The Spanish NYC

We finally made it to Barcelona after an intense couple days and night of traveling. As I mentioned before, we had to do quite a bit of backtracking from Granada to get to Barcelona. Instead of the original plan of an overnight train from Granada to Barcelona, we went back to Seville, back to Madrid, spent the night outside the train station, then took an early train to Barcelona this morning.

Brent and I had a chuckle last night when we were looking over our itinerary in the train station and realized just how little of our trip has gone by and how immensely exhausted we were. We are both looking forward to some downtime in Greece in the next couple weeks. For now, we are staying at a place called INOUT hostel, which is nestled in the mountains/hills of Barcelona. It took us quite a few Metro stops and a very long trek uphill to arrive this afternoon, but residing in a “mountainous” environment, away from the bustling city, is exactly what we wanted. The air here in Barcelona is quite cool today and it almost looks like it may rain. Our beds are situated near the window so a nice breeze has been blowing in while we were napping.

Tonight we will likely head out to the center of town to get a feeling of where we are and where we’d like to go tomorrow. It’s about 5:00pm and we have 3 nights here, so we are both thankful for the downtime between catching trains to the next destination.

Over the next few days, we plan to visit La Sagrada Familia, which is an absolutely exquisitely gaudy cathedral in the center of town---loved by many and hated by some for its over-the-top design. We will also check out Las Ramblas, a famous street that runs down the center of town and will take time to relax- on the famous beaches and beautiful area of San Sebastian.