Barcelona is definitely one of my favorite cities, in spite of the all the hype about La Sagrada Familia. There are a number of reasons why this is just a great city to spend 2 full days visiting and touring:
- FC Barcelona
- Gaudi influence over everything including the dog
- Great museums
- Olympic Village
However my visit through Barcelona did not include any museums aside from passing through the Thyssen andPrado Museums, for the pleasure of saying I visited them. The following 2 day itinerary is geared for the person who wants to see as much as they can of Barcelona without killing hours and hours in museum lines. The first step is to head to your local metro station and grab a 10 ride pass for €7.40. The metro map below is enclosed for convenience.
Day 1 :
- Start at 8.30 am and head directly to La Sagrada Familia, which is open at 9am. There are two advantages of getting there early. The first is obviously you will beat the lines that inevitably form around this “attraction”. Secondly, by seeing “Sagrada”, you will appreciate how it can be seen from all points around Barcelona.
Metro : Sagrada Familia : Note the two metro icons in this picture.
- Head off to FC Barcelona for a tour of the facilities. Nou Camp is world famous to all football fans and either invokes love or hatred depending on one’s perspective but the self directed tour is good easy time and the audio visual display is definitely something to see. It costs €17 but the cost includes the self directed tour as well as access to the museum. More likely than not, this tour will take about 2 hours.
Metro : Colblanc or Badal. From either metro station, it is a 10 minute walk to the Nou Camp facility.
- From the Stadium, head over to Passieg de Gracia. It is undoubtedly one of the more elegant and striking boulevards in the Eixample quarter. It also links Plaça de Catalunya on the edge of the old town with the Gràcia district to the northwest adjoining the Eixample. This is a central point of Barcelona. From here one can wander up and down the streets to see Casa Mila but nowadays it’s more commonly known as La Pedrera which means “quarry” . In addition, heading over to Plaça de Catalunya for the pigeons and the fountains, one can grab lunch here at this point and take a breather.
On the walk, it is quite easy to head over to Casa Mila
On the way to the quarry, you can also pass by Casa Batlló, which is another stunning Gaudi creation (Is there anything in this city, that the man has not created)
Visiting this area and grabbing lunch, should take you in the later afternoon.
Metro : Colblanc or Badal. From either metro station, it is a 10 minute walk to the Nou Camp facility.
- From Placa Cataluyna, head out of the downtown core for a reststop and refresher at Park Güell. This park was commissioned by Eusebi Güell as part of a failed real estate development, and instead the city got a stylish park for Barcelona aristocracy. The park contains amazing stone structures (see below), stunning tiling and fascinating buildings. Touring the park involves a lot of walking and hiking. However there is a little trick I found out to make this walk better … why go up when you can basically walk down. If you take the metro to “Vallcarca” you can then take the escalators to the back of the park and start at the highest point and the best views. You can slowly make your way down the windy walkways and view the whole of the park, and effectively save the best for last – the ornate entrance complete with dragon fountain and Hansel and Gretel houses. Unbeatable.
The park can easily take about three hours to tour and enjoy, especially on a weekend when there is music, performances and buskers all around.
Metro : Vallcarca L3 line – then head up the escalators.
- To end the day, head from the park to the Gothic Quarter. El Gòtic, also known as Barri Gòtic (‘Gothic Quarter’ in Catalan; Spanish: Barrio Gótico) is the centre of the old city of Barcelona. It stretches from La Rambla to Via Laietana, and from the Mediterranean seafront to Ronda de Sant Pere.
There are tons of little streets that all seem to form a maze within the city. It is easy to get lost, but also as easy to find your way out. There are so many churches in the quarter to visit, that it could easily take a day or two just to figure out El Gotic, but you don’t have that luxury of time in a 2 day itinerary, so head over to the La Seu Cathedral (Catedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia) and hopefully at night, you can take in mass as well as see people dancing in the streets.
This should take you straight into the middle of the night or possibly till midnight, but the end of the touring and exploration of the Gothic quarter as well as having dinner and drinks and maybe even walking back to Plaça de Catalunya at night.
