Barcelona

Our journey around Spain begins in Barcelona where we’ve booked into the Yurbban Trafalgar Hotel, which is in a perfect location for walking and seeing some of the main sights of Barcelona.

For dinner tonight we managed to get a 20 minute slot at Bar Del Pla, which is highly recommended as having great local tapas at reasonable prices.

Thanks to the changing of our flight we have 4 nights in Barcelona and to make the most of our first day we decided to book a Devour Tours food tour of Barcelona. Check out a quick video of our day below.

After our organised tour we visited a number of locations that Kath had researched that were a must see. These included a Cava Bar (Spanish Sparkling Wine), a small restaurant for a snack and then a tapas bar which was off the hook busy.

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That afternoon our travelling companions Leanne (Leo) and Gary arrived. We knew they’d be arriving so we went out for a walk where we ran into them in the street. They were surprised to see us as we hadn’t let on that we were arriving a day early!

For dinner we wandered the streets looking for a place to eat however many were full and booked out. We settled on a lesser know tapas bar and the food was still quite nice, but not as good as some of the more recommended places we ate.

The following day we when out into the streets of Barcelona where we visited Casa Mila which is the last private residence designed by architect Antoni Gaudí and was built between 1906 and 1912.

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You can purchase an entry into the building which has been set up as a kind of museum. Its rooftop is the most interesting and as part of our tour we had an audio which automatically played relevant information as you wandered around.

I found the rooftop and the inner roof area the most interesting, along with the bathrooms and kitchen areas.

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Following our visit were in need of sustenance so we headed away from the main street to one of the side streets to find something less “touristy”.

We found this restaurant which had a cabinet full of awesome looking sandwiches where you get a little card, and you can just browse and select what you like and it is added to your card allowing you to pay on the way out.

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A basic sandwich was the sort of thing we were after for lunch so this went down a treat.

After lunch, we walk down the popular restaurant street and checked out the menu’s. We then walked down the famous, or infamous depending on your take, La Rambla. Google “La Rambla Incident” for more info on this.

We’d purchased some cheese and meat products from the market on the previous day so we got together on our terrace for a pre-dinner snack and drinks. Following this we partook in the free happy hour drinks available at our Hotel.

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Keep in mind this a 3 Star property yet they offered free drinks for an hour every evening from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.

For dinner, we booked into a restaurant called Casa Rafols, which was quite highly regarded and was also a recommendation from the Hotel. We asked the reception desk to book us in at 8pm.

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Dinner was delightful and one of the best we’d had so far on our journey. We were still suffering the side effects of travel so we called it a night after dinner.

The next day we were off to see Sagrada Familia which is a large unfinished Roman Catholic church in Barcelona. It is the most famous of landmarks in Barcelona and one that many thousands of tourists come to see each day.

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We walked all the way around the church but didn’t venture inside. The external architecture was more of interest here for us. From here we walked up the road to a see an old Hospital with Roman architecture but didn’t stay too long, the walk was lovely though.

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From here we jumped in a Taxi and headed to the beach. It wasn’t the best day to be at the beach, but we made the most of it by wandering along and checking out the restaurants.

We located a place to stop in and have the traditional pre-lunch drink of vermouth as well as some tomato bread. From here we headed to lunch which was at one of the places we visited on our food tour from early in the post.

The restaurant is called La Peninsular and the food here is so fresh and local it was hard to pass up the opportunity to visit again. We feasted on a variety of fresh local seafood in a variety of forms.

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After lunch we made our way back towards the hotel stopping off at some of the other places we’d had pinned on our map. We also booked in for dinner at Bar Del Pla on the way through.

Snacks and drinks again on the terrace this afternoon and instead of the happy hour downstairs we decided to head to the roof-top bar and pool area for some pre-dinner drinks.

The roof-top area is quite popular with hotel guests and for good reason. The view is amazing and the area has a funky vibe.

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We headed to dinner for our allotted booking at 8:30 at Bar Del Pla. The food here is just simply amazing and it’s no wonder it is recommended by all the people we talk to and also no wonder that bookings are essential.

It can be quite loud, especially when there are large groups, and the space is a little cramped, however, we were lucky enough to be moved to a larger table, before we got stuck into our food, which made for a bit more elbow room when digging into the spectacular food. The absolute highlight for me was the Suckling Pig Taco’s. 

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After dinner we headed back to the roof-top bar for a night cap before turning in for the evening.

Our last day in Barcelona happened to be Catalan Independence Day, which was a public holiday. We’d pre-booked our taxi to the train station so we could be assured of getting there at the right time.

Out in the street, there were people marching and streets blocked off for festivities. Being a controversial topic there was a large police presence with helicopters and police vehicles everywhere.

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We said goodbye to the Yurbban Hotel and headed to the Train station. The taxi ride was smooth and we arrived in good time to get to our train to Logrono.

The train ride offered a great view of Spanish landscape with some dramatic mountains and cliff faces to be seen along the way, plus our first glimpse of Rioja vines!

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Arriving at Logorno we headed to the Avis car rental desk which is located inside the train station. We’d booked a mid-size car as that was all that was available online, however, the very helpful attendant noted that based on the 4 people and the luggage we had, we probably wouldn’t fit in the mid-size.

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There happened to be a larger vehicle available so we upgraded which turned out to be a good option. We headed from Logrono to La Guardia where we’ll pick things up in the next post.

Adiós!