 8th floor and, boom, the Sagrada Familia was right there. Amazing! Check the picture below for the view. It wasn’t crowded and we enjoyed sangria while basking in the sun and looking at the outside of the Sagrada Familia. We 100% recommend going here in Barcelona. After drinks, we headed to dinner at Patrón Restaurant, which @Johnson recommended for paella! We got seafood paella and jamón; it was delicious! We then headed to the Dow Jones Bar, which is a bar where the prices of the drinks change like the prices of stocks change. They have boards up with the prices, like on the floor of the NYSE. It was cool! At one point the market crashed, so sirens went off to encourage everyone to get drinks. We left after a drink to find some gelato. Gelato is not as prevalent or as good here, which is really sad. Gelato count is increasing slowly.
The next day we woke up early to head to Brunch and Cake. This was recommended to us by a lot of people and is high rated on trip advisor, but we found it very overrated. While the food was pretty and instagrammable, it didn’t tasted very good. We then went to Park Guell, the most picturesque Gaudí spot. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that you had to have a ticket with a specific time to enter this park. It’s a park! But alas, we couldn’t go at that time, so we got tickets for a later time and headed back to the hostel. We got ready for the beach and lounged at Playa San Sebastián for many hours. Our trip has slowed down a bit with our new travelers :) The beach was enjoyable with great sun and sand. Unfortunately, there’s people constantly walking around asking if you want sangria or mojitos (where did they make these??) or towels. It is not very relaxing constantly hearing “mojito, mojito, mojito?!” as you are tanning at the beach. At one point the police came and everyone ran, it was wild, but finally peaceful. We all swam a bit and then headed to lunch. We walked down the beach to Pez Vela (thanks @Danny for the rec!). It was right along the beach and a perfect spot for a late afternoon lunch.
After lunch, we metroed back to Las Ramblas to go to the Boqueria Market (we knew it was open this time!). We walked around the shops and then got some fruit juices and chocolates. Once we got back to the hostel, we quickly got ready to head to Park Guell again, this time with tickets. All of the mosaics were beautiful! And it has a great view of the city. Guell asked Gaudí to design this area, which originally was an estate for the wealthy. It was named Park because Gaudí wanted to use an English word for the British people who would be living there. It was difficult to build here due to restrictions, so the construction was quickly halted. After Guell died, his children donated it to Barcelona. Gaudí lived here before dying. We saw his house but did not get tickets to go inside. Park Guell also has a famous statue of a Salamander, an important symbol in Barcelona. After we took pictures, we headed back to Ayre Hotel for the great view. We relaxed over sangria and pasta to enjoy our last night in Barcelona. We got gelato on our way back, and it was actually good! We headed to bed, ready for another early train to Madrid! Stay tuned!
To Be Continued,
Emily & Grace
Just another day in the life of getting off a train in a new country. And this time, Spain!! First city: Barcelona. We used the metro (it's really easy to get around Barcelona with the metro) from the station to get to our hostel, Yeah Hostel. It's popular and really nice, especially since we had a 4 person room to ourselves with us and our two special guests! We did get sassed a bit by the front desk when we asked if there was free breakfast and got the response "Why would it be free?", we asked if towels were included and got the response "This is a hostel," and when we asked for A/C, we were told "The window could be open during the day." But other than that, it was clean and pleasant!
We met up with our first guest... drum roll please! NIKKI STEIN! After hugs and dropping off our things, we rushed over to the Picasso Museum for our ticket time, quickly grabbing small sandwiches before entering. We had paid for audio guides so we would learn something, but there was a lot of information we did not really want. As opposed to our tour of the Uffizi Gallery where we were taught about the paintings, the audio guides talked about the background of the painter and the painting. First we saw Picasso's early works, which were really amazing portraits. Then we saw how he changed and painted more abstract drawings. Namely, we saw Picasso's versions of Las Meninas and The Wait (Margot). We wanted to see Guernico, forgetting it is in Madrid.
We then left to head back to the hostel to pick up our second special guest... drum roll please! JACKSON BELCHER! The MB crew is back together! We still had 30 minutes until we could get our room, so we went to get churros, a common dessert in Spain. After getting into our room and changing for the beach, we headed to Botegella beach for a few hours. Finally, sandy beaches! It was pretty crowded because it was Saturday. We left to walk around Las Ramblas, a famous street with markets and people selling things. We really wanted some good food and went to get tapas at Bar Celta Pulpería (thanks @Jackson’s friend Johnson for the rec!). We ordered bread, manchego cheese, croquets de jamón, chicken skewers, calamari, steamed shrimp, potatoes with aioli, and amazing Sangria!! Super yummy and a great place to go (although we messed up and didn’t get the octopus which is the thing to order there).
We headed back to the hostel after dinner to nap since we were dragging Nikki and Jackson into the Europe nightclub scene. So we did our nap until 12:30 am and then headed to Club Opium. Barcelona is crazy at night. A ton more people and a lot bigger than what we just experienced in Marseille. We left at 5 am :) in search of food. We found nothing! We even made two subway pitstops to walk around in search of ANYTHING. Even McDonalds let us down. We were all tucked in by 6:30am for a good 3 more hours of sleep! It was light out. Why, Europe, why??
