A winter away from the cold in Barcelona, Catalunya!

[isaac]

Hi again guys, my recent trip report on my trip to Barcelona during the Christmas period.

Prior to this trip, I knew nothing about Barcelona except FC Barcelona. I also knew about its notoriety for pickpockets but that was about it.

Many friends have recommended Barcelona as a top destination, and seeing that tickets from UK to Barcelona were cheap, I decided to go ahead and book a 5 day trip to sunny Barcelona! It was an added bonus to get away from the biting cold in England that set upon us in early December. (It was -5C in W Yorkshire at the worst, no snow though).

It's funny enough though that the current weather in Leeds is 10C and Barcelona is 8C. hehe. Really enjoying the mild winter (if it lasts!)

Really have no regrets going on this trip, Barcelona really is a wonderful city- I enjoyed it more than Paris, London and even Budapest. Topping it off is that it's not expensive at all for tourists, really a bonus for students like me.

[isaac]

Day 1

Our flight from Manchester to Barcelona was booked on little known budget airline Monarch Airways. It apparently wasn't always a budget carrier, but it is now, along with charter flights.

It is actually pretty good for a budget carrier, I had quite a good experience flying with them.
Weirdly enough, online check in is NOT free, but airport check in is. They have pre booked assigned seating for a fee but we didn't want to pay for it so we arrived at Manchester T2 early to get three seats together. (Our other two travel companions were flying EasyJet from Bristol Airport)

They were extremely strict with luggage weights and dimensions, my luggage weighed in at 11 kg and I was asked to remove stuff. As I brought my heavy winter coat just in case, i simply took it out and wore it. Voila, 9.5kg!



Seats were AirAsia-ish and they even had free copies of the Times for passengers!

The flight was about 32 pounds one way.


Finally arrived in Barcelona El Prat after 2h30. Quite a long trip but it was alright. Customs queues were non existent. The customs guy was friendly enough. It was a short walk to the Airport train station, where one could buy a T10 travelcard for only 9,45€. A transferable and multi-person card valid for 10 trips. Imagine that! 0,945€ to get to Barcelona city centre. Even cheaper than the MRT in Singapore eh?



We rented an apartment through AirBnB, a apartment rental site. Total cost was something really reasonable, about 250€ for 4 nights for 5 people, which works out at 12,50€ pppn. A really nice apartment as well, about 1200 sq ft, nice balcony, quiet and safe neighbourhood, 2 minute walk to the Hostafrancs metro station and a discount supermarket two doors away. Really recommend this apartment to any group coming to Barcelona. Great value for money.



The street our apartment was on


It was really an experience on the first night!! Three of us arrived first and we met the owner of the apartment who gave us the keys. He was rushing off to meet a friend (our fault, as the airport train took longer than we expected to arrive) and gave us a quick overview of the apartment. He also told us to contact him on whatsapp if there were any problems. He didn't stay there, so we had the whole apartment to ourselves.

We then took one set of keys and went out grocery shopping for breakfast items. To our horror, when we went back, we were not able to open the door to the apartment itself! We also called and whatsapp-ed him but to no avail. His phone was turned off. Despite his good reviews on AirBnB, I was always just a little concerned as our passports were inside. Cash was mainly on me so no problem. This was about 10PM at night.

We then called Airbnb which were most unhelpful, as they said to give him 2 hours to reply and then they could process a refund if they deem fit. What bloody good would a refund be if our passports and personal effects were locked in? This incident has made me think twice about renting through AirBnB on future trips.

We then went to a nearby Chinese restaurant (the only one open) and had supper. At about midnight we were fed up and went to the Plaza Espanya Police station to lodge a report and see what they could do for us. Just as we were about to make a report...our dear landlord rang me up. He was apologetic as he was in the cinema and turned his phone off.

Imagine our relief!

In the end, he did turn up and the key that we took out (he gave us two sets) needed to be turned really really hard to open it. Funny as two of us guys tried and were not able to. ah well.

we all managed to sleep only at about 2am though.

I had bought a bottle of wine from the supermarket.


1,70€ ,Insanely cheap, cheaper than milk even! makes me think why the cheapest wines are at least 4 quid in tesco's...and 20 bucks in singapore...

[isaac]

Day 2

Our Barcelona trip started for real today! Having only 1 toilet, I volunteered to wake up the earliest to shower and have breakfast.



This was the bread we bought. Interesting name eh?

