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| Sagrada Familia |
Barcelona is another city that I visited recently. It's a great city with amazing architecture. It's a classic example of how restrictions might actually be a good thing. For hundreds of years the city walls were not allowed to extend and so any architectural development had to take place within the bounds of the city walls. As a result, every single piece of architecture is a sight for sore eyes. The facades, the balustrades, the balconies and the details on the buildings make a walk through any block a real treat.
Visiting a city and doing a walking tour with a guide is now a reflex to me. Luckily now both my daughters like to walk and enjoy discovering cities and culture as they're adults. So, no negotiating and fighting with them over the activities that children might prefer to do.
We opted for a free guided tour with Tours of my Life/ Guruwalk and our guide Christian Caner gave us a two and a half hour tour of the city focusing on the architecture and mainly on Gaudi architecture. These free walks are ‘pay what you think is fair’, so carrying alone some cash is ideal. Christian was funny and very well versed with the subject. He made the walking and the tour easy for the group that comprised different age groups, ethnicities and origins. Be ready to hear amazing stories and get carried into the past while discovering the streets you walk on, the roads that were made a hundred and more years ago and the prominent personalities that created the constant eye-candy city that you are discovering. You can meet Christian through the app or on +34 606 66 10 63
Read about Gaudi here https://www.casabatllo.es/en/antoni-gaudi/
Read about the Sagrada Familia Church here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia
Some fun facts about Barcelona.
The city is a Perfectionist's dream. The lines and shapes make for a very beautiful and satisfying image.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1cfyz5o/barcelona_as_seen_from_the_sky/
Barcelona has it’s own Valentine’s day with a twist. It’s not on the 14th of Feb but on the 23rd April. It’s not related to only couples but is all inclusive.
Read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_George%27s_Day_in_Catalonia#:~:text=Saint%20George's%20Day%20(Catalan%3A%20Diada,(Spain)%20on%2023%20April.
The Sagrada Familia church's construction is funded completely by private funds.
It's still incomplete and if you ever imagined a building that could be compared to a human being's evolution in life, this construction shows you its strengths, fragility and incompleteness in the day or lit up at nights. It's pretty from some angles, not so much from another, youthful on one side and old and grey on the other. Its uniqueness shows us perfection and its incompleteness keeps an angle of wanting and mystery.
The metro system is really amazing. I suggest buying a 2 or 3 day trip ticket as it's completely worth it. Barcelona is too big to walk everywhere and the ticket covers all kinds of transport including train ride from and to the airport. You can get a free mapf of the metro at the Tourist Info centre at the airport.
Avoid travelling to Barcelona if you can during European summers because apparently locals have started really finding their city too crowded and getting expensive due to its constant visitors.
Read about it here https://edition.cnn.com/travel/barcelona-reckons-with-overtourism-summer-2025/index.html
I'm guessing that only girls, ladies and mothers with daughters will understand the joy in this but there is a Sephora store that has an option to enter it using a slide instead of the escalators!
The two hotels we stayed in when we visited the city in recent months are:
Hotel Best 4 Barcelona
This hotel is a 7-minute walk away from the beach. It's clean and offers a good breakfast. The gym is decent, but some of the cardio equipment needs a revamp. If you're the weight training kind, you will be happier to work out there. Good value for the money you pay.
Hotel SB Icaria
This hotel is in another part of town near the beach. I chose it because it offered the possibility to be three adults in one room and that way my children and I could share all our time together and it was still economical. The hotel has a great outdoor pool area and the breakfast area is quite fancy. It offers a gym too and funnily enough this gym was a cardio machine gym person's dream as there was only a bench and a barbel rack for the weight training enthusiasts.
Next to the gym they have a sauna and a steam room and even though we used it just once, it was a very nice experience.
The only downside is that the layout of the rooms on each floor are the rooms lie on either side of a long corridor so you are constantly hearing people walking up and down, even quite late at night.
The plus side is there is a bus stop with a bus just outside the hotel that takes you to the city centre.
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| Beachside |
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| Street along the beach |
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| Pool at SB Icaria |
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| Poolside at SB Icaria |
The places we ate at were:
Chulo Restaurant
An amazing Nepali restaurant with a very kind person manning the place
Honest Greens
A very different concept that we experienced with quality products and lots of greens on your plate
https://www.honestgreens.com/fr/
El Santet
A small typical café near the SB Icaria hotel
Machina
Italian restaurant with a good value for money with very unique decor.
Burritos
Affordable Mexican food
Burger King Barcelona airport
They offer an extremely good vegetarian burger
Barcelona is definitely a great experience if you keep your belongings safe and avoid getting pickpocketed in the metro.
Several beautiful photos of Barcelona
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| Sagrada Familia |
Lovely blog Lekha! Wanting to book my tickets with my daughter asap to experience all that you've described.
ReplyDeleteLovely blog Lekha! Wanting to book my tickets with my daughter asap to experience all that you've described.
ReplyDeleteHey thank for reading and the comment!
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