Barcelona Spain was a bit of a different type of trip for me. It was a three night guy's weekend with my fellow expat spouses.
There were four of us in total, and one gentleman even flew in from Germany to meet us there.
We stayed for 3 nights in an Airbnb and made a long weekend out of it.
The first day we saw Sagrada Familia, which I posted already and the next day we just toured around the city.
I absolutely loved the buildings there as you will see from my photographs.
The architecture was really incredible, to the point where I probably could have done an entire posts just on it's building facades. I'll just post them here and now instead though.
I put together a walking tour of some city highlights that I found online, but it didn't exactly work out as planned, for a myriad of reasons.
It was a 3 hour circuit from start to finish, which to me seemed reasonable for an entire day. It's something my wife and I would do pretty casually on a normal trip day, but in the end I think it proved to be too ambitious.
As a group we were walking quite slowly and there were a lot of unplanned stops along the way that took up a lot of time.
I actually started to delete stops along the way to speed things up, but that ended up making the tour quite boring, which made things worse overall.
The back bit of the tour really just ended up being a lot of walking without actually seeing anything.
In hindsight we should have taken public transit or scrapped the tour all together and just saw the main sites that people really wanted to see. My bad.
Things are always different with larger groups of people.
I probably deleted around 3-4 stops in the end (a few buildings and one full neighborhood) but nonetheless it took us until mid-afternoon to reach our half way point, which was Park Guell. So when an hour and a half walk (cut down to about an hour and fifteen minutes) takes until 3pm to complete - yeah it's best just to scrap the entire second half of the tour altogether 🙃. So that is what we did. I don't recall what I meant for us to see but I'm sure it doesn't matter.
Park Guell was built in the early 1900's and designed mostly by the architect Antoni Gaudi. It's one of the largest green spaces in the city and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Source
As mentioned, we arrived at Park Guell around 3pm or so. It was quite hot out by that point and I think people were tired as well. We realized that the park cost money to enter and that made us pause for a while to think things through.
Admission was only 7 euros but no one, myself included, wanted to make a decision on whether or not to go in.
I didn't care at all because my wife and I were supposed to be going back to Barcelona in the summer for a family vacation with her parents. That trip got rearranged in the end but at the time I just figured I'd be able to see anything I missed at that point. I was really hoping that someone else would make the decision on the park, especially since I felt like my tour was a major flop.
So we hummed and hawed about it for 10-15 minutes until collectively we said "fuck it, let's go to the beach and drink sangria." So that is what we did.
The thing about larger groups is that often times no one (myself included) wants to make a decision about things. No one wants to be responsible for others getting annoyed or not having a good time, so everybody tends to sit back hoping that someone else will decide. Humans in a group really do need leaders in the end.
But shit, don't put me in charge. I still feel bad for making such a bad walking tour as you can clearly see. But anyway, we did actually see some cool things in the city besides the building facades shown above.
For instance, Plaça de Catalunya is a large square in the heart of the city. It's surrounded by tall buildings, and has several statues and a large fountain at its center. It's a nice gathering spot for people.
I've never seen so many pigeons in one place either, nor one's so trusting of people.
There was a guy that was picking them up and handing them over to kids!?!
I saw one young girl running through a large gathering of them and I had to turn my head out of fear that she would step on one of them.
The Arc de triompf was another interesting sit that we passed by in the distance. It really stoodds out because of its color. It was actually a part of the 2nd half of the walking tour that got scrapped, along with the park behind its entrance.
The Arc de Triomf was built for the 1888 Universal Expedition. It is a red brick arch that acts as a gateway to Parc de la Ciutadella and to modern day Barcelona. Source
Casa Mila is a unique building that we passed as well.
Casa Mila, also commonly referred to as La Pedrera is another UNESCO Site in Barcelona that was design by Antoni Gaudi. Actually, it was his last architectural project in any city and was completed in 1912 for the Mila family. Interestingly, at the time it was ridiculed by many people for its modern and somewhat outlandish design. Today it is a museum and is one of the most visited sites in Barcelona Source.
I only saw the exterior facade from the street but was still rather impressed by it. It definitely stood out among the other buildings along the city street.
The last building that I will highlight is another one designed by Gaudi. It's a colorful piece of architecture that goes by the name, Casa Batlló.
It was redesigned by Gaudi in 1904 for a wealthy aristocrat named Josep Battló. The Battló family lived on the first floor while the upper floors were rented out as apartments. It is another UNESCO site and was open to the public in 2002. Source
Just by looking at it you can tell that Gaudi took inspiration from bones and skeletons. The balconies looked like pelvic bones or maybe skulls and some of the columns looked like leg bones.
Despite minor hiccups due to my poorly planned walking tour the trip to Barcelona was actually a lot of fun. The city is very clean with well laid out streets and it has some very unique buildings and architectural wonders throughout. Overall I really enjoyed it and would probably even go back to see the insides of all of the Gaudi buildings that I missed.