The plan was to walk along the beach in Port Vell area before heading to Las Ramblas at 11AM for the Old City walking tour.

The weather was really pleasant the few days we were there. It amused us that the locals wore clothes that were equal in thickness to what people wore in the North of England, and that it was 18C to a low of 10C everyday!







We then adjourned to Plaça Reial, which was the meeting point for the walking tours. Funny enough, everywhere we went, we heard our distinctive Singapore/Malaysia accent. Think lots of tourists this off season were students studying in Britain like us.



Plaza Reial



Traditional Market



barcelona Town hall. the flags from left: Catalan flag, Spanish flag and Barcelona's flag.

Barcelona's flag and England's flags are similar because St George (Sant Jordi in Catalan) is both the patron saint of England and Barcelona.

Catalunya's flag

according to legend, Catalunya's flag is so because King Charles killed Wilfred the Hairy, the Count of Barcelona, and ran four bloody fingers down Wilfred's Shield.

The tour was pretty interesting, with stuff one would never know without a guide like that. Our end point was the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Mar:



We then headed off for lunch. It's really easy to get lost in the Barri Gotic (Old Quarter) and while the original plan was to get some paella, we wandered around and ended up having gelato, some tapas and some paninis for lunch at a Spanish chain called "Conesa". Really good.




The Gelato I had. Speculaas, Nocciola and Nutella



Churros con Xocolata



Tapas (I tend to think of it as the Spanish equivalent of dim sum)

[isaac]

Day 2 Continued...

We then headed off to Parc Montjuic, where there was a nice cable car and great views of the city at the Castell Montjuic. I'm ashamed to say that as a Singaporean, I've never sat in the Sentosa Cable Car. and thus have not had a cable car ride in more than a decade.

One had to take the metro to "Paral.lel" station and then do an internal transfer to the Montjuic Furnicular. Much like the Hong Kong one except quicker and not much to see on the way up. All these are included in the T10 travelcard. Neat eh?



Inside the furnicular



Cable car. It is quite pricey actually, at about 9,50€ or so for the round trip. Each way doesn't take much more than 5-7 minutes. Being relatively fit, we wanted to take the cable car up and walk down, but as it was already 4PM or so at that time, it wasn't a good idea as the sun would set at about 5.30PM.

I'd say the cable car is not really worth it, considering I think there are buses that bring one almost all the way up and the fare is included in the 0,945€ you'd have paid to take the metro and furnicular anyway.





The views from the castle were quite magnificent. One can linger on for hours on end and there were couples that seemed to be doing just that. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, 15C or so and sunny as Singapore.



We took pictures whilst standing up on the ledge, which had a steep fall. Not advisable and the guard will scream at you, but if you're sitting on the ledge, he's absolutely fine with it.

We came down at about sunset (5.30PM) and as our dinner reservation was for half seven, we had a couple of hours to kill and we decided to explore the Passieg de Gracia/Las Ramblas area. Whilst my original plan was to visit the La Boquiera market the next morning for brunch, we decided to visit it today as it was open till 20h. A good idea as it turned out...





DON'T PURCHASE FROM THE ROW OF SHOPS IMMEDIATELY FACING LAS RAMBLAS! They're at least 4x more expensive than if you just wander down a row or two.



Yes, that was Durian. 20€ for 4 seeds though.

Spain in general being closer to our tropical climate, one sees many fruits and veg that is non existent in GB, lychees, longans, rambutans for example. Granted, they are expensive (Lychees were 3,99€/KG) but considering this is a tourist attraction, I'm sure the locals have much cheaper places to get their fix of tropical fruits.

I bought half a local fruit called a Kijuano?





Consistency of a pomelo, tastes of nothing. But quite juicy.

Going to La Boquiera late is good, as the stallholders will make deals with you. Fruit Juice normally going for 1€ a cup was now 2 for 1€ like the Kiwi juice I bought:

[isaac]

Day 2 Continued again...

We then went for dinner at "Cullera De Boix", at Carrer L'Hospital off La Rambla.
We just had to do the tourist paella and sangria thing. Avoid the restaurants with touts along Las Ramblas. This one is good if you're in the Las Ramblas area and too tired to travel out for good food.



Sangria



Arroz Negro



Seafood Paella

Reasonably good for the price. Think it was about 15€ or so for three paellas and a jug of sangria for the 5 of us.

