Path: Eric’s Site / Eric / Travel / Europe 2022 / Barcelona

Related: Europe 2022, Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Marseille, Zürich (Site Map)

Spain Plus Two Cities in 2022, Barcelona

Parts

Thursday, October 6

My Barcelona hotel was visible from inside the train station, although the entrance was around the back of the block adjacent to the station. There is also a nice sizable park adjacent to the station, with a dragon for kids to slide down.

After dropping my stuff at the hotel, I went back to the train station to collect my four-day transit pass and then headed for the Hard Rock Cafe. In cities that have a Hard Rock Cafe, it is often my first stop, to get a shotglass for my friend Cathleen. That gets me initiated into the local transit system and leads to a bustling area of the city. In this case, that included an Apple Store. They were both around Plaça de Catalunya.

Parc de l’Espanya Industrial.

Dragon slide.

Apple Store in Barcelona.

Plaça de Catalunya.

I scouted a few places for dinner, again passing on some Lonely Planet had suggested, and settled on a pizza at Oassis Natural Cooking. And I scouted a few potential chocolate stores. Several were closed (gone, not closed for the day), and one was Chocolate Amatller. After tasting Amatller’s offerings, I preferred the closed stores.

Oassis pizza.

Amatller.

Friday, October 7

La Sagrada Família.

Today was rainy. I got soaked, but this was the only bad-weather day during the trip.

I had an early ticket for La Sagrada Família, which they have been building for 140 years (since 1882), some of them legally. Some permit issued by Sant Martí de Provençals was invalidated when that jurisdiction was absorbed into Barcelona. Antoni Gaudí applied for a building permit but did not get it, and nobody noticed until 2016. A new permit was issued in 2019 after negotiations about a century’s worth of missing fees.

If you visit, I recommend the audio guide, not a guided tour. The guided tour uses poor audio equipment and a microphone on the tour guide that picks up ambient noise, including hubbub, in the cathedral. The audio guide is a studio recording you can play on your own phone or other device.

Currently, the Ulm Münster is the tallest church building in the world, but La Sagrada Família will be slightly taller when they finish it. Grr.

After La Sagrada Família, I visited the Plaça del Rei site of Museu d’Història de Barcelona. It was interesting, but, to my surprise, I have no pictures from it. I may have been more involved in experiencing the museum than in recording pictures for you. Sorry. The museum has parts of buildings from the first five centuries CE and the original city wall, including a clothing dyeing shop with a vat for dyeing clothes, original city level, ruts in the street, a place where they prepared fish and made fermented fish sauce, a cetária (salting factory), and a wine-making facility with a transfer tank for wine.

Rubber duck store in Barcelona.

Royal Palace.

After the rubber duck stores in Madrid and Zaragoza, I had to check Barcelona, and, sure enough, Barcelona has a rubber duck store too. Still no Buffy duck, though.

Being in the old part of the city, the history museum is in a touristy area with lots of shops, so I spent some time walking around checking out chocolate shops, some planned and some found, including La Colmena, Chocolate-Box, Xocolates Fargas, Be Chocolate, and Petritxol Cafe. Most were ordinary stuff, sold to tourists who are not shopping for the good stuff. Even the chocolate museum, Museu de la Xocolata, did not have great chocolate. It did have these sculptures made out of chocolate and some history of chocolate in Barcelona and Catalonia. (Thanks to Lorinda for recommending the chocolate museum.) The museum uses a barcode on the wrapper of a chocolate bar as its entry ticket.

Sculptures at chocolate museum.

The Green Spot.

It was raining moderately, so I ducked into The Green Spot, a vegetarian restaurant suggested by Lonely Planet. Lunch allowed me to dry off a bit and to connect my phone to a battery to recharge. As I mentioned in the Madrid page, technology is great for getting around foreign cities, but real-time navigation burns energy, so I recharged the phone when I could. The food at Green Spot was nice quality except the flavor was underwhelming.

After this late lunch (on time for Spain, late for me), I walked around the area some more. This part of the port area was full of boats and not hugely attractive, so I headed inland. While wandering the large tourist area (shops and shops for blocks and blocks, plus restaurants and some museums and squares), I found Chocolataria Equador, which was a nice surprise. Decent price, nice flavors in the bonbons (the bars were weak), not very adventurous but pleasant.

The Picasso museum had a long wait for entry, so I bought a ticket online for the next day.

Port.

A tower of Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar.

Chocolataria Equador.

Saturday, October 8

Unclear train sign.

Since the port had been unattractive the day before, I started this day with a trip to a beach. To do this, I had to interpret the annoying sign in the train station you see to the right. I was looking for the R2S, which I suppose is the R2 SUD listed in the sign. But which of the rows below it is an R2 SUD? The icons at the top use three shades of green for the R2, the R2 NORD, and the R2 SUD, but the rows below use only the R2 shade. But one of them is the R2S I want. I guessed you are supposed to distinguish them by destination. But why not match the colors or label the lines?

Anyway, I made it to the beach, grabbed some photos for you, and took a bus back toward the Picasso museum.

Beach on the Mediterranean.

Picasso rubber duck.

When looking for travel souvenirs, I generally try to find something ordinary to the area or meaningful to local folks, rather than souvenirs made for tourists. But, after seeing multiple rubber duck stores in Spain, I guess finding a Picasso rubber duck in the Picasso museum gift shop fits the bill.

