Oh Barcelona.

After over a month of being back from Europe I am finally sitting down to re-cap to you all about what went down. This is the second post I’m doing for on a budget, in a backpack. If you missed the first one you can check it out here.

Getting there

We arrived into Barcelona very early morning on May 11th (literally very early, like 2am early). Getting to our hostel wasn’t the easiest experience I’ve ever had. We had purchased the Hola Barcelona pass before we arrived and we had to pick it up at the airport but that was a whole ordeal. After over an hour of trying to make that work we ended up on a bus that dropped us into a sketchy part of the city at 1am. After a series events (including a creepy taxi driving trying to convince us to get in his car) we called an Uber who was AMAZING and took us right to our hostel. And just to continue this great ride, we got to the hostel and were told the hot water was broken in the building and they didn’t know when it would be back…awesome.

Day 1

With all of that aside we woke up at 8am on the 11th to make our 10am ticket appointment at Casa Batlló. We first came to an adorable coffee shop and got some croissants for breakfast! (can you spot the rainbow on the floor??)

Because we were really early for our ticket appointment we wandered around the area to get an idea of where everything was.

Once it hit around 10am we went into the museum. To me, the coolest part of the museum was the fact that there was an art exhibit going on. You can see a picture above of Tori and I standing in front of a LOVE sign that was apart of the exhibit.

How amazing is some of this art? It all emulated the stages and parts of love. You can click on the pictures individually to make them bigger (and I totally recommend you do). Probably my favorite thing was the bench that said “this is where we end our relationshit”

After exploring the Casa we made out way over the Flax & Kale which was a restaurant Tori had found that was Vegan & GF friendly! At first I was hesitant because I was worried It wouldn’t be “traditional” and I would be getting a generic meal that I could get back home. But this place was SO good! We ended up going back a few times. I got a “Traditional” Spanish soup (literally thats what it was called on the menu!) and an ahi tuna taco which was AMAZING, I’m actually craving it now that I’m home. After lunch we went to Las Ramblas briefly but we didn’t stay long. Then we made our way over to Sagrada Família which was HUGE. We turned the corner out of the subway station and I think all of our jaws dropped. You really can’t tell how big it is until you’re in front of it yourself.

We spent the rest of the day wandering until it was time to go to Parc Güell which we had a ticket for that night! The park is free to enter and wander around but it costs money to get to that part that you see in all of the pictures. Unfortunately, most of the benches were under construction when we went! You can see in the picture of the three of us that there is a fence because half of the promenade is completely torn apart! With that being said it was still BEAUTIFUL and Tori made the smart choice to book us the last ticket of the day so we could watch the sunset!

We covered A LOT in our first day and that night we went on a pub crawl with our hostel which was super fun and eye opening to Barcelona! *shots shots shots* I’m not a huge party person but I do love a good club which we ended the night at! We also had the funniest bar crawl leader, Juan. He always said that if you were crossing the street and the sign started to blink, “you stop, or you run. Or you die”. We said that the rest of the trip in every city! Oh Juan. <3

Day 2

The next day in Barcelona was for sure more chill. We had to move out of our hostel and move to a hotel that was closer to the airport for our early flight to Rome. It felt like a lot of the day was wasted because #1 we were tired and #2 it took a lot of time to get from the city to the airport. We made the best of it by wandering around a beautiful park and seeing the Notre Dame of Barcelona (ya thats a thing, how did I not know that?!). I also got this bomb veggie burger from The Good Burger with some mayo fries!

I’m still trying to think of a good way to end these posts. So we’re gonna give this a go:

Takeaways:

• Nothing is fun when you are tired, no matter how amazing it is. So sleep!
• Barcelona is reasonably priced.
• You can basically see everything in Barcelona in one day, but you can’t “experience” everything in one day.

Highlights:

• Flax &. Kale 
• Our Hostel – the vibe was awesome and people were very helpful! They also had a lot of activities and socials. (despite not having hot water, yes, this still made a highlight!)