Spain Part VII: Barcelona

On Monday morning, we flew from Madrid to Barcelona. It is important to note that on our plane, one seat was marked by a small banner that claimed that Rafael Nadal (professional tennis player and one of Matt’s personal favorites) had sat in that particular seat after winning a tournament in Rome. Anyways, we arrived in Barcelona around 1 PM. With a bit of hustling, we were able to drop off our bags at the hotel, grab a quick lunch, and make the 2 PM walking tour. We wanted to get a brief introduction to the city as soon as possible. The majority of the tour was spent in the Gothic Quarter of the city –picturesque narrow streets that make you feel like you’ve traveled back in time. We learned about Barcelona’s history and gained an understanding of the Catalonian culture. Barcelona is located in Catalonia, the northeastern region of Spain that is made up of four provinces. This region is particularly unique as it is well-known for its intense pride. Catalonia is actually its own officially recognized nationality. Throughout history, they have continually set themselves apart from the rest of the country of Spain. In fact, they even have their own language, which seems to have a strong French influence. It was really bizarre to be in Spain but have all of the signs in a different language, with the Spanish translation being below in a smaller font. Even today, many people in this region would like to secede from Spain. When you walk through the city, you can see the Catalonian flag waving on balcony after balcony (not the Spanish flag).

Also on the tour, we stopped at the site that is said to be where King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella welcomed Christopher Columbus after his voyage to the Americas in 1492. They really love Columbus in Barcelona. He also has a huge monument near the harbor. We spent the rest of the day exploring more of the city.

These steps are where they greeted Columbus...

Here you can see the Catalonian flags.

On our second day in Barcelona, we did another walking tour. This time, we did one that was specifically about buildings that were built by the famous Spanish architect, Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi was a Spanish architect who is known for leading the Modernism movement. He has many works in Spain, and quite a few in Barcelona. Because we have a lot of cool photos and interesting facts about the buildings that we saw on this tour, we will follow up with a separate post.

After the walking tour was over, we enjoyed a late lunch at a cute café in the main shopping district of the city. We then decided to walk the rest of the way back to the hotel (which was really really far haha) so that we could explore more areas of the city. We ended up walking mostly through the L’Eixample district. “Eixample” translates to “extension,” as that is exactly what this area is. It is the “newest” part of the city and was added to Barcelona in the 1850s in order to accommodate the growing population of the city. There is some really impressive architecture in this area, including more Gaudi buildings.

We finally made it back to our hotel and rested up before heading back to the Gothic Quarter for a late night tapas dinner. The nice thing about tapas is that you can eat a smaller dinner if you had a huge lunch at 3:30 PM! Also, I can’t believe we haven’t mentioned this yet, but meal times for Spaniards are a bit later. For example, most people eat lunch between 1:30 and 3 PM and dinner between 8:30 and 10 PM. Most dinner restaurants didn’t even open until 8 or 8:30 PM. Since we usually eat dinner around 7 or 7:30 anyways, it wasn’t too much of an adjustment. But definitely something worth noting in regards to the Spanish culture.

On our third day in Barcelona, we used our time to scope out the areas and sites that weren’t covered on our walking tours. First up – La Boqueria, the main market in the city center. This place was really cool. We’ve seen a lot of markets like this in our travels, but this one was definitely one of the best. We also walked along the waterfront, spotting both a gigantic Columbus statue (as mentioned above) and a huge crayfish. It was a really beautiful day to walk along the water. After lunch, we visited the Picasso museum. Although Picasso wasn’t from Barcelona originally, he spent a lot of time there and had a deep connection with the city. While I really enjoyed the museum, I do have to say it was a bit disappointing. I guess I didn’t realize that since many of his most famous works are held in larger museums throughout the world, there aren’t many at the Barcelona museum. However, they did have a large collection of his works from his youth. You should have seen some of the stuff he was painting when he was only 14 years old! Incredible! Another highlight was seeing his collection of Las Meninas works. As I mentioned in the Madrid post, one of the most famous pieces in the Prado Museum is Las Meninas by Velazquez. Picasso paid homage to Velazquez by creating a series of works, which are all interpretations of Las Meninas. Picasso painted 58 paintings of Las Meninas, all using different colors, sizes, shapes, etc. It was really cool to see Picasso’s interpretation when we had just seen the original Las Meninas a few days before. I was genuinely in awe.

For our final dinner in Spain, we chose a highly recommended tapas place that actually ended up being near our hotel. It was a bit more casual than we were expecting, but the tapas were pretty unique and modern, and everything we ordered was really excellent. It was a great last night in Barcelona.

On Thursday, we had a few hours to kill before we had to head to the airport for our flight back to Munich. We relaxed in the city, picked out our Barcelona magnet, and enjoyed an American brunch at a cute café. Matt enjoyed a huge omelet, while I had pancakes (both are rarities, if non-existent, in Munich). It was the perfect way to end a wonderful trip. Our journey home was uneventful and although we had a blast, it was nice to be home, sweet home, after 15 days on the road.