TAPAS
With exhaustion, we woke up to get bagels and go to the Sagrada Familia. The bagel place let us down being closed; we were so looking forward to it, tired of croissants. So instead we had to grab croissants and then walked to Gaudi’s famous Basilica. It looks like a giant sandcastle. We rushed inside to make our ticket time for climbing one of the towers. We went up the Passion side and saw great views of the city and views of the outside of the building. We didn’t have to climb stairs- we were pleasantly surprised that there was an elevator to take us to the top! You could see the whole city and were close to the other columns of the building. Back downstairs inside, the stain glass windows were amazing letting in lots of light and coloring the walls. Nikki noted that the glass did not depict religious images. The architecture was amazing with high ceilings. Outside the entrance and exit, there were many sculptures on the wall of Jesus and the apostles. We have to note that they were not naturalistic @Dr. Piercy. The building is STILL under construction even after it had been started 100 years ago. If you look online at what they're planning to do, it's pretty amazing though. They think they'll be done by 2026...
After visiting the Sagrada Familia, we decided to see more Gaudí and check out the other houses he designed. We took the metro to the right area and started walking down Passeig de Gràcia, a famous street with the houses. We first saw La Pedrera and then Casa Batlló. They were all conveniently located on the same block. We didn’t go inside any of them, but the pictures looked cool so maybe next time we find ourselves in Barcelona we will. As we walked farther down the street, we got to Las Ramblas, the busy street we had seen the day before. This was a Sunday, so unfortunately most of the shops were closed. We were planning to check out La Boqueria Market also, but it was closed. We continued walking to our lunch spot- Bo De B (@Maddie for another rec!). It’s a fast food sandwich spot that is pretty popular and had a decent line. It takes awhile because they cook the meat of the sandwiches once you order it. The signature part of it is all the toppings and sauces you can add to the sandwich. It makes it delicious!! We were very hungry and scarfed it down but it was huge and very filling. We then headed back to the hostel to take a nap after the long night we had.
After waking up, we got ready for dinner but first headed to Ayre Hotel Rosellón (thanks @Johnson for the rec). We went up to the 8th floor and, boom, the Sagrada Familia was right there. Amazing! Check the picture below for the view. It wasn’t crowded and we enjoyed sangria while basking in the sun and looking at the outside of the Sagrada Familia. We 100% recommend going here in Barcelona. After drinks, we headed to dinner at Patrón Restaurant, which @Johnson recommended for paella! We got seafood paella and jamón; it was delicious! We then headed to the Dow Jones Bar, which is a bar where the prices of the drinks change like the prices of stocks change. They have boards up with the prices, like on the floor of the NYSE. It was cool! At one point the market crashed, so sirens went off to encourage everyone to get drinks. We left after a drink to find some gelato. Gelato is not as prevalent or as good here, which is really sad. Gelato count is increasing slowly.
The next day we woke up early to head to Brunch and Cake. This was recommended to us by a lot of people and is high rated on trip advisor, but we found it very overrated. While the food was pretty and instagrammable, it didn’t tasted very good. We then went to Park Guell, the most picturesque Gaudí spot. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize that you had to have a ticket with a specific time to enter this park. It’s a park! But alas, we couldn’t go at that time, so we got tickets for a later time and headed back to the hostel. We got ready for the beach and lounged at Playa San Sebastián for many hours. Our trip has slowed down a bit with our new travelers :) The beach was enjoyable with great sun and sand. Unfortunately, there’s people constantly walking around asking if you want sangria or mojitos (where did they make these??) or towels. It is not very relaxing constantly hearing “mojito, mojito, mojito?!” as you are tanning at the beach. At one point the police came and everyone ran, it was wild, but finally peaceful. We all swam a bit and then headed to lunch. We walked down the beach to Pez Vela (thanks @Danny for the rec!). It was right along the beach and a perfect spot for a late afternoon lunch.
After lunch, we metroed back to Las Ramblas to go to the Boqueria Market (we knew it was open this time!). We walked around the shops and then got some fruit juices and chocolates. Once we got back to the hostel, we quickly got ready to head to Park Guell again, this time with tickets. All of the mosaics were beautiful! And it has a great view of the city. Guell asked Gaudí to design this area, which originally was an estate for the wealthy. It was named Park because Gaudí wanted to use an English word for the British people who would be living there. It was difficult to build here due to restrictions, so the construction was quickly halted. After Guell died, his children donated it to Barcelona. Gaudí lived here before dying. We saw his house but did not get tickets to go inside. Park Guell also has a famous statue of a Salamander, an important symbol in Barcelona. After we took pictures, we headed back to Ayre Hotel for the great view. We relaxed over sangria and pasta to enjoy our last night in Barcelona. We got gelato on our way back, and it was actually good! We headed to bed, ready for another early train to Madrid! Stay tuned!
Top of Segrada Familia
La Pedrera
Casa Batlló
Yummy sandwiches from Bo De B
To Be Continued,
Emily & Grace
What an amazing adventure!
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