I am the worst. As soon as I left Europe I completely abandoned this project. I only had a few more days to write about and I didn’t do it. For that, I apologize. So let’s begin…
After our first day in Barcelona, Tyler and I ended up going to a B&B where we could actually stay together, which was nice and made me feel better about making the awful silly booking mistake I made at Sant Jordi’s. Our next couple of days in Barcelona were spent walking around and taking in what we both decided to be the best city we visited on our trip. The B&B we stayed at was just a few blocks away from Gaudi’s (still in progress) masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia – a ginormous, elaborately structured church that we later learned to be a beautiful architectural interpretation of Montserrat, a nearby mountain. Not only this, but our B&B was also near an amazingly delicious bakery called Su Pan. We went there multiple times a day to indulge in their crispy, to-die-for chocolate triangle pastries. It’s been a few months now and I still crave the deliciousness.
Anyway, the city planning of Barcelona was amazing. The streets were very wide, allowing for wider sidewalks and much less stressful foot-navigation. The subway was clean, easy to navigate, and the stations felt completely safe. We were a bit far from most of the big attractions, so we had to use the subway several times which was no issue. On one day, we ventured out to Parc de la Ciutadella, the best park I’ve ever been to. It was a very big park and the landscaping somehow broke it up into several sections without areas seeming closed off. There was a band playing, lots of people out, and it was just one of those beautiful perfect days you don’t forget. We rented a boat and rowed around a little lake that was in the park and saw a really cool fountain. It was warm, we were both happy, and there was so much to explore. From the park, we walked by the zoo which was too expensive to go into, and then we walked to the coast and walked by the beaches. The coastline was broken up (technically) into several beaches with different names. One had an exercise platform. Another had lots of volleyball nets. All of them had a good amount of people laying on the sand, soaking up the sun. Close to the beach was a big crazy street that Barcelona is famous for called La Rambla. There were lots of vendors, a ton of tourists, and a whole bunch of restaurants and street performers. It was funny because having just left Rome, we were used to seeing people everywhere on the streets trying to sell something, but we saw a lot less of it in Barcelona. One evening when we were walking down La Rambla, we saw these guys out selling knockoff handbags off their blankets. One of them spotted a cop coming down the street and yelled to the other vendors. They all scooped up the four corners of their blankets by string and hustled down the street before they could get caught. It was hilarious. It also explained why we saw so few street vendors selling their stuff off of blankets. Barcelona has a much bigger police presence than Rome, or at least the police enforce the selling without a license in Barcelona.
If you continue down La Rambla walking towards the sea, you get a lovely view of the big hill where Barcelona’s Olympic village is. There is also a mall out on the water that’s got lots of shops and an Imax theater. One day when we were over in that area, it started to rain really hard so we decided to go watch a movie in Spanish. Boy was that rough. Neither of us could understand what anyone was saying. I probably caught about 10 words, the characters spoke so fast. It was still kind of funny though and Tyler said he enjoyed it either way. After the movie, we walked outside and it looked like the rain had just finished, so we ventured up the hill to check out Olympic village. We saw the diving arena, but didn’t see much else. Unfortunately, before we could explore too much I needed desperately to use the bathroom so we ran around (well I ran, Tyler followed irritated by my constant need to pee- it really did put a damper on a lot of our trip) looking for an open toilet for a while. Finally after finding a place, it was starting to get dark so we walked to the Magic Fountain which was absolutely beautiful. Starting at the top of the hill and working our way down, each level had a new surprise. Reaching the bottom, the picture of the multilevel fountain was completed with the big, colorful, musically synchronized Magic Fountain. It was beautiful and magical and locked in the perfection of the city, especially for Tyler who loves fountains.
Down the street from the Magic Fountain was the old arena used for the Barcelona Olympics’ indoor sports. Instead of letting it sit to rot or knocking it down, the humungous building was repurposed into a mall. On one of our nights there, we went to the very top level, which was a collection of rooftop restaurants that offered a great view of the city. On another day, we took a trip to Monserrat where we got to see the lovely mountain church and enjoy the “black hole market” where locals give you all the free samples of cheese you could ever ask for. The tour package we signed up for included that trip to Montserrat and a tour of a vineyard/castle and of course a little bit of wine and tapas.
Lucky for us, we were the only people signed up that day so we got a private tour and bonus- got to go to the roof of the castle to take in the incredible views. We ended up buying a couple of bottles of wine which were extremely delicious and very reasonably priced. On our trip to/from the city, we got a great history lesson and learned some pretty interesting facts about Barcelona and Montserrat. To be honest though, to this day, I still regret not buying cheese from that black hole market. Barcelona was perfect. But alas, all good things must come to and end, so when it was time to head to Dublin, all we could do was look back fondly on our experiences there. Barcelona, we’ll come back for you.
Dublin was interesting. It was cold, rainy, and to be honest, it felt like we were back in America with everything written in English- Gaelic too though! We hung out around town, even saw the X-Men movie one night. We did a tour of the Guinness Brewery and checked out the local Trinity College which was cool to see. It was an easy place to hang out and become re-accustomed to English speaking culture.
On the last night of our adventure, we hit the town with a bunch of hostelmates, one who was a musician that traveled all over and even had a stint living in NYC. He was a cool guy, and the group that we hung out with was a lot of fun. Unfortunately it was one of those nights that left me feeling like death the next morning and throughout much of the next day. The flight home was pretty sloppy but alas we made it back safely and so the adventure ended.
I am now living in Charlotte, NC where I am working as a Plastics Engineer and Tyler is in Tampa, FL in an Operations Management role. Being long distance is rough, but we get to see each other at least once a month which could be a lot worse. Besides, having made it through a month-long international backpacking trip together without wanting to kill each other is a pretty solid indication that it’s worth it. If we could handle that, we can handle a little bit of distance for a while. Until then, we’ve got at least a few more months’ worth of reminiscing over this year’s travels before we plan our next big trip!
