18 hours in Barcelona

In my experience, Barcelona has the same kind of reputation as Berlin or Montreal: a creative party city full of artists that's on everyone's must-do list. I'd already been to a few places in the South of Spain but never to Barcelona, so I decided to go there when I had a free weekend in January.

I had a class in Manchester on the Friday so I flew to Barcelona on Saturday morning and stayed until Sunday afternoon, giving me just 18 hours in the city. What to do with 18 hours? A lot of people might plan out a jam-packed itinerary of top tourist spots but I like my city-trips to centre around eating, drinking and wandering. It doesn't always work out, like when I was in San Pedro de Alcantara on Christmas Eve and not a single place was open so we ended up eating chips and canned sardines from the supermarket on the bed in our hotel room for dinner...But it worked out pretty well this time :)

A party for Greece: The Musical near our hotel

I met my boyfriend at Girona airport and we drove into Barcelona (about an hour away). We checked into Hotel Reding, which is perfectly located just west of La Rambla (the main shopping street). It was super convenient to everywhere and was a good place to start wandering the narrow pedestrian-only streets of Ciutat Vella filled with shops (99% selling only shoes, or so it seemed), cafes and restaurants.

We ate lunch (some decent, but not exciting, seafood) and did some more wandering, then looked online to find an event for the evening. The very first one I found looked really good and was close by: traditional Spanish guitar by Barcelona Duo de Guitarra in a chapel, with a glass of red wine to go with the music.

Guitar concert in a little chapel

It started at 9pm and we were surprised to see that the chapel, attached to the church Iglesia de Santa Ana, was very small and intimate. The duo were absolutely amazing! I would highly recommend going to one of their regular concerts if you're in town. Guitar concerts in churches are held pretty often around Barcelona so there's sure to be one on.

Traditional Spanish guitar by Barcelona Duo de Guitarra

The next morning we slept in and had a quick breakfast of churros and chocolate with cafe con leche (no trip to Spain is complete without this combination!) at the bar in a cute little cafe on La Rambla, not far from Travel Bar, where we were meeting a walking tour.

I try to always go on a free walking tour in bigger cities because it's the best way to get a feel for the city and learn about interesting places I might like to return to. They're not free of course - you generally give a generous tip at the end - but the set-up means that lots of interesting people show up for the tour and the guide is usually really entertaining and friendly. This was the case for Barcelona too.

Interesting sculpture representing a human tower, a Barcelona tradition

A view of a unicorn and 'elephant' gargoyle

Our guide Chrissi took us all around the Gothic Quarter east of La Rambla and told lots of stories from the near and more distant past. At the end we all had a 1 euro drink at Travel Bar Port, the sister location of Travel Bar, and warmed up because it was freezing outside! Unfortunately Barcelona does get winter weather too...

Placa Sant Felip Neri - a courtyard filled with history (and bulletholes!)

School of Architecture building with Picasso drawings on it to try and divert attention from its ugliness...

One of the most interesting parts of the tour for me was getting to learn more about the relationship between the Spanish and Catalan languages in the city. I think that most people in other countries don't actually realize that Barcelona is Catalan-speaking and that Spanish is actually a second language for natives. The menus are usually in both languages and a lot of signs are in Catalan only, which can look very different for many words.

The famous 'La Boqueria' market, which was unfortunately closed when I went

It seems that the working environment can be alot like in multilingual Luxembourg: the working language is Spanish but colleagues will speak Catalan to each other. This makes it more difficult for an expat, who needs to pick up two new languages. In Luxembourg, you have to learn French to get by but if you work with or befriend Luxembourgers then you'll find them speaking to you in French or English but switching to Luxembourgish when speaking amongst themselves. In the same way, Catalan speakers prefer to speak their native tongue with each other (as would anyone), and an expat who studied Spanish will find themselves unable to understand.

Saint George, the hairy patron saint of Catalonia, slaying a dragon

But Catalan isn't simply a local dialect of Spanish as might be assumed, it's a proper language with about 6.5 million speakers and on equal linguistic footing with French and Portuguese. And Catalonia was once an independent territory with its own constitution before becoming part of Spain through royal marriage (with part of it ceded to France later on). An independence movement has been around for a long time and just this past September, on Catalonia's National Day, about a million demonstrators filled the streets of Barcelona calling for Catalonia to become a sovereign state. I'm interested to see what will happen! 

Back to the main topic, visiting Barcelona: After the walking tour we walked back to the area around our hotel where a new Vietnamese restaurant I read about in Ryanair's on-board magazine (of all places) was located. My boyfriend and I both love Vietnamese food, which is not available in Luxembourg, so we were pretty excited to try it. Unfortunately, the food wasn't very good, even if the decor was cheerful and creative. I suppose that says more about taking recommendations from Ryanair than anything else... Though I have to admit, from the 4 meals we had in Barcelona (seafood lunch, tapas dinner, churros breakfast and Vietnamese lunch), the churros and chocolate is the only one worth remembering. I've heard that Barcelona has wonderful restaurants but sadly the ones we chose weren't them.

So in 18 hours I managed to visit all kinds of interesting parts of the city, learn about its history and language and even fit in a guitar concert. Not bad! I'll definitely have to go back again to see what it's like in the summer and to visit Gaudi's famous church (hopefully with some Canadian friends?), but my next destination in Spain will be beautiful Seville, where I'll do a week-long Spanish course in April. Can't wait :)

Some useful links if you're going to Barcelona:
Ryanair (cheap flights to Spain)
Barcelona church concert listings
Free walking tour of Barcelona from Travel Bar (they also do cooking classes, flamenco nights, bar hopping, etc.)