Food and Art. These 2 words sum up our Barcelona trip. Our week in Catalunya was the best gastronomical experience of our lives and in between meals we saw the works of the masters Gaudi, Picasso and Dali. Yummy food, great architecture and paintings, what more could you ask for? Add in nice weather and friendly people and you’ve got the perfect holiday, a Barcelonan holiday.
The itinerary
5 days Barcelona
2 days Cadaques
1 day Figuerres/Girona
Pace of Sightseeing: slow
We spent 5 days in Barcelona middle of October 2015. We like to travel during the shoulder season to save money and we love fall weather. The weather was refreshing, between 15-20C, we got away just wearing light sweaters and cardigans, which was good for me, as I hate feeling cold and bulky clothes (hubby likes cold better). Barcelona in October, fall season was just beginning, the leaves turning bright yellow, a quarter of the leaves have fallen but a good deal of them are still firmly attached to the trees. The weather was mild and clear, other than the night we had dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant when it rained, we were blessed with nice, cool weather that was perfect for walking around and sightseeing.
The people we met were polite and nice if slightly aloof. Nobody was in a hurry. Everybody in the hotels and restaurants spoke English but they appreciate if you try some Spanish or even better Catalan.
Food Glorious Food
We ate some of the best meals we ever had in Barcelona. Of course it helped that the weather was cool and we were hungry from all of that walking, but really the food was beyond compare, very fresh, with great variety and some awesome cooking. We had croissants, coffee and zumo naranja natural (fresh squeezed orange juice) for breakfasts, gorged on fresh seafood, paellas and tapas for lunch and dinner, ate cakes and sweets from neighborhood bakeries, and treated ourselves to a Michelen restaurant dinner. We found the restaurant food to be cheaper and nicer in Barcelona than Singapore where we live and work, most of our meals (without wine) came to under €30 for two people. Add €20 for a bottle of cava. None of the hotels we stayed at served breakfast and that was alright because there were plenty of neighborhood cafes serving the locals their cafes, te and croissants for €5 and under. The Michelen restaurant dinner was an extravagance, but hey why not, this was Barcelona, the city with the largest number of Michelen starred restaurants.
Be sure to try La Paradeta, a non-pretentious restaurant that sells and cooks seafood by the weight market style. If you stick to mussels, squid and fish and avoid the expensive oyster you can easily tuck in a nice and filling lunch or dinner for under €20 for two people (before wine). In the Boquerria market in Ramblas, we tried one of the stalls that sold seafood by weight as well..food was nice but more expensive and not as fresh as Paradeta.
Here is our itinerary:
Day 1 – Arrive about 3pm, and settled into our first hotel.
Day 2 – As this was a Sunday went for mass in a church, walked to admire the houses on Passeig de Gracia (Gaudi’s Casa Batllo, La Pedrera and their equally magnificent neighbors), changed to our 2nd hotel, lunched at one of the restaurants around Rambla Catalunya and spent the afternoon in Parc Guell.
Day 3 – Joined a Montserrat and winery daytour. Dinner in La Boqueria market in La Rambla.
Day 4 – Morning went to Sagrada Familia by metro, looked around and appreciated Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece, bought souvenirs from one of the shops around Sagrada Familia, took the public bus to Arc de Triomf, walked around Ciutadella Park, took the bus and metro back to Sagrada Familia to tour the inside (we only managed to get tickets on the day itself for the 5pm intake). Finished the night with a dinner at a Michelin starred restaurant.
Day 5 – Changed into our 3rd hotel, walked around La Rambla, visited Barri Gotico or the Old Quarter and toured Picasso museum.
Tips:
1) Stay in Eixample rather than on Ciutat Vella or La Rambla to save on hotel rates. Hotels on the Passeig de Gracia side of the Placa Catalunya are cheaper (and newer) than the other end of the street going to the harbor. Aside from hotels, restaurants and shops also tend to be cheaper on this side.
2) Use public transport. We took the aerobus from and to the airport. You can buy the ticket from the driver onboard. The bus end at Placa Catalunya from which the Ramblas are within walking distance. Buy the T10 ticket in one of the machines in the metro stations and use it on both bus and metro around Barcelona. T10 allows you to take 10 journeys on the card, and the card can be shared by more than 1 person, and last we checked the T10 costs €10per ticket, this is very economical compared to the €2 per single journey ticket.
3) Pre-book the Sagrada Familia tickets. If you want to see the inside, know that this is a very popular tour and they only allow ingress by the hour on your ticket, but once inside you may stay as long as you like. We did not prebook any tickets online, and when we tried to buy tickets online the night before going there the website would not sell us any. We had to go buy from the ticket counter at the back of the church, we were very lucky to have gotten tickets to get in at 5pm, one of the last intakes for the day!
