Barcelona: Day 1

We had a fairly low-key (maybe even boring?) first day in Barcelona. And apparently I didn’t take any pictures this day. Whoops.

We left Bern bright and early to take a train to Basel, where we were flying out of. This was one part of the trip I was a bit nervous for because I didn’t want us missing our flight to Barcelona. The Basal airport is technically across the border into France, so I didn’t know the logistics of crossing country lines. Turns out everything was fine and we had plenty of time.

We booked our flights from Basel to Barca through Vueling Airlines – a super budget airline that gives you no legroom whatsoever. Like my knees basically touched the seat in front of me. I would compare it to Frontier or Spirit here in the States. But the tickets were cheap and it was only an hour and thirty minute flight.

We landed in Barca and hello warm weather! I had pre-booked roundtrip tickets on the Aerobus, which got us to and from the airport and the city center. (highly recommend this) From there we used the subway to get to our AirBnb on the edge of the Gracia neighborhood. We ended up taking a nap (oops to only getting 4 hours of sleep the night before). I was also still feeling pretty terrible from catching a cold.

That evening we walked more into the Gracia neighborhood and headed to a tapas restaurant called Cafe Flanders. They didn’t speak a ton of English and my Spanish was rusty, but we got it figured out! We learned that “fried potatoes with spicy sauce” is a staple on tapas menu. We ordered this “fried cheese” dish and it was nothing like what we expected. What came was a plate of sliced green tomatoes topped with melted white cheese and sprinkled with Italian season. Well…okay then.

barca1

We ended the evening by walking down to the Sagrada Familia to see it lit up at night. It truly is unbelievable. Parts of it was designed to look like it was melting, and it certainly did look that way. We had tickets to tour it the next morning, which I was pretty excited about.

–m.