Metro : Jaume I – L4 line ; Liceu and Drassanes – L3 line.
Day 2:
- First thing on the second day is to head out to the Montjuïc is a hill located near the center of Barcelona. The best way to get up the mountain is to take the cable car. The cable car is called Telefèric de Montjuïc and there are 3 stations: Parc Montjuïc, Mirador and Castell. This is one of two different cable car rides that you can take.
- Once you’re in the park, there are many gardens and spectacular views of Barcelona and the seaport on clear days from the Montjuïc Castle. Walking around the castle, taking pictures and enjoying the view, will pretty much take up most of the morning into early afternoon.
Once, you’re finished enjoying the view and the castle and walk down the garden path past the Olympic diving pool, past the dancing kids and head over to the Barcelona Port Cable Car ride, which is the second cable car ride.
- The second cable car ride is called Transbordador Aeri del Port or the Barcelona Port Cable car. The great thing about taking this cable car ride down is that it drops you right in the heart of Barceloneta. Personally, I felt that the staff were abrupt, the ride is slow and the service is poor, however for €9 on a sunny day, the cable ride is arguably the most stunning and exhilarating way to see Barcelona and links two of the city’s prime locations – Montjuic and Barceloneta
- After the cable car dropped you off at Barceloneta, then the rest of the early afternoon can be spent grabbing lunch and walking the boardwalk. Barceloneta is known for its sandy beach,restaurants and nightclubs along the boardwalk. There is enough here to take you through into the late evening; Parc de la Ciutadella, Zoo, Aquarium and Olympic park
- If there is still time in the day or you want to attempt to pass out from exhaustion, head up to Tibidabo for an alternate view of the city.
To get up to Tibidabo there is the the small blue tram – the ‘Tramvia Blau’, which is a signature ride in Barcelona. Its quaint appearance and friendly driver make it a pleasant experience for those wishing make it all the way to the top for the Tibidabo Amusement Park and the church- the ‘Temple de Sagrat Cor’. However, it can serve as an activity in itself- an entertaining ride finishing at the lovely Plaça Dr Andreu.
The easiest way to get to the tram’s starting point is on the L7 train that leaves from Plaza de Catalunya station in the centre of town. This will take about ten minutes and drops you in Plaza de John Kennedy, right next to the necessary bus stop, which is at 2 Avenida Tibidabo- directly in front of you. Take a look at the beautiful La Rotonda building on your way past. The bus stop is right in front of this building, so it will also help you to find where you need to be.
- To end the day, if you’re not ready to drop down because of sheer exhaustion, head over to Las Ramblas for peopel watching and some shopping.
By the end of this two day itinerary, you would have seen the majority of Barcelona’s highlights, albeit a a breakneck pace.
Barcelona day 1
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Feb 222010
There is a lot of romance associated with backpacking. Tons of stories of young adults who either just are in or just finished university, making their first backpacking trips across Europe. It’s become a right of passage and when joining the workforce, it gives those who’ve travelled, extra confidence that they know a bit of the world, since they had their 2 week “Contiki” experience, complete with drinking adventures with strangers who speak different languages and some pictures of the experience.
Europe, is of course the easiest and least challenging place to travel
- Reliable rail/bus service
- Porous borders once you’re actually in the EU
- Interconnected routes
- Cheap flights between destinations
- Safe and good hostel network
- Information booths at every airport, train station and city center
That being said, I have zero issues with “easy traveling”; I like the fact that I expect zero issues when travelling through Western Europe. It’s almost like travelling through Canada or the US, except with different languages. The more one travels, the more one realizes that we are inherently the same people. The food in different regions can be all very similar. For instance, if someone can prove to me that “Pelau” from Trinidad, “Rice Pilaf” in North America, “Paella” in Spain or “Biryani” in India/Pakistan are fundamentally different dishes, then I’ll become a vegetarian.
