By: MJ + PJ
There was a lot to see – check out our Barcelona photos here!
Taking a high speed train through eastern Spain we arrived mid afternoon at Barcelona Sants Station. We had a bit of time in the station to work out how exactly to get to our Airbnb – this familiarity served us well on our dramatic exit at the end of the week.
Catching a local train towards the Barcelona Forum for free thanks to our Eurail pass, we popped out to catch the light rail system at Sant Adrià de Besòs. An easy half mile on this mode of transport would put us a few hundred meters walk from our much anticipated floating Airbnb.
This, is where it all started to fall apart.
The platform where we stood was the terminus of this light rail line. There were two ticket machines – neither of which would accept credit cards. The light rail drivers could not issue tickets, and there were no tickets machines on the train. The only person at the train station had nothing to do with the light rail system. We had no small cash, and the machines did not issue change. We could not purchase a ticket.
All we had were several 50 euro notes – the least useful denomination of any currency on the whole continent. ‘Breaking a 50’ is probably the most ridiculous barrier we came across in Europe. Where we were, there were no banks open and there were only a few small stores – most having no goods or services we really wanted at that moment.
MJ was tasked with the unenviable mission to get small change. He knew we needed about 24 Euro – a train driver had recommended getting a 10 ticket pass as the best deal for a few day stay, and everyone needed a ticket to ride. The first convenience store MJ found would not break the 50, so he bought some staple items, this coming to barely under 10 Euro. This meant he still had to break one of the two 20 Euro notes he received in change. That cashier declined to split a 20 into two fives and a ten. That was interesting. Finding a second convenience store, MJ purchased a less than one Euro item to break a 20, enabling a neat 24 euro to buy the tickets, and having walked 1000m.
Arriving back at the platform PJ was surprised to see a bag of groceries being carried by an obviously annoyed MJ. Luckily the light rail schedule was frequent – there had been about six trains come and go in the more than an hour it had taken to sort out these tickets… to go 700m… the next stop on the line. These things happen. We boarded the next train.
It was getting cold and we had arranged to meet our host outside the Decathlon store at The Forum. With the worst of the day behind us, we were met by the host and she skillfully oriented us to the small moored boat that was to become our home for the next five days.
We had decided to mix up our accommodation a little as we surveyed the options in Europe. Hence we found ourselves on a small boat in Barcelona. If you have not stayed on a boat for a night or two, you should. You learn all sorts of things! There are places to store almost anything in somewhat unusual but practical places. There are things like induction stove tops and integrated sound systems… which are amazing! There is no space to spread out all your things. There is no way to avoid being gently lulled to sleep.
We loved our time on the boat – our host made it a extra special with the additions of a few fun props for AJ to get his pirate game on!
So what did we do in Barcelona? We had been here also on our honeymoon, so we had a few things to see that we had missed then, and some things we just had to see again.
We started our first full day with a somewhat damp Sandemans walking tour. On the tour we got insight into some interesting Catalonian things: the moving of old buildings stone by stone for the revamping of the city, a review of the complex history and politics of the region, the hilariously dull School of Architecture building (with Picasso mural), the ‘crapper characters’ sold in tourist shops (seriously, this is a thing…), and some good advice on where to eat tapas. This region’s identity is clearly very different to where we had just been in Andalusia.
After the tour we took a walk around the La Rambla and then found ourselves at the Arc Triomf and Citadel Park near the center of Barcelona. This is quite an interesting place and must be buzzing with people in the Summer months. We only took a brief look around, as we had a higher list place to get to before we attempted to conquer all things Gaudí over the coming days.
That high list place was Parc de Montjuic, the Magic Fountain and the National Art Museum of Catalonia – all located on the northwest facing aspect of Montjuic. It was a crisp afternoon as we walked uphill from the metro station at Placa d’ España. We caught the last half hour of the Magic Fountain action from several angles, and listened to a musician while enjoying the view from the steps in front of the art museum.
The following day we spent a few hours out of the rain visiting the Picasso Museum. Certainly worth a look, and a great opportunity for AJ to get immersed in a prominent artist’s work – an artist who was likely to feature in European Museums. We walked the streets afterwards, working our way to Palace Güell, After a few hours in the palace we went hunting for the Pinchos (Pintxos) tapas bar that our guide had pointed out. Your bill is determined by how many toothpicks are left on your plate.
Gaudí here we come! Having booked our Sagrada Familia tickets for the fourth day, we spent our third day seeing Gaudí’s other architectural gems in the city. A few hours at Casa Batlló was followed by an afternoon in Casa Milà – these houses split nicely by our considerable difficulty finding a grocery store to grab a cheap lunch from. We had an early dinner at a cafe on the median strip of Rambla de Catalunya, and then explored the Casa del Libro nearby to bide some time waiting for our evening event at Casa Milà. We also happened upon a bakery called Boldu – where AJ had a person shaped doughnut!
In the evenings at Casa Milà there is a special guided tour followed by a rooftop light show projected onto the famous chimney features. This is certainly worth including on your list if visiting – however you don’t get much time to explore the house as you would during the day (self/audio-guided by day). The night event ended with a champagne at floor level, where we met two interesting people with whom we had a vibrant chat – a Rio Urologist in town for a conference, and an Australian mother of five boys who was in Europe for a wedding.
The Sagrada Família holds a special place in our hearts. We had visited it on our honeymoon when there was no ceiling (and it rained!), very few stained glass windows, and with the interior filled with scaffolding. It was stunning to visit again to see the inside – mostly finished. As we were there in the afternoon on a sunny day, we were awed by the sunlight exploding colors through the western side stained glass windows.
Our visit at the Sagrada Família took about six hours… a lot longer than the three to four “they suggest”! We took our sweet time, taking the walk up one of the towers, exploring the underground area, visiting the special exhibit, and listening to every word of the audio guide. We appreciated that the audio guide was much different from our last visit! You’ll need earphones for the audio guide – you don’t want to hold the audio stick to your head for that long. It was nice to just soak in the atmosphere of the cathedral, and appreciate the remarkable vision that Gaudí had. It is truly a place of immersion. With construction due to be completed in 2026, we figured we will come back in another 10 years to visit!
It had been a few days since we had done laundry. This is kind of an important thing to get done when you only have a small amount of clothes with you! Once that was complete, we headed to Parc Güell just after midday. Disappointingly, tickets were sold out for the day by midday. It was Saturday. We did not recall buying tickets on our last visit, and had wrongly assumed that it would not be particularly busy. This was a hard lesson to swallow, but we did get to walk around the outer areas of the park, and go into Gaudi’s House Museum. Lots of construction, so we didn’t feel too bad about missing out. We ended this day with a stop at Barceloneta Beach, where we sat on the gritty sand with thousands of others, watching nothing in particular besides the fading light.
Our dramatic exit from Barcelona involved a delayed exit from the boat, a slow walk with our packs over the Forum hill, a metro line that had too many stops, a taxi ride that was characterized by red lights, a dash into Barcelona Sants Station yelling for directions, and a fingers crossed escalator ride to the platform where our high speed train patiently waited. We boarded that train and it was moving before we had settled into our seats. It was going to be a long full day of travel across Europe to Brugge in Belgium.
While it was stressful to say the least, this ‘almost missed’ scenario is one of those events that becomes more likely to happen the longer you travel. The stark reality: If you don’t catch your initial ride, you won’t make subsequent connections. It would have been an expensive and time consuming disaster if we had missed that train! Lesson… learned?
