Barcelona

Our flight to Barcelona was delayed by an hour and the train into the city took forever so by the time we made it to our Airbnb it was almost 6pm. We gave ourselves a few minutes to do absolutely nothing (exhausted after a very steep climb to our apartment) and then headed out for dinner to Gràcia, about a 20 minute walk from the apartment. Gràcia was my favourite part of the city the last time I was here with Kate so I was excited to spend some more time there. Tired and not wanting to do a tonne of research about dinner options, we headed to one of my favourite spots from my last trip, La Vermu – a vermouth and tapas bar. It was every bit as lovely as I remembered, with delicious vermouth for only a couple of euros (served with a couple of olives and a wedge of orange), potato chips doused with chilli vinegar, and lots of different types of anchovies on offer. We walked home via the quiet streets and lovely squares of Gràcia, picking up an ice cream along the way.

We had a very slow start to the day on our first morning in Barcelona, opting to get sandwiches at a local bakery nearby. Although we weren’t staying in the hippest part of Barcelona, it was really nice seeing a much more local, tourist-free side to the city. It was also insanely inexpensive. We had two beautiful baguette sandwiches and an enormous fresh squeezed orange juice for less than 10 euros. We enjoyed our food so much that we actually started our day here every day of our stay. One of us would walk down to pick up sandwiches, coffee and an assortment of pastries and then we’d hang out at home with our breakfast before heading out into the city late morning. It was a really lovely routine and I certainly didn’t tire of trying different Spanish pastries. Our favourite was somewhere between a doughnut and a brioche and lightly dusted with sugar. At only 25 cents for two, it was hard not to enjoy at such a price. The bakery even had a whole grain croissant which sounds impossible but was delicious.

We didn’t tend to eat big meals in Barcelona, instead opting to bounce between tapas bars (and we found some great ones). On our first day, we again walked to Gràcia where we had anchovies (fried this time), Spanish style tomato bread (pan con tomate) and our first order of patatas bravas. After lunch we walked to an ice cream store called Parallelo. It has an insanely high 4.9 rating on Google and I seriously questioned how it could be so good but the pistachio ice cream was incredible (so good in fact that we went back after dinner that night).

We spent the afternoon at home, taking care of some life admin and getting stuck into some remote work for me, and then headed out around 6pm for dinner. We ended up at Bar Pietro (again in Gràcia), where we had seen patrons spilling out onto the side walk the night before. It was so good! And again, unbelievably cheap. Wanting to try a few different spots, we had a quick snack at another tapas bar called Raspall. It was inexpensive but the food wasn’t great and so we didn’t linger.  At this point, we were exhausted and not keen to wait for a table at a restaurant but still peckish so we got another scoop of ice cream at Parallelo (chocolate this time) and headed home.

Thankfully Raspall turned out to be the only disappointing tapas experience we had in Barcelona. We ate so well there! We discovered a great spot a short walk from our apartment called Bodega Casas. We enjoyed small glasses of vermouth with soda and lemon, a huge plate of cheese, more tomato bread and a few different types of anchovies and sardines. Dan even tried some olives. We didn’t just eat in Barcelona (though that did take up much of our time). We also spent so much time walking, exploring the alleys of the El Raval and La Barceloneta, fuelled by coffee from Syra and an ice cream at Kate’s favourite store from our last visit.

We also timed our stay in Barcelona to coincide with a huge festival called La Mercè which kicked off on Friday and ended on Monday with the feast day of Our Lady of Mercy. On Friday there were lots of free concerts and performances scheduled across the city and we decided to head out to just soak up the vibe and see what we found. We started with a long walk from our apartment past the Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau. I’d never heard of this site before and I wish we’d gone in! It looks fascinating and the walk there, high above the city, had incredible views of Barcelona out to the water. We stopped for a snack at Veiga bar Tapas Cerveceri (some of the best food of our time in Barcelona) and then wandered over to another part of the city called Eixample. By the late afternoon we were ready for another snack so we stopped in at Senyor Vermut. We had a hilarious time at this spot. We sat at the bar drinking vermouth and watched everyone around us eating patatas bravas. We figured they must be a house speciality and so we ordered some. As we were eating, we watched a man filming in the restaurant and we figured he was a travel blogger or youtuber. It turned out that he is an “influencer” and runs a social media and youtube account about the best patatas bravas in Spain. When our patatas arrived, he asked if he could film us eating ours for his next youtube video (he also said that Senyor Vermut is one of the top five places for patatas bravas in Barcelona). We agreed (and fully expect to hit the big time as social media stars any day now).

On Saturday, after our usual breakfast, we walked past the Arc de Triomf through to the Parc de la Ciutadella, which had a huge food market and lots of performers. From there we wandered through the narrow lanes of the Gothic Quarter and El Raval.  While the streets are beautiful, the number of tourists was oppressive. We stopped into the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, which I’d heard was stunning (and it was beautiful) but it was packed with people using the space to hang out and escape the heat and crowds outside. We found the food options to be so much more expensive and not as good too. We stopped into Bar del Pla, which is very positively reviewed, but the service was pushy and the patatas bravas were probably the least enjoyable of our stay.

Keen to find somewhere more relaxed to hang out, we walked towards the water to see if we could get a seat at Cervecería Vaso de Oro, a beer and tapas spot recommended by a friend of Ben’s. The food and service at this tiny narrow bar was spot on and we ended up grazing here for hours. We tried Manchego (one of my favourite cheeses), delicious Marcona almonds, anchovies and Dan ordered some blood sausage. We saw lots of people ordering what looked like a simple almond cake and never one to turn down the opportunity to try a new cake, we ordered a slice. I love simple snacking cakes, free of icing and perfect for shaving off a slice here and there and this one was exceptional.

After dinner we headed back to the Gothic Quarter for one of the main events of the festival:  the Correfoc (or fire run). Groups of residents from each part of the city dress up as devils to parade through the city accompanied by drummers. As they walk, they hold spinning frames packed with fireworks above their heads (here are some photos). I did not fully anticipate the intensity of the parade until we started to line up and saw plenty of locals wearing goggles and long sleeved hoodies so as to avoid being burnt by the displays. It was lots of fun and an incredible sight to see fireworks lighting up a street into the distance but I am a chicken and it was a little scary seeing and hearing huge quantities of fireworks exploding so close to us. We are not crowd people so after an hour or so of the parade, we headed we headed back to Gràcia to end our night with something much more chilled. We had a beer at Bar Pietro and a final vermouth at La Vermu. I tried a clara (a lemon soda / beer combo) for the first time and then it was home to bed after a very long day.

On Sunday, we woke up to a very sleepy city after the intense partying of the night before. Dan felt really off, with his cough still lingering, and I had work to do so we picked up our standard breakfast from the bakery nearby and spent the day at home.