[isaac]

Day 3

The day started off most awesomely as it was my birthday! And also because we were going to what I thought was the highlight of the trip besides Sagrada Familia. Yes, we were going to the FCB Stadium!

As a football fan, I thought the rather steep price of 17€ for students (bring your student card!) and 22€ for adults was worth it. One of my female non-football fan friend was not too convinced however.

You get to see the museum, see the stadium and take lots of pictures and see the away dressing room, which is not really impressive. It would have been most awesome had they opened their home dressing room a la Manchester United.

The stadium however is awe inspiring. It seats in excess of 100,000 people and is absolutely massive.





La Caixa is a bank ubiquitous in Barcelona. Much like DBS in Singapore.



Mes Que Un Club means "More than a club"



We then went for lunch near Parc Guell, which was our next stop. the neighbourhood behind Parc Guell (Vallcarca) isn't as nice as the one we stayed in (Hostafrancs), many quite run down buildings.

I then got scolded at a La Caixa ATM terminal! There was a ATM terminal inside one of the La Caixa bank branches, where I had to collect my pre booked Sagrada Familia tickets for the next day. The Spaniards don't queue for the ATM like how the Brits or we Singaporeans do. They take a mental picture of who was there before them and then go when their turn was due. I didn't know this and assumed that there was no queue for the ATM as the people were waiting for friends in the branch or whatever. But they were all queuing for the ATM. oopsie!

Going up Parc Guell is quite Guell-ing. It's steep. Our tour guide gave us a hint: instead of getting off at Lesseps and walking uphill and then downhill, get off at Vallcarca the next stop, where there are steps up the back of parc guell as well as escalators in the middle. thus, one could take the escalators up the back of parc guell and walk all the way down Parc Guell to Lesseps station to the next attraction.



The Escalators



You can't really see it here but it's really steep down and up. If I just had a bicycle...

Parc Guell is really interesting. It has many of Gaudi's elements in it and there is even a Primary school within. Those kids are really lucky eh?

Some of the buildings remind me of Hansel and Gretel, whilst the rest were just uniquely Gaudi. Gaudi loved to merge architecture with nature (He believed nature was the best teacher we had) and its really reflected in the way he designed stuff.





The broken porcelain thing is a big thing with Gaudi



Doesnt that remind you of the candy house in Hansel and Gretel?


The famous lizard in Parc Guell



The broken porcelain thing very big with Gaudi



Parc Guell from the base

[isaac]

Day 3 Continued

The walk to Lesseps train station was quite far, about 1.3km. I again booked dinner for 7.30 and we didn't have much time to kill, thus we decided to go to the dinner place, which is in the notorious El Raval district. A good thing and a bad thing...

The restaurant we were going to was the highly rated Cera 23, which I found through tripadvisor. It's on Carrer De La Cera, 23 (The spaniards put the house number behind the street, and so 50 Park Lane in England would be Park Lane, 50 in Spain). Carrer de la Cera is an extremely dodgy street. Lots of immigrant communities and we really felt quite unsafe for the first time this trip. On the upside though, I saw really cheap bakery stuff, eg 3 croissants for 1,10€, etc.

We reached the restaurant early at 7PM, and it was not open yet. They only opened at 7.30PM. We thus had to kill 30 minutes of our time. We decided to walk to the main road Ronda Sant Pau. This was really one of the hidden gems which I've never heard of... We saw a long queue outside a shop and being Singaporean (and some Malaysians)...we couldn't resist seeing what the commotion was all about. It was outside some sort of bakery-ish, cafe-ish shop called "Sirvent". Best of all, ALL the people queuing were local Spaniards. The main attraction seemed to be something called Turrone, a hard brick of almonds with different things holding them together, some with honey, some with dark chocolate etc etc.


This isn't my picture, but this is what Torrone is.

Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures as we were just too excited at that time and I forgot. It didn't help that the neighbourhood was a little seedy.
Their website is here:
http://turronessirvent.com/

We did see Turrones sold at Las Ramblas, and whilst the prices were comparable (22,70€/kg), the quality of the Sirvent ones were much better.

For starters, one had to take a queue slip to be served, and it was one of those old fashioned pink slips straight out of the 1980's.

We waited about 15 minutes to be served, and when we got served, I immediately asked "Habla Inglese?", and had to wait for the only English speaking member of staff to finish serving his current customer. He told us about the different types of turrons, essentially most are almonds with different stuff in between.

