A flight from Madrid to Barcelona only takes a little more than an hour, and less than hundred Euros per person, so we decided to spend the new year in Barcelona! We chose to spend New Year at Barcelona, mostly because of Sagrada Familia. We also picked an apartment 5min walk from Sagrada Familia, but in the end we found many more interesting places to visit in Barcelona. It is a beautiful seaside city, so peaceful & relaxed. Also, there were so many works of Gaudi and others here.
This is a really helpful site to book the plane/train/bus tickets online.
This is one example of list of places to visit. Let’s see how many I got to visit in the end…
https://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/barcelona-e-cat-bar.htm
We had so many people & luggages that we had to call a large taxi to take us to airport before dawn (the sun rises so late in winter of Spain!), but then we arrived Barcelona before noon. In fact, we were so early that it took a while until the apartment manager came to give us the keys, so we ate lunch at a local Brazilian Steakhouse nearby first. The steak turned out tasted really good! Also, as we expected, the Sagrada Familia was only 5min walk from our apartment. We could basically see it from our balcony! How nice! As a bonus, there was beautiful ancient-looking furnitures, lamps and a tiny lizard on the wall that looked like Park Guell!!
We rent a 4-bedroom apartment. It was so spacious and well-equipped. I totally love the apartments in Spain, except:
- they usually either only have stairs, or only have tiny ancient elevators which are very slow and need to open close the door manually.
- they usually have very complicated and multiple door locks, sometimes even multiple front doors. The keys are 3-dimensional and weird shape (looks if as to open the secret treasure!), took a while for us to figure out how to insert & how to turn it.
- hot water runs out after long showers or multiple persons take showers.
I have separate posts for the following 3 big landmarks of Barcelona. Please check them out! (Some of them will show you how to entry for free!)
Many museums in Europe has specific free entry days (e.g. first Sunday of each month), so if you check the homepage of the museums in advance, and plan ahead to visit on free entry days, it will save you a few bucks!
It was new year time, Barcelona was full of holiday mood. Our apartment was just behind the main streets. We wandered around the streets, and eat in different restaurants every night. Barcelona is a perfect place to eat seafoods after all!!
During daytime, we walked on Passeig de Grà cia, looked at the famous Casa Batlló, Casa Amatller, Casa Milà . We also visited Barri Gòtic, La Barceloneta and others, but I think I enjoyed the most was the Picasso Museum.
Although we spent quite a long time waiting in line to get in, it was well worth it. Now I know not only the name, but also the life experiences of Picasso, and how much his styles had evolved overtime. It was very interesting. The museum showcased many private letters and postcards that Picasso had written and drawn for his family and friends, also some hand notes. They were so unique and artistic. I really enjoyed visiting art museum of a certain artist, instead of a mixture of many.
http://www.museupicasso.bcn.cat/en/
Public bathrooms in Spain seem to be non-exist, but MacDonald’s were everywhere, so we often visited MacCafe or other coffee shops for bathrooms.
We had spent a whole day wandering at the seaside. It was so relaxing.
Another day, we took subway to visit the former Olympics site in Barcelona, and we passed by some interesting museum and beautiful garden.
After new year, we took another flight to our last but not the least destination of Spain — Granada!! Let’s see what we’ll find there!!
