BON DIA PEEPS! it’s been an exhausting five days of extreme indulgence in Barcelona. There’s been lots of alcohol, late nights, and questionable decisions… I mayyy have over done it, but I was making up for lost time after 11 days of sobriety in Morocco…… Obviously I’ve been having an amazing time,,. There’s something incredibly magical about the city.
I fell in love with Barcelona the first time I visited about 6 years ago. it’s an artsy, dreamy, hedonistic paradise filled with the most wonderful and beautiful things… Just wandering around its alleys and streets inspires creativity… (just ask George Lucas who apparently modeled the storm trooper helmets after the chimneys on Gaudi casa de mila!) My time in Barcelona was absolutely perfect.. so much so that I was almost afraid to come back and ruin the memory. Luckily I got over that irrational fear and the city is still as amazing as I remembered, if not better. I got to enjoy the place with old friends, while also taking in new experiences (and of course, meeting some new people as well!!)
I was fortunate enough to have a place to stay in the super hip and trendy Born district thanks to my wonderful friend Albert, who I met the first time I came to the city. We’ve been friends for about 6 years and our friendship has spanned over 3 continents :) He's been traveling around South America and had a spare room at his place. He and his 3 very lovely roommates kindly offered to let me stay, and i gladly accepted :) I went out with a few of his friends the first night I got to Barcelona, where we finished a couple of bottles of wine, ate delicious tapas, and went to the opening night of Bestial which is a club right on the beach.
The next day I roamed around the city and visited a few sites around the Gothic district including the Santa Maria del Mar, Cathedral de Barcelona, the Generalitat, etc. At night, two of my friends from NYC, Gavin and Joseph, flew in from Ibiza. We grabbed some dinner and went to a bar called NumeroNueve, where we were doing shots of tequila and whisky (so American!) and headed over to Razmatazz.. which is apparently the second largest club in Europe. it's also where I went last time I was here. There were definitely some deja vu moments when I was walking around the streets up to the club that made me laugh. I left a little early since the club was a little too intense for me… #gettingold
The next morning I woke up slightly hungover… and headed to Port Vell to meet a former coworker and amazing friend, Natalie. She recently moved back to Barcelona to work at this amazing travel start-up called Trip4Real. The company connects travelers with local guides for an authentic, one of a kind experience. The exchange fosters a new kind of tourism that also empowers local economies, so essentially, everyone wins :) One of their offerings is private sailboat tour to go around the city which they helped us arrnge. It was a fantastic few hours of chilling, chatting, catching up, and of course, drinking beers and wine in the sun :) You can also steer the boat if you'd like, but since I didn't have any plans on dying/imitating the Titanic, I just sipped on some beer and wine :) Then we got delicious Asian food, which almost made me cry because that was the only thing I was really missing from home.
Since I was rather tired from the other nights, I decided to stay in so I could wake up early the next morning and head to Figueres, a quiet little town about 2.5 hours away from Barcelona, to see the Dali museum which was amazingggggg! Gavin and Joe were supposed to come, but they partied to hard (I figured) so I went by myself. The train ride was really pretty.. i just stared out of the window listening to music and enjoyed the beautiful countryside landscape. And the museum is just phenomenal. The heart of the museum is the building that housed the town's theater when Dalí was a child, where one of the first public exhibitions of young Dalí's art was shown. The old theater was burned during the Spanish Civil War and remained in a state of ruin for decades. In 1960, Dalí and the mayor of Figueres decided to rebuild it as a museum dedicated to the town's most famous son (thanks Wikipedia!)
I’ve never been a huge modern art fan… it’s usually to abstract for my puny mind to understand, but Dali’s work is truly ingenious. I loved the fact that you could stare at his work and constantly discover new things depending on the proximity, perspective, etc. I spent a few hours wandering around the place and had a delicious glass of cava before i got back on the train and had a nice little siesta… just in time for Albert’s return to Barcelona :DDD <3333
Yes, i was fortunate enough to be in the city for his arrival… i was so worried i was going to ruin the surprise, but i didn’t, so ha!!! We all went to Red Ant for dinner (which was another delicious Asian restaurant) to celebrate his return! Then we went bar hopping… we did shots of at a bar called Bollocks, which is a dangerously delicious shot filled with absinthe, cinnamon, milk, etc., drank mojitos at some random Paki owned bar, and went to Pepes for more drinks before heading to Apolo for Nasty Monday, one of the biggest parties in the city. Because Albert knows all the coolest people, we hung out on stage with the DJ and danced and partied till about 530AM.. still early for Barcelonaians.. but late enough for me :)
The next day, Gavin, Joseph and I decided we wanted to do something cultural, so we woke up early-ish to do a Gaudi themed walking tour which was really fantastic. I’ve always been a big fan of Gaudi’s work — there’s something whimsical and delightful about his buildings. TBH, it looks like he dropped some acid and/or ate some shrooms and created his masterpieces… which I can totally get behind. He was another genius in his field... But anyway, we wandered up Paseo de Gracia admiring the beautiful modernist buildings, and ended up at the Sagrada Familia (or the Sangria Familia by Gandhi, according to some terrible people.) Apparently it’s supposed to be done in 2026… 11 more years—hopefully I’ll be back in Barcelona before then, but it’s amazing to see all the work they accomplished within the last 6!!!
After the tour ended, we had a picnic with some awesome choices we met on the tour at Parque Guell which is the most beautiful park I've ever visited. We grabbed some bread, cheese, and of course, many bottles of wine. I had a slight tummy ache from stuffing my face, but it was totally worth it. I also managed to crack open a bottle of white wine.. literally cracked it open by dropping int on the floor, but we managed to salvage a bit of it since it was in a bag.. which i poured into my cup. AHH bagged wine.. who said growing up meant growing old? We had a great time (obviously!)
As you can see, I absolutely had a wonderful time in Barcelona but it’s off to Germany :) So exxxxcitted… if there’s anything I could love more than Barcelona, it’s German men (hehe)