Barcelona Day 7: Easy Like a Sunday Morning

Just this week while watching some commercial on TV, I told Drew I didn't understand the song. How are Sunday mornings easy!? It's the last day of the weekend and I'm constantly struggling with wanting to stay in bed vs. getting out of bed and being productive.

Then, when I was thinking of what to name this post, the song came to mind. It was the easiest Sunday I've had in my life: I woke up to the most gorgeous sunrise over the ocean without even having to leave bed. When it started to get too bright, I pressed the button on my nightstand to close the light filtering screen. A few hours later, Drew and I headed down to Wave for a delicious champagne brunch, which again was included because of his Platinum status.

After taking another short nap, we headed down to one of the pool decks to lay out and sip some Cava Sangria. We didn't stay for long though, as the sun had shifted to the other side of the hotel and it got a little chilly.

As much as we wanted to just stare out of our hotel room windows all day, we also wanted to explore the beach area a little bit so we went for a short walk. I can't believe how many nude old men were on the beach, standing up, and "reading newspapers." Like who stands on the beach reading?

After seeing my fair share of saggy balls and fake boobs, we decided to head out to the street and do a little more exploring. I loved the cute residential streets.

For dinner, we decided to eat at Pez Vela, which was right beneath our hotel. We ordered the Pan con Tomate, Charbroiled Galican Style Octopus and Arroz Negro (baby squid black rice with artichoke) along with a few glasses of wine. The Octopus was a tad too salty and not as good as the octopus at the W but the Arroz Negro was delicious. The bill came to roughly $100 US before tip which seemed a tad over-priced, especially considering the wine was only €3.50 per glass and the fact that we both could have eaten more paella. It's not like rice is expensive...

I had my heart set on having dessert back at Wave since we didn't get to have it the night prior. I ordered the White Chocolate Satin Sphere and Drew ordered the W Style Sacher. While we were waiting for our orders, we noticed the waitress bringing a delicious looking drink to another table. We called her over to ask what it was and although it sounded good as well, we decided against ordering it as we had an early flight the next morning and had already had a few drinks.

Once we were finished with our desserts, the waitress and hostess surprised us by bringing us each one of the drinks we had asked about along with a selection of delicious chocolates.

 

I can't remember everything that was in the drink but can only describe it as light, fruity, a tad spicy and refreshing. It was probably the best drink I've ever had and paired excellently with the chocolates. Now that I'm looking at the menu, it may have been the "Lost Island," which is described as Brugal rum with falernum, lime, spicy mango syrup, homemade caramel syrup, Angostura bitters and lime foam. As we were finishing up our drinks, fireworks had started outside again. What a perfect ending to a perfect night and vacation.

Barcelona Day 6: The W

There was a lot we wanted to fit in on our last half day before switching hotels. Our plan was to get everything out of the way so we could just relax at the second hotel.

We woke up super early to have breakfast and head to Park Güell for the second time. We knew we had a long walk ahead of us and had to be there by 9 at the latest. We got there just as the sun was rising and wow does that park fill up quick! It was so busy that we had to wait almost 20 minutes just to get into the gingerbread house which honesty ended up being a waste of time in my opinion. The interior was just an empty house with blue walls. What am I missing? Not to disrespect anyone's artwork...just not my cup of tea.

 

After spending about an hour in the park and spending €3.50 on a Fanta Limón (which is delicious and my new favorite drink by the way), we decided to head back towards Las Ramblas. First order of business: check out the new Uniqlo and Zara Home. Zara Home is the coolest store I never knew existed. Unfortunately, I didn't have much room in my suitcases so I settled on buying some hand-towels for our kitchen.

After shopping, I wanted to grab a juice from Merkat de La Boqueria. I got the coconut raspberry while Drew refused out of fear he would get food poisoning. Story of my life with Mr. Stubborn. He doesn't know what he was missing out on...that juice was amazing!

Next, we headed to Granja M. Viader for churros and hot dark chocolate. I was definitely glad we got to experience it but....I've had better churros at Disney World. They just didn't melt in my mouth the way I expect churros to. The hot chocolate was very unique in that it was super thick, almost like a pudding. It wasn't bad but definitely nothing earth shatteringly good.

