Barcelona

This city is magical.

This was the tiny view of LA SAGRADA FAMILIA from our AirBnb apartment! I’m shouting because I am HERE for a good view out of my window! Also, I had a brief but lasting love affair with art history my sophomore year of undergrad and Antoni Gaudí is everything.

While in Barcelona for just a couple of days, we visited La Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, the Picasso museum in the La Ribera neighborhood and had dinner in this perfectly tiny hole in the wall suggested by one of my dear Spanish professors. The name of it is Can Lluis and we had 3 excellent dishes, all recommended by el famoso Profesor Juan Sempere: escalivada, mejillones y fideuà. I had a fabulous time using my Spanish in Barcelona even though I was told that nobody would understand or answer me in Spanish because the official language is Catalán. I ordered our meal in Spanish but once the waiter heard me speak to my husband in English, he wouldn’t speak Spanish to us anymore so we could both understand. Bummer.

The most adventures thing I did in Barcelona was visit Ice Bar which is exactly what it sounds like and no, I don’t know why I thought I would enjoy this either.

While I’ve been leaning more and more towards a legit, genuine winter destination lately, I’m still not convinced I should choose the snow over the beach. Not yet. But Ice Bar was an experience that I’m glad I had. I couldn’t stay long. The bar is made of ice, guys, less than 10 minutes was all I had in me.