Exploring Barcelona

On The 24th of June I left Bilbao and made my way to Barcelona. As I had a bunch of flight credit left from the cancelled end of 2020 trip I was flying there via Madrid. There is a bit of flying back and forth on this first part of the trip, but it had to be done to not waste the credit I had and spend any more money than I needed to.

I arrived in Barcelona and checked into my hotel at about 6pm-ish. After dumping my things I went for a walk to find something for dinner and a quick stop at a supermarket for some room food supplies. I’m loving the summer fruits and manzana’s are great here! Literally apple is one of the handful of Spanish words I have learnt (thanks DuoLingo). If you’re interested in what I had to eat-eat stay tuned for the Vegan Eats: Barcelona blog coming soon. Even on this short journey out I started to get excited by the street art I was finding. I knew Barcelona had a bit of a rep for it’s street art but it’s been so much fun discovering it for myself.

I got up early the next day, did some work, and then wandered out to see what I could find. It was Saturday, and the only plan I started with was finding some markets. An epic food market was happening just down off La Rambla close to where I was staying so I picked up a punnet of cherries for breakfast. I kept making my way down La Rambla towards the docks and checked out the trinket markets going on.

I then got distracted from finding markets by all the street art I kept spotting. I just started walking in a direction and then got caught up taking photos of the all the pieces. I weaved my way about, sniffing all the art out, even coming across a gallery or two. I had a quick food and coffee break, and continued filling up my phone with graff shots.

I found my way back to my hotel where I cooled off for a bit and did some work.

After working for a few hours I headed out for another walk this time to check out Passeig de Gràcia and it’s epic architecture. These buildings are as incredible as everyone tells you they are, but like anything the sheer impressiveness of it all needs to be experienced to really grasp. There was a lot of looking up happening.

I stopped for some dinner on the way back towards where I was staying and checked out a bunch of shops. I stumbled into the area full of record stores, alternative clothing, and found out from one of the guys working in one of these shops that a bar called Nevermind was close by. So I went and checked it out. It was pretty cool. Covered in stickers and graff, friendly staff, a great soundtrack, and even a mini inside skate bowl. I overheard two women that entered the bar speaking english so when they were looking for somewhere to sit I let them know that I hadn’t really spoken to anyone for a few days so please sit next to me. They were cool peeps, one was from Mexico but has been living in Barcelona for 5 years(?) now and designs swimwear, the other has been living there since March, is originally from Holland and a psychologist who works remotely.

While I was here I also was messaging someone from Reddit that had hit me up after I posted in the r/solotravel subreddit about heading to Barcelona, as they were too. He asked if the Magic Fountain was something I was keen to check out as he was around there so we agreed to meet for the choreographed show at 9:30pm. A huge Pride event was also taking place just on the opposite side of the road from the fountain, so I was so glad to head down that way and get to check out all the things happening. This ended up being a mutual first time meeting a Redditor experience for the both of us, and we agreed it went well. He was a cool dude (Javier? I am guessing on spelling.) who lives in Germany, and is originally from Colombia. It was so nice to meet someone friendly, easy to chat to, and chill. We went and had a drink and ended up chatting till 1am-ish. So far Reddit real lifers are cool.