It’s been seven years since I’ve been in Spain—and a decade since my last visit to Barcelona—and in that time, I had forgotten just how intoxicating I found this city.
In my travels to Spain, I’ve learned that you’re either a Madrid person or a Barcelona person. I am the latter. While I find Madrid enjoyable, I feel it could be any international city anywhere in the world, while Barcelona has a distinct, well, Barcelona feel to it.
Weary and jetlagged from a Nashville to Atlanta to Barcelona overnight flight, my parents, four of their friends and I arrived in Spain on Wednesday morning just to drop our things off at the hotel, grab some coffee and get moving.
We only had two-and-a-half days there and wanted to see as much as possible before we fell asleep on our feet.
Though all I really wanted to do was grab one of these pods and go to sleep. I don’t sleep a wink on planes.
Seeing as we were staying in the center of everything on Passeig de Gracia, we started with a wander down to Plaza Catalunya and on to Las Ramblas, which even though it was a Wednesday in May, was packed with pedestrians, both locals and tourists alike.
We found a great marketplace, perfect for eating lunch, but then decided we wanted a sit-down experience so grabbed a table upstairs at Casa Guinart.
Then, we returned to the hotel, as the sangria was working its magic, and I crashed. Hard. Once again, I broke the cardinal rule of travelers everywhere and napped through my jetlag. Oops. I awoke to a 6:15pm call from Neal asking where I was as it was time to go to dinner. Last I checked my watch, it was 2pm! That was one serious nap.
I credit my ridiculously comfortable bed that enveloped me like a giant marshmallow. Our hotel,BCN Design Hotel, was phenomenal—the service, the rooms, the everything—and I just picked it on a whim via Trip Advisor reviews as it was within our budget ($200 or less a night per room), and I wanted to give my parents and their friends a distinctly Barcelona experience by picking a swank design hotel. This beauty definitely did the job.
After naptime, it was still light out, so we decided to take a stroll in the opposite direction from where we went earlier as we built up an appetite for dinner.
For dinner, we found a “topless bar” in which to dine, and I’m pretty sure the guys were disappointed to learn what tapas actually are.
Still, the food was delicious. And yes, there was more sangria.
The thing about Spanish dinners is that they last far longer than you expect. It was midnight before rolled back into the Design Hotel and 2am by the time I had finished tending to work queries back home. So much for an “early night.”
Though the next two days in Spain peppered us with rain and nearly blew us away with strong winds, so I’m glad we got our Barcelona fix while we could.