The rest of my day was unstructured, going to whatever destination I chose at the moment. Below are photos of columns of the presumed Temple d’August. The temple was built in the first century BCE, and these columns of it have been standing in Barcelona since then, but folks lost track of what they were. It was only in the 1800s it was reestablished they had been part of a temple. To the right of that is a nearby street view.

Temple d’August.

Street view.

I walked a part of La Rambla, a 1.8-mile pedestrian shopping/restaurant strip. Then I headed to Tibidabo, a hill overlooking the city. A regular train gets you to the hill, then a funicular gets you up part of it, and then you can take a bus to the top. I walked the last part. There was a church and an amusement park at the top, and a radio tower nearby. I wonder about building churches on hills; it was a substantial walk just from the funicular, so do folks really make the trek to the church on a regular basis?

View of Barcelona from Tibidabo.

Church on Tibidabo.

Amusement park on Tibidabo.

Radio tower on Tibidabo.

View away from Barcelona on Tibidabo.

Radio tower on Tibidabo.

View of Barcelona hillsides from Tibidabo.

Funicular on Tibidabo.

Cookies. Left: Chopped macadmia with Oreo. Right: Chocolate chip with peanut butter and jelly.

Paella.

Then I went back into town to check out more chocolate stores. Mauri Paisserie was closed, even though hours listed for it said it should be open. Chök The Chocolate Kitchen did not look great for chocolate but had these cookies. On the left is chopped macadamia with an Oreo, and on the right is chocolate chip with peanut butter and jelly. Neither combination really worked. I consoled myself with churros with chocolate, back on La Rambla. I also found a place to try paella again. It was better than the first one, in Madrid, but I am still not a fan.

Then more wandering around.

View near port.

Plaça Reial.

Mercat de la Boqueria is a large market with lots of stalls, mostly selling food. Part of it was closed when I was first there, and I think that part is largely for groceries. The part that was open was more ready-to-eat foods and touristy offerings.

Mercat de la Boqueria.

Finally, for the day, I checked out Musée d’Art Contemporain. It was early evening, and I almost skipped the museum because I did not want to feel rushed, but I settled on going in. The museum was free, thanks to some sponsorship by Uniqlo. Multiple museums were free on this trip, some due to the day of the week, one due to some local event, and this one due to Uniqlo.

The images below show two rooms in the museum with the same stuff in them.

Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).

Sunday, October 9

Sunday, I had a ticket for a guided tour of Parc Güell. The area was intended to be a luxury housing development with park areas, but they offered only small building lots with significant building restrictions, and the plan failed. It does not seem surprising to me that wealthy people did not like small lots with restrictions. Eventually it was made a public park.

Getting there was harder than expected. Public transit took me to one side of the park, and I needed to enter on the other, and it is in a hilly area with some winding and dead-end streets, so I had to detour and climb a bit. But I made it in time. The tour was fairly interesting.

View from Park Güell.

Park Güell.

View from Park Güell.

Once again, the rest of my day was unstructured. I went back into town and then to Castell Montjuïc, which was built in the seventeenth century and used for defense into the twentieth century.

Castell de Montjuïc.

View from Castell de Montjuïc.

Castell de Montjuïc.

View from Castell de Montjuïc.

From there, I wandered through other parts of the park it is in, made a pass through the Museu Etnològic, and walked here and there checking out restaurant options. The McDonald’s of the photos below was not a restaurant option; I just thought it was interesting they were selling baked goods. Back at La Rambla, I picked up some turrones from Torrons Vicens to try later. (Verdict: no.)

Public gardens/park.

Street view.

McDonald’s in Barcelona.

Pole decorated as a tree.

Lemon and pistachio gelatos.

Chain-link fence sculpture.

El Taller de Virginias.

Columbus monument.

Monday, October 10

Monday was a bit weird; it was a train travel day, but my train did not leave until 16:36, so I had plenty of time left in Barcelona. Since it was Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I started with a photograph of Barcelona’s Christopher Columbus Monument.

Enric Rosich Chocolates.

Then I went to a mall, L’illa Diagonal, where I found Enric Rosich Chocolates, which was nice. Some of my best chocolate finds on this trip were unplanned, found by going places rather than by recommendations or online searches before the trip.

The food and dining options at the mall are a step up from most US malls.

Food and dining at L’illa Diagonal.

Heading back toward the center of the city, I picked up some chocolates at Natcha, which was reasonable but not great, and visited es 4 sense, a chocolate store I had seen previously but that had been closed. It was open and turned out to be pretty good, another fortuitous find.

Natcha plain ganaches.

Natcha flavored ganaches.

es 4 sense.

The fact you see pictures of the chocolates means I did not eat them right away; they made it at least to my hotel room to be photographed. I tried out another poké place for lunch. It was not bad, but I think many US poké places are doing a bit better.

The Fresh Poke.

Orange Theory Fitness in Barcelona.

The Orange Theory I saw randomly on the street reminded me of a friend who is a big Orange Theory fan, so I messaged her a photo on the fly. I finished the remaining pre-train time with another visit to la Boqueria. Barcelona seems like a good place for food options, including tourist areas, other parts of the city, la Boqueria, the “food court” at L’illa Diagonal, and bakeries all over. Other than that, I would not be greatly interested in living in Barcelona. If I had to pick between Madrid and Barcelona, I would pick Madrid. It seemed a bit more comfortable.

I picked up my luggage from the hotel and went to the train station.

⇐ Back to Zaragoza — On to Marseille ⇒

Path: Eric’s Site / Eric / Travel / Europe 2022 / Barcelona

Related: Europe 2022, Madrid, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Marseille, Zürich (Site Map)