The moment I stepped off the plane into the Barcelona airport after a 14-hour flight on Air France, I fell in love with the city. It has an aged charm but still manages to embrace the modern world.
Although I traveled in October, I was greeted by the ever-present and incredibly hot Spanish sun that everyone tells you about. You can smell the water in the air as your taxi drives along the streets that spill into the city center. The palm trees, although not native to Barcelona, add a nice tropical touch.
Barcelona is made up of 10 districts, much like neighborhoods but with 200,000 people in each one. I skipped the traditional path of using a hotel and decided to look into apartment rentals on AirBnB.com.
I was scheduled to stay 18 days in the district of L’Eixample, easily the best barri (neighborhood) to stay in. Everything is close and nothing is more than a 5-20 minute cab ride away. Neighboring cities that you rarely hear about will keep you culturally satisfied when the buzz of Barcelona becomes too loud.
My first taste of the city was in its famous market, Mercat de la Boqueria. Located in the Old City, the market is stuffed to its brim with hanging pork, lovely tapas bars, fresh produce from outlying farm towns, and every kind of souvenir you could imagine. I walked from booth to booth for hours, only purchasing fresh saffron to bring home to my mom and some sweet fruit juices.
Outside the market you can hear flamenco music, smell the paella being cooked, and hear people speaking a language similar to Spanish but far more difficult. It’s called Catalan and it belongs to the original people of Catalonia—and yes, they make their differences known. Even their flag is not the same.
Crossing a block or two, you enter the modern world of Passeig de Gracia. With businesses, top clothing designers such as Louis Vuitton, Prada and Hermes with some of architect Antoni Gaudi’s best work sprawled in between cafes and bars, it’s the perfect blend of work, play and play some more. As a photographer, I thought I always paid attention to art, but when you visit a city that was either the birthplace or the adoptive home of Gaudi, Picasso, and Salvador Dali you realize just how much you didn’t know. Imagine if Toledo was redesigned in tribute to its nickname, the Glass City. A basic building would turn into a piece of art.
Wandering on these cobblestone roads led me to La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi’s masterpiece and Barcelona’s most famous attraction. He began working on it in 1891 and more than a century later it is still under construction. Calling it a cathedral seems a bit underwhelming; I’d describe it as the Bible in the form of a building. One side of the cathedral depicts The Passion of The Christ, while the opposite side illustrates his birth. This is how I met and fell in love with this city.
Next, we’ll leave Barcelona for the coastal city of Costa Brava and a day trip to Girona!
