My experience of Barcelona is split up between two short and sweet weekends, one in the spring and one in the fall. I’m definitely going to come back to Barcelona to truly steep in the culture, but the time that I had with it was pretty meaningful. I packed a ridiculous amount of activities in for a total of 72 hours.
The overall feeling of the city is very young and vibrant. Everyone is either a chic, well-dressed woman, a punkish-looking skateboarder, one half of an adorable and small old couple, or a man with an incredible beard reading a philosophy book. Or a tourist, which comes with being anywhere, but especially Barcelona, being the capital of Catalonia. The boardwalk on the beach is always so full of life, with people walking their dogs and rollerblading and playing volleyball. Barcelona is also the skateboarding capital of the world, so you can always spot some young guys and girls doing tricks on any available surface. I’d highly recommend finding a famous skating spot and just watching some professionals take on feats of stairs and inclines that make me cringe just thinking about them.
If there’s anything I want to impress upon you about this particular city, it’s (surprise) to not just go see the Sagrada Familia, but to go IN the church itself. You will never see anything like it in your life, and the beauty of it is literally breathtaking. I gasped out loud. It’s a similar response to seeing the Grand Canyon or the Alps for the first time, except this is man-made which makes it all the more incredible of an experience. The church was designed primarily by Antoni Gaudi, the famous Catalonian architect that has done many crazy architectural feats across the city. They started construction in the 1870’s and it has yet to be finished, projected to be done in 2026 (as of now). The church is designed to mirror the unparalleled beauty of nature, and man does it do the trick: I don’t want to show too many photos because I want you, dear reader, to have my experience, but I’ll give you a little taste. (Photos don’t do it justice anyway.)
LOOK AT THAT. Look at how beautiful that light is. There are so many gothic, dark, and musty cathedrals all over Europe, whose stained glass are full of cluttered depictions from the Bible, but this church completely rejects these norms and uses light for the sole purpose of beauty in color and gradient. I absolutely love it and I will try my hardest to come back when it’s totally finished.
The other highlight that I will mention is food. I love Hispanic food of every kind, so I’m a little biased towards Spain in general, but I will say there are some places in Barcelona that totally blew my mind. There is one restaurant that isn’t necessarily Catalonian, but is too good: Brunch and Cake. Yes, it’s a bit “white girl overpays for Instagram-able plate,” but good God, is that plate incredible. If you want a dark green matcha pancake with strawberry compote while overlooking the harbor, I suggest you try out this restaurant. A great thing about Spain in general is that there’s a ton of immigrants from all the places they imperialized (a little disturbing, yes), so you can find every kind of Hispanic-infused meal in Barcelona/major cities. One of my travel buddies is Colombian so he took us to a few Colombian restaurants and I was schooled in the ways of the Colombian meal.
I ate so much I was on the verge of puking for a few hours in fact. If you like fun at all, go to Barcelona! Maybe not in fall 2017 because of the independence marches, but you should definitely go at some point.