As one matures as a person and as a traveller, it is in our nature to increase the difficulty of the challenge, because natural habituation occurs. We seek to wander to more remote places, abandon the creature comforts we know, try truly exotic cuisine (Spicy fried crickets, or Hakarl – Rotting Shark.. anyone?) or some even go to the extreme of vagabonding or “Slow travel”.
Backpacking for extended periods of time, is challenging to the psyche and to the body, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t adapt well to unnatural/unfamiliar surroundings. Personally, when travelling to places where English is not the mother tongue, in a couple days/weeks one can become quite isolated in a sea of foreign tongues and customs. You find yourself gravitating to semi-familiar surroundings, hence why in Southern Spain, I prefer having Arabic food. I know the cuisine well (I know which items have dairy or not), I know enough Arabic words (not just “Sharmut/Sharmuta”) and customs to order and be friendly with the shop owners and I know it will be good. Arabs/Middle Easterners are always impressed when they find out I am from Trinidad, since I’m usually the first person from Trinidad, they’ve ever met. I’m peppered with questions about the geography, the race of the people, the language and what we actually do there for money. Invariably, they are always surprised that we have so much racial and cultural diversity in Trinidad. When I explain that we have our own version of Falafel (there is little difference between a “Kachorie or Saheena” and a Falafel … although the Syrian mafia in Trinidad, would have you believe differently).
Travelling can become costly and time consuming, which is why most people in North America give it up when they become part of the “rat race” because of a multitude of factors ranging from having only 2 or 3 weeks vacation, project deadlines, fear of traveling and just everyday life issues. Backpacking in hostels and “Couchsurfing” can easily remove a lot of costs associated with travel, but then that also means giving up our creature comfort of personal space, sharing with strangers and necessarily interacting at close quarters with unknown elements. All that being said, I feel better inside, when the pains in my shins and legs are from hiking up Tibidabo or Montjucic rather than sitting at a desk all day and waiting for 5pm to arrive.
Feb 202010For some reason, every iconic picture of Europe I saw in travel brochures involved some low angle shot of a pigeon in a square or plaza with the background of some European travel sight. Why re-invent, when you can copy the same shots? One really good reason … these pictures don’t tell you about the inherent dangers of Plaza/Square/Placa/Zocalo pigeon photography.
In Placa Catalunya, the Pigeons are rather peculiar, in that they have been trained by tourists and have morphed into mutant Pigeon food collection terrorists. One minute the Pigeons are calmly walking on the ground in a huge swarm. No problem? Just situate yourself on the ground or low to the ground and just wait for your shot.
Not really. The pigeons have been trained to move en masse to the sight of any object being thrown, hence the pigeons move in a swarm from one side of the Placa to the other and if you’re in the middle of the Placa, it can be actually terrifying … not that I was terrified, but I was a little concerned that one of the Pigeons would fly right into my head. I even flipped open my umbrella, when I was caught in the swarm and a Pigeon flew into my umbrella. Thankfully to report … my umbrella was unharmed.
Notice the other tourists ducking for cover and I only realized that the Pigeons swarm was an efficient, aerial Pigeon fecal delivery system, as one of the tourists in the Placa was hit. She wasn’t mortally wounded, but she didn’t had traces of a spread shotgun attack. However as quickly as the Pigeons moved, they went to other side of the Placa because of this guy by the food stand tossing bread.
Thankfully, the Pigeons don’t control the entire Placa, at the fountains, the Pigeons have ceded control to the humans.
And at night, it is a completely Pigeon free zone!
Feb 202010
After having a great experience in touring Santiago Bernabeu, it would be a disservice if I didn’t tour Camp Nou, if just for a comparison and to say which tour and stadium is better. Initially after reading some bad reviews on the experience, I was quite hesitant to make the trip to the stadium since [... Click here to keep on reading this article]
Feb 192010
After a hard day of climbing mountains, running and hiking all over Barcelona, trying not to die of rain induced hypothermia and going all day without food, because I am terrified of the “manteca”, “queso” and “leche” that might be in my food, I get to Park Güell and there is music, people, dancing and [... Click here to keep on reading this article]
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