4) Wear comfortable shoes. If you stay around Placa Catalunya like we did you could walk to almost all the attractions.
5) Barcelonians are not Spaniards, they are Catalans. Their language is not the standard Spanish (which they call rather condescendingly “Castellano” they speak Catalan; say Hola (hello) and Gracies (not gracias, pronounced like “gratzi”).
Top picks:
Our top sights (in this order) for Barcelona are: Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia & Barri Gotico.
Parc Guell
Allocate half a day to see the enormous Parc Guell, go in the afternoon when the sun is coming down. Entrance to the Parc is free, but you need separate tickets to get to see Gaudi’s house and the main square. Parc Guell was supposed to be an exclusive gated community for the affluent in the 1900s Barcelona who wanted a residence far away from the hustle of the city and was designed by Gaudi. Parc Guell is on a mountain. You can have a good panoramic view of Barcelona from up here. The Parc is sprawling and there is plenty of whimsy in the winding viaducts, birds nests and colorful tiles. There is a big stage like area near the entrance which was supposed to be the main square and an aqueduct at the same time to collect rain water. From here you can take photos of the fairylike gingerbread houses (which were built as guard houses to the estate but now used as gift shops). How to get here: bus or taxi. We used the metro to get to Parc Guell but this turned out not to be a good idea as we ended up at the back of the park and had to walk a long way to get to the main square.
Sagrada Familia and Gaudi’s works
A monster of a church, looking gothic and weathered outside but inside, amazingly light and airy it was almost unbelievable. Supposed to be Gaudi’s crowning masterpiece unfortunately he passed away before the church’s completion. Metro station: Sagrada Familia.
Amongst the 3 masters Gaudi is inarguably the one with the greatest influence in Barcelona. The city is so highly shaped by Gaudi that you can not take Gaudi and still have a Barcelona. Walk along Passieg de Gracia and admire the madcap genius of a house of dragons bones and skin of Casa Batllo and the chimney stacks shaped like knights’ masks of Casa Mila. Metro station: Passeig de Gracia.
Las Ramblas and Barri Gotico
Walk along Las Ramblas and take in the main tourist street. Stop by and eat and shop in La Boqueria. Continue to Barri Gotico or the old quarter. Centuries old buildings, cobblestone and narrow alleyways to get lost in and breathe the history. Try and ignore the souvenir shops. Perfect for walking and exploring.
We went to see the Picasso museum just behind Barri Gotico but left not so impressed, maybe because we were not really fans of the guy. The museum has a good collection of his early works as an art student. There were some knick knacks too, for instance they show an old magazine page where Picasso sketched his friend’s head, tehee it looked like something a fifth grader will draw.
How to get here: From metro station Catalunya walk to Placa Catalunya, to Las Ramblas and Barri Gotico. Or if you want to start from the Picasso Museum metro station: Jaume Uno.
Montserrat
The Montserrat day tour was the only guided tour we had during this trip. It was good to get an overview of Barcelona and its history. We bought the tour online via viatour and the tour was run by Castletour. We met up with the group in Placa Catalunya, then a bus took us to Montserrat. In Montserrat our tour guide told us the history of the church and its surrounds and we had a couple of hours free time. We used the time to go up the funicular train to the top of the mountain and hiked there a bit. We left the monastery a little before noon and went to a small winery where we had lunch and had a tour of the vineyard. We had wine tasting and the guide gave us a great lesson on wines and its characteristics, my aspiring sommelier husband really enjoyed knowing about grading wines scent, taste, color, leg, etc. It was one of the highlights of our trip, it cost us USD100 per person. The pace of the day tour was nice and easy and left plenty of time to enjoy our surroundings. My only disappointment was that we had to leave the Montserrat church before lunch and missed the boys choir performance. You could go to Montserrat using public transport (train) and that’s what we would do should we have another chance to visit Barcelona again.
We enjoyed our time immensely in Barcelona, and as with any other trip we want to wander off the beaten track. When we travelled to London we added Edinburgh and Inverness on the side. This time around we took a trip up the Costa Brava coast and went to Cadaques. Check here for our trip from Barcelona to Cadaques.
Useful links:
http://www.aerobusbcn.com/en/?gclid=CJ2Ops-9uc8CFc8TaAodn5UBhg – aerobus from airport to Placa Catalunya
http://www.renfe.com/EN/viajeros/ – to book train tickets from Barcelona to anywhere in Europe
http://www.sagradafamilia.org/en/tickets/ – official website of the Sagrada Famila, purchase tickets online
http://www.parkguell.cat/en/buy-tickets/ – official site of Parc Guell
http://www.laparadeta.com/en/ – our favorite market style seafood eatery