Barcelona

So why did we start our journey in Barcelona, Spain?

A few reasons. We figured that spring was best appreciated in southern Europe. We’re meeting friends in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 16th. And after Amy lived in Granada for a semester in college, we figured Spain provided the softest landing.

We decided to skip Madrid (for now), and Barcelona is only other city in Spain with nonstop flights from California. Ever heard of LEVEL airlines? Us neither. It’s apparently a fairly new budget airlines that only does long-haul flights from Barcelona to a handful of cities around the world. They don’t do business class. They don’t include check bagged, meals, or even water. Between all the 1-star reviews and reports of cancelled flights, we were a bit apprehensive. Would we even get there? But the planes were shiny and new, the service perfectly fine, and the passengers…well, there weren’t any. The plane was mostly empty. So we each took a full row to stretch out and sleep through the flight. Griffin was a champ, alternately sleeping and wandering the aisles in his socks.

Touchdown! As we got off the plane, we tried to mentally prepare ourselves for our first challenge: Spain’s COVID entry requirements. As with so many countries right now, they have been constantly changing and rather unclear. Even the travel agency I’ve worked for for years couldn’t quite tell us what we needed. But our paper vaccination certificates from the CDC were fine, and we breezed right through customs. We got some Euros at an ATM, Griffin ordered his first pan du chocolate, and we easily found the airport bus that would take us right to the doorstep of our AirBnB on Plaza Catalunya. Easy peasy!

Amy had booked us a lovely, modern rooftop apartment that overlooked Barcelona’s main shopping boulevard, Passeig de Gràcia, and we were grateful to settle into it. Just one problem: jetlag. It was late afternoon in Barcelona when we landed but morning in California. We all struggled to sleep. After a brief nap, Griffin was up, playing quietly and tiptoeing around the apartment in semi-darkness until finally passing out at 7am!

I don’t love cities. But I think I may love Barcelona. I’m not alone; last year, it made a top ten list of best cities in the world to live, work and visit. As we flew in, I spotted all the landmarks I remembered from my last trip here way back in 2005: the insane spires of Sagrada Familia cathedral, the strangely phallic and colorful Agbar Tower, Montjuïc Hill, and the Barceloneta Marina.

Like so many places in Europe, Barcelona has a rich history, with evidence of inhabitants going back at least 5000 BC. The Romans founded the small city of Barcino here in about 15 BC. The remains of their city walls and forum are still very evident in the Gothic Quarter, and you can walk through large scale excavations of Barcino underneath the modern city in a sprawling underground museum, which was free on the day we went.

Today, the city is the cultural and economic capital of prosperous northern Spain. It’s the fifth largest city (by population) in the EU, and one of the busiest ports in the Mediterranean. It’s also the official capital of the modern and medieval state of Catalonia, which has its own traditions and language (Catalan) distinct from the rest of Spain. For many years, Catalonians have agitated for their own country, even declaring independence in 2017, which Spain refused to accept.

Despite all that, the city center feels strangely cozy and inviting, especially the famous street of La Rambla (or Las Ramblas), a wide tree-lined pedestrian boulevard that arcs up from the waterfront to the city center, filled with tourist shops, restaurants, and theaters.

“The happiest street in the world, the street where the four seasons of the year live together at the same time, the only street on Earth that I wish would never end, rich in sounds, abundant of breezes, beautiful of meetings, ancient of blood: Rambla de Barcelona.”

Federico García Lorca

Along the east side of La Rambla is the palm-lined square Plaça Reial, where I stayed in 2005, and the medieval Gothic Quarter, which roughly follows the footprint of Barcino. I had forgotten just how narrow and charming its small, cobblestoned streets are (called “kissing lanes” since the buildings on each side almost kiss), or how imposing its cathedral is. And I was especially charmed to almost immediately discover a tiny vegan baklava shop tucked into one of its avenues!

But Barcelona is also a wonderfully creative and modern city, perhaps most famous for its resident architect Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926). We visited three of his most famous works:

• The stupefying Sagrada Familia Cathedral, with its tree-like columns and fruit-topped towers, started way back in 1882 and finally due for completion in 2026.
• The wonderfully organic and fluid Casa Batlló apartment block, now a museum, which includes a trippy lightshow in the basement after your tour.
• The hilltop Park Güell, a strange combination of colorful mosaics, imposing Doric columns, stone viaducts, fountains, and natural landscaping.

Unfortunately, Barcelona was bitterly cold and somewhat rainy while we were there, and it took several days to get over the jet lag, so we didn’t explore quite as much as we would liked. But we did manage to:

• explore the large city park with its lake and many fountains
• tour the quaint Barcelona chocolate museum, where the ticket is a chocolate bar
• enjoy a children’s walking tour of the Gothic Quarter, which started and ended at candy shops!
• see some of Picasso’s best work in the Picasso Museum
• take an evening vegan tapas tours with a very interesting Russian-Spanish woman, who taught us more about history than food
• head over to the Lego store, where they had Lego reproductions of Sagrada Familia & Casa Batlló
• indulge in churros and chocolate, a traditional treat, at one of the city’s oldest restaurants
• eat fried vegan calamari & more at the hot pink Vegan Junk Food Bar
• sneak over to one of Barcelona’s private cannabis clubs (what do we do now with this year-long membership?)

We also spent a lot of time on the roof of our apartment soaking up some occasional sun, doing art, and simply admiring the city. Griffin quickly proved himself a savvy urbanite, learning how to use the elevator and metro turnstiles, and demonstrated that he still has a better sense of direction than his mother!

Next stop: Granada!