Thursday 2 May 2013

Hola Barcelona!


Last weekend, the boy and I flew to Barcelona and spent a lovely few days exploring, eating, and relaxing. I'd never visited the city before but it had been top of my list for a good few years - the art, culture and food had always tickled my fancy and it's pretty much around the corner from England so seemed like a plausible destination for my poor graduate self.

We landed on Friday and were greeted by lovely gloomy grey skies and lashings of rain. I won't dwell too much on the weather - I think we've all done enough of that already over the last few months(!) - but it was grim. Our guide book had just one page devoted to 'What to do if rains', because bad weather apparently only hits Barcelona roughly 50 days out of the entire year. And yes - we enjoyed 4 of those. 

So, moving on to the good stuff! We stayed in a beautiful hotel called Hotel Grums, which is situated in the west of the city and is only about a 5-10 minute walk away from the famous, bustling street La Rambla. I highly recommend it if you're after somewhere modern and stylish, yet affordable and welcoming.

Since it rained a lot we made good use of the Metro (such an easy system to get to grips with) and the 10-trip ticket - a definite bargain if you're not one for walking or just like to get to places quickly! For the rest of the time, strolling on foot suited us just fine. In fact, I'm really glad we did so much of this because we saw a lot of beautiful buildings and quirky residential areas away from the main tourist routes that we would never have found otherwise. 
































Dinners pretty much consisted completely of tapas. You have to do it, right? 




This was an amazing little restaurant we found called Mam I Teca, which had only 4 tables and 1 waitress, but it served the most delicious food. Perfect for a quiet, romantic meal. 
I'll let the pictures do the talking for everything else:


La Sagrada Familia - or the 'Gaudi Cathedral'






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