One night in Barcelona

Monday morning we were off to Barcelona ! Our flight was early in the morning, but we still managed to fit in a little exercise beforehand. Hearing “last call for flight xxx to Barcelona at Gate xx” when you are NOT at the gate will do that to you.

We arrived in Barcelona bright and early and ready to explore. We took a walk to Sagrada Familia, one of the favorite Dolin Europe sites. We had gone back in November and had no idea that the 15 minute line that we debated waiting in was a steal of a deal, since on this day the line stretched all the way around the church. We admired the outside and then showed Jenn and Michael our pictures of the inside from our last trip.

 

Then we took a detour in a cab to somewhere I am pretty sure no tourists have ever gone before. I had cut out part of an article I read that mentioned a restaurant in Barcelona that served the best grilled meat in Spain. And it was rated one of the top 10 secret places in Europe. So we hopped in a cab and gave the driver the address. There is a reason it is a secret. It was outside of town, up a hill, around some corners, and down a driveway. And it is closed on Mondays.

So our faithful driver turned around and drove us to another restaurant sort of in the area that John and I had gone to before. We had margaritas, beers, and tapas, and decided we liked Barcelona again. 

That evening we headed to the W Hotel, which is right on the beach. I had heard that there was a bar on the top floor with a beautiful view of the whole city with drinks made from fresh fruit. We all like the beach, bars, and fruit, so we thought it would be a winner. As we pulled up in the taxi, we noticed that we couldn’t actually see the top of the hotel due to all of the fog. We took this as a bad sign for the view, and this was confirmed when we made it to the top. 

The view from the top

 

We had a fun drink anyway and then some more on our walk along the beach. 

We stopped for dinner in the Gothic Quarter. The food was good, except for Jenn’s rice dish that ended up being Michael’s rice dish. It consisted of some rice, a few shrimp with eyes, and a lot of oil. 

The next day we woke up to rain. We took a walk up to the Olympic stadium, bought some umbrellas, and then went to the Olympic museum. And then we took off for Rome.