Team Reid has now been to Espana and loved it. Barcelona is
definitely our new favourite city (sorry, Paris…).
When we left London
it had been drizzling endlessly, cold, and frankly a little depressing. So we swapped it for four nights of dazzling
sunshine, soft sandy beaches, fascinating architecture, endless pitchers of
Sangria and plenty of cured meats with Cherie.
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| Cherie. Remember this face. |
You should probably start getting used to seeing and hearing about
Cherie, she’s going to feature here a bit, methinks. Veronica will be making her debut shortly
too, but I don’t want to give too much away just yet.
Anyway, back to Barca, as the cool kids call it. We learned some Spanish!
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Hola! (Hello)
-
Me llamo Melissa (My name is Melissa)
-
Quanto est?
(How much does it cost?)
-
No tengo iho (I have no children)
Endlessly useful. Did we ever use any of these phrases? Just the first one.
Anyhoo, here is our list of the top five things to do in Barcelona:
1 – EAT!
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| Nam Nam: it's Spanish for nom nom |
This was probably the thing we did most of… Shocking, I know. The food here was absolutely amazing. Kyle and I didn’t really know a lot about
Spanish food before we went but, luckily for us, Cherie did.
We ate screeds of tapas including cured
meats, croquettes, bikinis (that’s a toasted Sammie with the crusts cut off…),
patatas bravas (potato chunks with a spicy sauce), garlic shrimps and this
amazing dish that had potatoes, big chunks of chorizo and smashed up eggs all
muddled together. We also squeezed in paella,
churros, gelato. Delicioso! Needless to say, when we got back to London, no one was keen
to jump on the scales…
Our fav restaurants were Sagardi and Tapas 24. Buried in the Gothic Quarter, we had dinner at
Sagardi and paid by the toothpick. Seemingly
endless platters of delicious morsels were presented on a piece of bread with a
toothpick holding it all together. It
meant we could try a bunch of different things and it didn’t matter if it
wasn’t a complete taste sensation. We
stood at the bar with a glass of cava and grazed our way around the room. It was brilliant. And then we went down the road for some outdoor
cocktails. Perfect.
2 – Gaudi’s Architecture
Apparently, when Gaudi graduated from university, one of his
lecturers said he wasn’t sure if they were giving a degree to a genius or a
madman. Having now walked through a
couple of his creations, I guess I can see what he meant. Discovering religion at some point in his
life, a lot of Gaudi’s work is religious, but he also built a couple of
houses. We took a stroll through La
Pedrera, in the middle of a random and otherwise normal street. The roof of that place looked like something
out of a Tim Burton movie…
Sagrada Familia was absolutely incredible too. Again, totally bizarre but brilliant, inside
and out. I really don’t know what to say
about this place. It was amazing to be
somewhere that had already been a major landmark/attraction for so long, but
that was still under construction.
In
the time it took us to wander through the inside listening to the audio guide,
some workers installed a whole row of stained glass panels. The nativity and crucifixion facades took a
good 15 – 20 minutes each to absorb.
Definitely a must see.
3 - Bike tour
Having enjoyed the Fat Tire Bike Tour in Paris,
we had to look them up in Barcelona
as well. We’re half way to that free tshirt
once we’ve done all four cities… Just Berlin and London
to go!
We also managed to twist Cherie’s
arm sufficiently so she’d come along too.
Turns out Paris
wasn’t a fluke, bike tours are brilliant.
This time we had an Aussie guide in a Hawaiian shirt, jandals and white
sunglasses called Bill to show us around.
It was a gorgeous day. Kyle and I got horribly sunburned. Cherie, as we found out, is magically sun-proof.
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| Bliss. They fed us too. |
4 – Sangria… on the
beach…
Ice cold sangria…
Soft, white sand… Mid to late 20
degree heat… Loungers free for the
taking… Enough said? Okay.
I won’t mention the foot rubs we got for a fiver then.
Or the bar we found down the beach where you
could lie on couches and drink and watch the water… Nope, I won’t mention that either.
5 – La Rambla
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| Apparently our noses are significant... |
This madly busy street is apparently filled with
pickpockets, although we weren’t troubled, and street sellers, like caricature
artists. It also has a large fresh food
market that was rammed with fruit, freshly squeezed juices, cured meat, sweets,
fish, eggs and any other food you might want.
We bought peaches the size of our fists and Kyle put away his body
weight in fruit jubes.
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| Jubes... didn't survive the walk back to the hotel |
In short, Barcelona
was fantastic. If you haven’t been… Go.
Buenos noches, amigos.
M&K
