This was not a favorite for me, unfortunately.  But if there had to be a low point, I’m glad Rome wasn’t a let down, or Santorini.  I’d heard mixed reports on Barcelona, many love it, some aren’t big fans.  Me?  Not a big fan.

We started out with an irritating flight and some hotel issues.  We stayed at a “nice” hotel here, but they didn’t live up to my expectations.  It is nice, it’s clean, we have a giant room and a view.  But the service is terrible.  For instance, we arrived a little bit before check-in and our room wasn’t ready.  The lady said go have a welcome drink and I’ll come get you in a few minutes when it’s ready.  Well over an hour later I finally got up to see what the deal was.  Oh, the keys had been ready forever and they didn’t know where we were.  Really?  because we were in the bar, where we were told to go.  MAD!

We had barely enough time to get settled in and get to the meeting point for the Fat Tire Bike Tour.  These tours are amazing, and I was hooked from my first one in Berlin.  This tour was one of the very best parts of this trip.  The guide was informative, and it was also a lot of fun.  We saw a lot of the major sights, and also stopped for some food and drink on the beach.  Pretty awesome.

The next day, Alex and I decided to go do our own things.  I went on my own personal Gaudi tour of Barcelona, while he had some banking issues and kinda had a shitty day unfortunately.  While he was doing that, I went down to the beach for a little while, then had lunch around the corner from my first Gaudi house.  I started at Casa Calvet, which is pretty tame by Gaudi standards.  It’s his first apartment block, and it won him his only award in his lifetime.

After Casa Calvet, it was time for my favorite of his houses, Casa Batllò.  This is one of his weirder looking buildings, and I love it.  Some people think it looks like a house of bones or a dragon house.  So cool.

From there it was up to La Perdrera or Casa Milà, which is made to look like a cliff face sculpted by waves and wind.  It’s huge and also super awesome.

I went to Park Güell next, which was far more of a hike than I was expecting.  It’s on a huuuuge hill.  I don’t even really know how to describe it.  It’s got Hansel and Gretel style gate houses, a mosaic lizard, and some crazy cool wavy stuff going on in the main building and terrace.

Since there was one more house nearby the park, I decided to do one more before going back to the hotel to rest for a little while.  Casa Vincenç is interesting but not my favorite.  It’s one of Gaudi’s first commissions, and has a lot of color and ceramic tiling.

Back to the hotel to rest after that, and I ended up helping Alex find a way to call his bank because they locked him out of his card for some reason - even though he did tell them he was leaving the country.

Once that was done, we went to La Sagrada Familia, which was by far my favorite thing of the trip.  It’s a giant church that Gaudi started, but is still not finished (and he died in 1926).  It’s so different looking outside, and the inside is about the most strikingly beautiful thing I think I’ve ever seen.  One side tells the Nativity story, the opposite (where the entrance is) tells the Passion, and the side currently being built (which will be the main entrance) tells the Glory.  Each side is very different in styling.  But the inside is where it was at for me.  It’s like being inside a tree from the Lion King.  So colorful and full of stained glass and interesting shapes.  Loved it.

Yesterday we started off at Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, or the MNAC.  It’s full of, you guessed it, Catalunyan art.  Romanesque, Baroque, Renaissance, Modern…  interesting, but I was thanking god they had very limited English plaques to read, because it really hurried Alex along.

From there we went to lunch.  A little bit over tapas by then, so we went to a place in my book that’s run by people from Naples, serving obviously Italian food.  It was great, the people there were so funny – the waiter made fun of Alex for how he pronounced “pizza funghi” – and it was just a lot of fun.

I decided we should probably check out La Boqueria, the main market in town.  It was super cool, full of so many colorful fruits and veggies, and scary meats.  Then we tried to fulfill the churro experience that I needed, getting churros from the best place in Barcelona and then to a “milk bar” a few doors down to get chocolate to dip the churros in…  didn’t work out, the milk bar was closed.  But the naked churros were still delicious and light and amazing.

And that was pretty much the extent of our Barcelona trip.  It was not either of our favorites at all.  But we had some good experiences and saw some very cool things.  I think the only thing I’d ever think to come back for is to see La Sagrada Familia finished.