Barcelona

We got our first view of the Mediterranean Sea out of our plane window as we arrived at the Barcelona airport!

We found our private transfer with the "Granade" sign and met our driver Alfonso who took us to our hotel. 

Roger de Lluria Hotel - our room has the flags in front of it!

We dropped off our bags and went out exploring at about 8 am. The first place we stumbled across was The Cathedral, my favorite church that we saw.

bad view

inside the Cathedral

We continued on to get a cappuccino and Joe's chocolate croissant (his first of MANY) at Bubo, where we sat and ate in front of the Santa Maria del Mar, another beautiful church.

inside the Santa Maria del Mar - we didn't take a picture of the outside!

Via - Thanks Google Images!

We started cruising around the streets and alleys and looking at the cool architecture. Joe refused to have a mojito because it was only 9:30.

Here I am cruising around and checking things out

We saw a protest on Placa de Sant Jaume, which is the square in the middle of the main government buildings. 

We found this huge wire hanger sculpure which was completely out of place in the middle of all the old, beautiful buildings surrounding it.

Then Joe decided it was finally time for a drink! We found a cafe and ordered a carafe of Sangria. It was really strong and barely had any fruit in it.

Delicious!

We were really tired and decided to go back to the hotel and check in, and we took naps and showers. 

Our sweet room!

We had TWO balconies!

We never ate lunch so we were starving and went to the market to get wine, cheese, and prosciutto and ate it on our hotel balcony.. This may have been the worst idea of the trip, but it sure seemed like a good one at the time!

We had dinner reservations at Manairo Restaurant (recommended by the Walsh's) and it was close enough to walk to. Here we are on the way, after we met some people from Shreveport, LA outside of our hotel:

I forgot to mention that my straightener was immediately ruined the second that I plugged it into our plug converter and never replaced for the whole trip, so please excuse my hair/ cowlick situation in all of these pictures.

We got to the small restaurant and weren't super hungry because of our snack we had earlier, but we both ordered the tasting menu and were ready to eat some weird food. Our waiter didnt speak English very well so Joe was put to the test with his Spanish/ Catalan (while I offered zero help obviously.)

The delicious food started coming! I swear we ordered the nine course menu, but it seemed like we had 200 courses.

First up was this delicious bite, I will call it 'potato yolk with truffle oil'. It was really yummy and exploded in your mouth.

Other dishes we had were foie gras (it is now certain that we do not care for foie gras), filo wrapped cod, gorgonzola pizza, foie ravioli with truffle crema, scallops with rice (best rice I have ever eaten ever), fresh calamari with a fried egg ring....

Yummy! We loved this calamari dish (thats the 'egg ring' on top)

 .......and that is where things start getting hazy. I told you that the snack was a bad idea. A fish dish came, and we couldn't handle it anymore. We both thought we were going to blow up from the amount of food we had eaten and told the man that we couldn't do it anymore. He was not very happy. He said he would wrap up our beef course, but still brought us out dessert. One dessert was a kind of ice cream over crazy crunchy ice rocks that tasted like alcohol. The next was a fried bread with creamy sauce. He asked if we wanted coffee and we said no thank you sir. This is how miserable we felt:

We walked home and passed out, and left the beef on top of the mini fridge. Oopsies. We set the iPad alarm for 9 am so that we would have time to get to our bike tour at 11. Apparently we were in a food coma and didn't know how to set the iPad alarm because it never went off, and we woke up at 10. We calmly ate breakfast and then ran like crazy people to the bike tour- which we missed. Our concierge rescheduled it for us for the next day, and we created our own tour of the City. We started by walking to the Antonio Gaudi house, Caso Batllo.

Everything Gaudi designed looks like something you would see in Disney world. He didn't use any straight lines in designing this house, even the roof is curved. 

 The outside is covered in mosaic tiles. Pretty neat. 

 Just posing in front of a fountain while we walked around

We walked down La Ramblas, which is a tree lined street filled with shops and restaurants.

Joe loved the trees

Then we went to La Boquiria, which is the market. I was super excited, and posed outside.

need to work on my poses

There was SO much cool and super weird stuff for sale in the market. It would be so awesome to have a kitchen and actually be able to cook a meal with your finds.

 Yummy looking tomatoes

octopus and squid

scary looking fish with teeth

rabbits (according to joseph)

truffle shop!

pig products

pig brain and liver

I wasn't hungry enough to eat lunch at the cool looking tapas places inside, but I really wanted some Iberico Ham - which is supposed to be the best ham in the world. I think these two or three little pieces cost 4 euro:

It tasted like really delicious prosciutto

Joe got a sandwich and beer and ate it while we people watched on La Ramblas. 

Next, we went in a little cafe and had some drinks while we made a plan to get on the eurobus (subway) and head to Sagrada Familia and Park Guell - two more Gaudi attractions. 

starting to get sick of my pictures already - day two

First stop: Sagrada Familia, The Cathedral of the Holy Family- one of the most famous churches in the world! (declared by me.) It is so massive, and is also incomplete. Gaudi spent the last years of his life working on it, and he died in 1926, when it was a quarter of the way complete. It is projected to FINALLY be finished in 2026, so there was construction going on while we visited. 

it looks like a HUGE drip sand castle to me

couldn't even fit it in the picture!

pillars that looked like trees

hanging over the altar

Our next stop was Park Guell, and we had to climb a steep and looong hill to get there. There were some escalators to help us out:

 mosaic lizard statue...everyone wanted a pic

a crazy cave-walkway

the new pose I learned in Park Guell

at the top of the park overlooking Barcelona

That night we went to the Marina to eat some seafood paella at a super cool restaurant.

 Joe ordered razor clams and they tasted like they were fresh from the sea:

The waiter gave us champagne before our espressos came..

After we left we were hopped up on caffeine and decided to head to the W Hotel bar on the beach to see the view of the whole city at night. It was quite exclusive, and the people behind us were rejected from going up!! We are so fancy. 

via

After we left the W, we went back to town and had some more drinks at Fok, a tapas bar near our hotel. It was a very fun and late night!

...Which meant we weren't super excited for the bike tour the next morning, but we DID make it on time! We headed out with our Barcelonian guide and two Brits who were on their honeymoon too. We were cruising the streets while other people were trying to walk, but we did get to see some interesting things we hadnt seen yet, and learned a lot of cool info from our guide. 

ready to go!

El Gato de Raval - by Botero, he liked to make fun of fat people (and cats I guess)

cruuuuising along the beachfront

having a drink with our silly guide

me and the brit

tour group pic

The Citadel Park

Joe started getting antsy at the Citadel and thought we were going to miss the boat and get left in Barcelona, so we hurried back to the hotel and packed up, then went to the port to load. 

We made it! We checked in and found our room, then had a drink on the deck to say goodbye to Barcelona.