Barcelona has been a firm favourite to visit for quite a while so as soon as we arrived, I wasted no time in doing the regular hotel faffing around and instead chucked my coat on, grabbed my camera and headed straight out of the door!
Seeing as our hotel was smack in the middle of the gothic quarter (I can’t recommend it enough), the walk to the sights took all of 1 minute! 🙂
There’s so much to see and do in this city (we’re got a full list of it all here) and not to mention an abundance of places to eat too so having a convenient location in this city was pretty much high up there on my list or priorities.
We started off with the Barcelona Cathedral which, despite the cloudy weather (which soon cleared up), still looked rather impressive. (I never used to think weather had a huge impact on how I viewed cities until this trip to Palermo where it rained A LOT in the freezing cold and had me wishing I’d just stayed indoors).
We couldn’t go into the Cathedral at this time (it would be opened later) so we figured we might as well go for a gander around Barcelona’s Gothic quarter…
There were lots of nice little pastry shops dotting the corner and beckoning you to come in…
…as well as some rather impressive sweet shops! (I stocked up on quite a few bags of sweets here and ended up eating them for weeks. I tend to get greedy like that in sweet shops).
We decided to ditch the maps and just make our way randomly through Barcelona’s side streets…
…which, as it turns out, is not a bad way to see more of the city!
We made our way over to Columbus’s Monument…
…where there was a street market on the opposite side of the road. This is where Chris and I lost Georgia and Lloyd for about 20 minutes as they went off in search of vintage treasures.
Eventually, we couldn’t hold out much longer and dragged Lloyd and Georgia down to Las Ramblas in search of drinks and food.
See, I told you the sun came out in the end! And what a different that sunshine makes!
I’m almost certain we ended up going down side streets we didn’t need to and couldn’t make but I have to admit, it made for a welcome change to over planning sight seeing in a city like this. There’s definitely something liberating about just chucking your map away and leaning into your instincts…
…even if your instincts lead you to feeling like you’ve seen the same street more than once. 🙂
Tapas and pinchos were definitely on the menu at many of the restaurants here and we figured we might as well take a gamble and try something different.
Random aside – how cute are these two???
Again, see why I said getting lost in Barcelona has it’s perks. Only downside is I don’t know where this building is or what it’s called! Have you got any idea?
Before you knew it, we were back at the Cathedral again…
a building so intricate you just have to photograph it twice (and then some more times)….
… before finally getting pinchos at a random place in town. Not my choice by the way (PHEW! No pressure!) and glad it wasn’t as it was not great..
By this point, I was ready to kick off my shoes and have a nice long bath before heading out again for the evening….
…but not before seeing at least one Gaudi masterpiece. This led us straight to one of the closest – Casa Milà!
A place so beautiful (and so famous) you’ve also gotta photograph it twice! 😉
We actually took a proper tour of the building a couple of days later but for this evening, it was time to get home and prepare for what would be rather amazing food and cocktails fuelled evening! 😉 (More on that very soon…)
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