SPAIN 2026
The plan: clockwise from Barcelona, Blue by train, Green by car
Sunday
Barcelona
The 4 hour flight to Barcelona was non-eventful, which is a good thing.
We jumped in a Taxi to Room Mate Pau Hotel, dropped our bags, and walked around the area of our hotel.
The view from our room
The area where we stayed was next to the Placa de Catalunya, a short walk to a lot of the sights, including the historic district and La Rambla... the shopping street that is under full-on construction.
We wandered through the historic district of Barcelona, a winding maze of narrow streets, cute little shops and old buildings.
One of the things we didn't expect to see where all these little statues of a guy with his pants down taking a dump. Apparently at Christmas, a nativity scene without the pooper was said to lead to a bad growing season. The act of pooping symbolizes fertilizing the earth, ensuring a good harvest, and bringing prosperity for the upcoming year.
We ended up having dinner in the historic district at Ginger, a little place in an alley. It was very good and felt old school authentic.
Norine's favourite, seafood with all the bits still attached.
Hola España, we have arrived, a little evening wander of Barcelona and an outdoor meal
with a Sangria and a Cerveza.
A good way to start the adventure.
Monday
It was a very Gaudí day in Barcelona! We started with Park Güell in the morning, you need to be aware that these premier locations require a pre-booked entry time. If you just show up at the gate, you may not get in. I booked both Park Güell and Sagrada Familia well in advance. Park Güell is on the southern slope of Barcelona, so we grabbed a taxi and had him drop us near the upper gate, so it was mostly a downhill walk through the park.
Park Güell was part of Barcelona's late 19th and early 20th-century urban expansion, Catalan industrialist and art patron Eusebi Güell commissioned architect Antoni Gaudí, a leading figure of the aesthetic movement in Catalan modernism, to design a park. Construction took place between 1900 and 1914, and the park officially opened to the public in 1926. In 1984, UNESCO designated the park a World Heritage Site, recognizing it as part of the "Works of Antoni Gaudí" collection.
What's a park without flowers?
After spending the morning in Park Güell, we walked down the hill towards Sagrada Família. We had time to stop and have some croquettes in a nice little park on the way.
We had a 12:30 Entry time for Sagrada Familia. You have to make some choices when booking, entry time? guided/not guided? tower climb? which tower? We chose the Passion Tower.
Construction on the Sagrada Família began on March 19, 1882. The man in charge was Francisco de Paula del Villar, a respected diocesan architect. His plan was solid, safe, and completely unremarkable: a Neo-Gothic church with pointed arches, buttresses, and a single bell tower. The kind of church you could find in any European city. He didn't last a year. In 1883, Villar resigned over a dispute about construction costs. The project went to a young architect from Reus who had mostly built lampposts and a small shrine. Antoni Gaudí was 31 years old. Gaudí kept the foundations Villar had already dug. Everything else, he threw out. He had no interest in copying Gothic cathedrals. His new design called for 18 towers, three grand façades, columns shaped like branching trees, and geometric forms that no one had ever attempted in stone. It was not a church inspired by the Middle Ages. It was something no one had a name for yet. Gaudí worked on the Sagrada Família for 43 years. From 1914 until his death, it was the only project he worked on. He died in 1926, struck by a tram, with only one tower finished. Construction is still ongoing today — funded entirely by donations, the same way it started in 1882. We arrived shortly after they placed the last peak on the last tower.
Sagrada Familia is unlike any church or cathedral we had seen before, and it is packed.
The smallest of details, like bronze bugs amongst an ivy pattern on a door.
The thing that strikes you most when you walk in is the colours, filtering in through so many stained glass windows, one side in shades of Blue and green to represent the morning dawn, the other side in red and oranges to represent the sunset.
As the afternoon sun is coming in, the church is just aglow in colour.
Subtly placed on a wall on the back side of the church is a magic square, each row, column, diagonal adding up to 33, the supposed age of Jesus when he died. The back side of the church is much less nature influenced and more modern in design.
Picture taken the next day from the roof of a double decker bus
six replicas of the tower toppers
It was finally our turn to climb the tower, you take an elevator part of the way up, and then climb more stairs to the top... then descend a spiral staircase the rest of the way down.
The close up views of the structure, and the faraway views over the city are stunning. Then it's the almost dizzying climb down to the ground, at least you don't have to wall hug and let people pass like we have in other towers..
From the Sagrada Familia, we walked up to Sant Pau Recinte Modernista, a historical hospital site. The Hospital de Sant Pau opened its doors in 1902, designed by architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner with a radical vision: instead of one grim, crowded building, 48 separate pavilions surrounded by gardens, all connected by underground tunnels. The idea was that beauty itself could help patients heal. Natural light, ceramic tiles, floral mosaics, fresh air. A hospital that felt more like a palace.
Only 27 of those 48 pavilions were ever built. It still took until 1930 to finish. Domènech died in 1923 and never saw it completed. For over a century, it was a real, working hospital. Babies were born here. Surgeries happened under those painted ceilings. It treated patients until 2009, when a modern facility finally replaced it. Today it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed alongside the Palau de la Música Catalana. The WHO has offices inside. The UN uses it too. Most visitors walk straight to the Sagrada Família, just 10 minutes up the same avenue. Very few stop here.
A bit of a walk from here was a collection of unique Casas, some of them Gaudi created houses; Casa Comalat, Casa Milà, Casa Batló, Casa Amatller, and Casa Lleo Morera
Casa Comalat
Casa Mila
Casa Batllo
Casa Museo Amatller
Casa Lleo Morera
Just a regular old building
So much walking, over 20,000 steps today. We stopped for dinner at Ana’s Restaurante Italiano en Barcelona, and then it was back to the room to let our feet recover.
Tuesday
After so much walking the day before, we slept in a little, and then decided to spend the morning on the Hop on Hop off bus. There was a bunch of delays before we actually got going, and then we toured around getting a sense for the different areas.
An old bull ring that has been converted into a shopping centre.
Ooh, a new football (soccer) stadium for FC Barcelona
This non-descript lamp pole, surrounded by construction and graffiti was one of Gaudi's first works.
One of the perks of the Hop On Hop Off bus fare, is it includes multiple routes, and a Boat Cruise. So we took advantage of that to get views of Barcelona from the water.
After an hour of circling around the harbour, we headed back to land, and walked down along the Barceloneta beach area.
A brief stop to consider our next rental car.
Our destination at the end of the beach, once you figure out how to get past the roadways, was the pretty Ciutadella Park.
The Cascada del Parc de la Ciutadella is beautiful.
Barcelona has over 6,000 wild parakeets and they all descended from escaped pets. The Monk parakeets arrived from Argentina in the 1970's, and either escaped or were released because of how noisy they are.
Even the lampposts were fantastic.
We had dinner at Spacca Napoli... soggy pizza and a small plate of Ravioli. Our next stop after that bite to eat was the beautiful Palau de la Música Catalana
I thought I was being smart, and booked a concert event there for that night, a chance to see the amazing stained glass and detailed concert hall. Turns out there is two different concert halls in the same building.
What I though we were getting
What we actually got
It was a weird ass quartet of brass wind horned instruments, and it gives you an idea of what happens at band camp if they all dropped acid. The little stooping man gives you a sense of my opinion of it. After falling asleep a couple times, we left at intermission and didn't come back. Instead we stopped for a little gelato and headed back to the room.
One of the day trips that was highly recommended to us was the rocky hillside village of Monserrat, so we got up early and joined a "small group tour" to go see this historic location.