A return to Barcelona for me, which is where I first set foot on foreign soil as a solo traveler 13 years ago. Since then, Barcelona seems more crowded and busy, but still as fantastic as I remember it.
We’re using AirBNB for some of our accommodation on this trip, where people with spare places rent them out. We were living just out of the centre of town in an area called ‘Hostafrancs’. It’s outside the main tourist area so we felt like we were living like locals. At least until we tried to start talking. My Spanish wasn’t as good as I thought it was, obviously.
We had arrived in time for the celebration of Saint Jordi, the Catalan equivalent of St Valentines day. The tradition here is for men to buy women flowers and for women to buy men a book! Does that sound like a fair exchange? It’s a public holiday, and it seemed all the locals had descended on the Ramblas to watch the festivities and just hang out, and we did the same. There was a great buzz for the whole day.
We had a couple of days of good weather so we headed out to Park Guell early before the crowds descended – I remembered it being crazy busy the last time I was here, and it filled up quickly once we got there but we were able to enjoy it nonetheless.
The weather soured for the next few days indoors, either at Hostafrancs cafes or a few museums and galleries. We also went to a local bar to watch the champions league semi final where FC Barcelona were playing Bayern Munich. Barca got thrashed 4-0 and the increasing despair of the locals was painful to watch, as we were barracking for the locals too.
I had wanted to visit the Dali museum in Figueres, an hour away by train. It was frustratingly crowded there, to the point where it was impossible to appreciate any of the works. It wasn’t clear if it was particularly busy the day we were there or it was regularly like that but it was a lowlight of our stay there.
The biggest surprise for me was returning to Sagrada Familia – it was amazing to see how different it had become in the intervening years. It now had a roof and the internal space was cleared of cranes, cordoned-off areas and hoardings. There is so much intricacy and considered detail on display, and it is a really spectacular space.
