Weekend Trip - Barcelona

Our first real weekend trip was last weekend.  We took advantage of a 3 day weekend Brian had and left the rain and cold for sunny Barcelona.

We packed the weekend full of walking, walking, sightseeing, tapas, and more walking.  By Monday, we were both excited about a little excursion to the Beach for some down time.

Highlights from Barcelona are:
-The amazing architecture
-Pintxos , snacks on toothpicks at bars, their version of Happy Hour.  Fun and delicious
-FC Barcelona game. Messi scored a hattrick and it was the coaches last game.
-Barri Gothic district - old winding medieval streets that you can spend hours in and still walk around a corner to a place you've never seen.

The biggest let down of Barcelona were the Public Bikes.  They had amazing bike lanes off the street, the bike stands were everywhere, the weather was perfect BUT you had to be a local to use them.  So frustrating.

This is La Boqueria.  Friends recommended that we check out this market and it did not disappoint.  This was our first stop on our first full day. It was incredibly big and full of small vendors selling fresh fruit, veggies, meat, fish, cheese, sweets, anything you can think of.  My favorite was the €1 Fruit Juice I'm holding in the photo.  Fresh strawberry coconut juice - amazing.

After browsing the market, we took a train to a funicular to a bus to get to the castle on top of Montjuïc.  The views were incredible.

 I loved the way they landscaped the moat.

Still on day one, we decided next to head to Park Guell.  We knew it was on top of a hill, and the train couldn't take us there so our tired feet were pretty happy when we found escalators to the top!  Amazing.

Here is the view when we entered the park.

 

As if we hadn't done enough the first day, we also had tickets to watch the FC Barcelona game.  The game started at 9:15pm, crazy right?  It was nice that we were able to get in a good Siesta before going.

We had to figure out what train to take, where to go, where to pick up our tickets, how to get in, find our seats, which we thought could have taken a while, so we left pretty early.  Turns out, it was super easy, and we were among the first into the stadium.

It was the coaches last game with the team.  He has been with them for 4 amazing years and taken them to great places.  The stadium was full, 100,000 fans.

Here is Messi's first goal of the game.  FC Barcelona was up 4-0 in the second half and no one left early.  We were really surprised.  With 100,000 people leaving and taking the train home, we were a bit anxious to get a head start.  We watched the last 5 minutes from the doorway across from the exit.  Shockingly, the security didn't mind us standing in the aisle.

Gaudi's Casa Batllo, very cool architecture.

Cute photo of Brian at the Picasso Museum.

Another Gaudi house, Casa Mila, we went on the tour of this one.  It is an apartment building and we were able to go on the roof, the attic and tour 1 apartment.  The other apartments were occupied by residence.  I can't imagine what it costs to live in a Gaudi apartment that is also a World UNESCO site.

The kitchen of the apartment was very cool.

And finally, we went back to La Boqueria, grabbed some stuff for a picnic lunch and a fruit juice and took the train to Sitges Beach, just 30 minutes from Barcelona.

It was a perfect afternoon to relax and enjoy some sun.  The only mistake was I forgot to bring my skirt, so I had to walk around in black jeans.  Nothing like putting on tight jeans after laying out in the sun.

We had a wonderful weekend exploring Barcelona, eating Tapas and drinking wine.  Looking forward to the next trip.