Sounded really good and GF and I bought 2 x 400g for our own consumption and another friend bought 1 block as well. They throw in free gift wrapping for that price as well!

The address for the shop if anyone is interested is: Parlament, 56
08015 Barcelona.

oh yes, and dinner was very good! Cera 23 is one of those cozy restaurants with an open concept kitchen. They gave us free starters as well. Mojitos are highly recommended if a little pricey at 8€.









Free starter



berry mojito



Entrecote of Galician Beef

Total bill came up to about 25€ each with drinks. Highly recommended though.

[isaac]

Day 4

Day 4 was our last full day in Barcelona and we spent the morning walking along Passieg de Gracia before going back to Plaza Reial for the Gaudi walking tour at 11AM. It explored Gaudi's buildings dotted all over Barcelona, but primarily 4, which were:

-Palau Guell
-Casa Batllo
-Casa Mila (La Padrera)
-and of course the Sagrada Familia

I timed our Sagrada Familia tickets to coincide with the end of this walking tour so we save a metro trip.



Casa Mila



Casa Batllo

All these were impressive but really paled in comparison to...





La Sagrada Familia

It is an unfinished cathedral that is set to complete with the Jesus Tower somewhere around 2025-2030. It is extremely magnificent both inside and out. Really worth the 16€ or so to go, including the tower visit.



The inside is meant to mimic a forest and how the trees and its leaves form a canopy of sorts.

The tower visit was really enjoyable for my travel companions but not for me. I have a fear of heights and found it quite scary, especially the last part where there were no railings whilst walking down. Not advisable if you have a height phobia, but highly recommended for everyone else. My 4 friends enjoyed the tower visit thoroughly.

One takes the lift up and walk down one of the towers. You can choose to go to the Passion Facade or the Nativity Facade but not both. its an extra 3€ on top of the ticket admission fee.



Not many pictures. Too scared to take them.

the museum in the basement (thankfully!) was also enchanting. Very interesting and Gaudi's crypt is inside.



Nativity facade. Look how intricate the stone figures are. Gaudi apparently studied and used people, both dead and alive, to build his stone carvings as realistically as possible. The soldier slaying the baby has 6 toes as the guy whom he modelled it on had 6 as well.

Dinner that night was at another highly rated tripadvisor restaurant, Romero. I felt it was quite forgettable though, both in terms of service and food. Had an ox sirloin:



To be fair, it was abit cheaper than Cera 23, at about 15€ per person.

[isaac]

final day

2 of our friends' flights were earlier in the day to Bristol and they left earlier. our other friend stayed back to pack. As GF and I had already packed the night before, we went out for a last hurrah at Las Ramblas, eating gelato and just generally walking around for a couple of hours.

I was extremely tempted to cut my hair near my apartment where it was advertised as 4€ for a men's haircut. Scared that he'd give me a coconut cut or something stupid, I didn't. Just paid £12 for a haircut today. Doesn't look stupid though, so can't complain.

Then went to get herbs and spices at the supermarket next door. I cook lots of stews here in England (easy lah...) and use lots of bay leaves. Tesco's sells them for an absolute rip off and it's like 5x cheaper here...so I bought 3 packets...along with a jar of Oregano, Parsley, powdered garlic and Cayenne Peppers. hehe. can't resist saving money whilst on holiday, lah.

We took Ryanair back. Nothing much needs to be said eh? cramped seats, no assigned seating, constant advertisements over the PA throughout the flight, bla bla bla. But whatever, we reached Stansted on time and that was what mattered. There began a Guell-ing (sorry) 1h30 trip to Liverpool street, tube ride to King's cross, 2h30 ride back to Leeds and a taxi ride home... back to cold, windy and rainy England. Nice to see you again I guess.

And with that, uni has started again today for me. no more trips till April. Hopefully Rome the next time...

Thanks for reading and a happy new year to you all!

[Kyo]

Lovely TR, very well done (I think you mislabelled the Nativity facade photo, would you mind to re-link that?)!

Cheers!

[isaac]

Lovely TR, very well done (I think you mislabelled the Nativity facade photo, would you mind to re-link that?)!

Cheers!

oops! changed thanks!

[CarbonMan]

Very nice, Isaac! Makes me want to post my pics from last year.

[isaac]

Very nice, Isaac! Makes me want to post my pics from last year.

thank you! yup you should! already looking forward to the next time I can visit Spain