The last stop on my hit list was Chök. I had seen them all over social media and they had the best looking donuts I've seen in my life. Granted, we weren't about to eat donuts right after churros so we got them to go for later on that night. Drew got all excited when he saw vegan donuts and ordered one of those....although I'm not quite sure why, as he most definitely is not a vegan. Anywho, whatever floats his boat.

We got back to the hotel at around 1 and had planned on leaving by 2:30 for our next hotel. I decided to be practical for once in my life and agreed to take a cab to our next hotel, W Barcelona. It only ended up being around €17. I was so excited to finally get time to relax. Little did I know how amazing our room was going to be.

SPG Platinum members are supposed to be given the best available room upon check-in, up to a standard suite. Drew didn't think this location would upgrade us at all based off what he read on Trip Advisor, etc. However, they did us one better and placed us in a corner suite on the 12th floor. When we saw the room, we were awestruck. It had the most gorgeous views I've ever seen in my life. The living room had a view of Barcelona and Barceloneta Beach while our bedroom overlooked the Balearic Sea. All you could see was the sea out of that window. In addition, the rooms had automatic shades, automatic pull out tvs, a rainfall shower head, a spa tub in the bedroom and Bliss bath products throughout...my favorite! The pics don't even do the room justice.

 

For dinner that night, we decided to eat at Wave Restaurant inside of The W. We ordered the Spanish Tapas Selection for an appetizer which included Cabrales cheese and caramelized apple croquettes, octopus skewers, razor clams with Espinaler sauce and “Bravas” W style. For our meals, we both ordered the lemongrass infused salmon with coconut foam, curry and roasted pumpkin. Everything was amazing. I wanted to order dessert but had remembered about the donut I was saving for later that I didn't want to go stale. As we were finishing up our meal, fireworks had started over Barcelonetta Beach that we could see from the window.

 

Once we were done, we headed upstairs to Eclipse. I ordered a passion fruit mojito and Drew ordered a beer. Once we were finished drinking them, I was ready to head back down. Noisy, clubby bars aren't really my thing unless I'm with a bunch of friends. Instead, we retreated to the lounge and had another drink while rocking in our swinging chairs. I ordered the Candy Shop martini, which was surprisingly not sickeningly sweet. I wish I knew how to make it.

And then it was back to the most awesome room ever. Oh, how I wish we could live there.

Barcelona Day 5: Drew's Birthday

September 22nd: Drew's Birthday. I'm a terrible girlfriend and didn't really plan anything special, mainly because I wanted him to pick what he wanted to do...which, let's be real...he's incapable of doing.

We wanted to take the cable cars we saw down by the beach up to Montjuïc. However, due to poor planning yet again, we accidentally took the Teleferic de Montjuïc and not the Transbordador Aeri del Port which seemed a lot more thrilling and had better views. I had waned to see some of the gardens at the top but apparently, it was the wrong cable car for that too. Instead, we settled on the Castell de Montjuïc which ended up having pretty amazing views.

 

 

By the time we were done exploring, we were pretty hungry. I was dying for a ham and cheese sandwich but Drew wanted to head straight to Diagonal Mar to do some shopping. I wasn't buying it because I didn't know if they had good food or not. I convinced him to stop at Glòries on the way because they have a cute cafeteria on the ground level. We decided to eat at Enrique Tomas which I personally thought was delicious...it was one of the best sandwich I've ever had. Come to find out, it was rated only a 2.5 online due to some people getting food poisoning and others thinking it was overpriced. I would still go back. I just probably wouldn't order one of the take out sandwiches that have been sitting there for hours...

After lunch, we headed to Diagonal Mar. I wasn't too impressed. Glòries is a much nicer mall. However, I did find a super cute faux leather jacket at the Zara in Diagonal Mar for €24.99 or roughly $30 at the then exchange rate. Afterwards, I saw the same jacket back home for $39.99. I should have known Zara was cheaper in Spain and bought more!

Once Drew got his shopping fix, we went back to the room to rest up a bit. I tried to get Drew to choose a place for dinner but yet again, he claimed he wasn't hungry. After browsing for a bit I saw that Picnic was only 2 stops away and had some food I thought he would like. Once he saw the pictures, he finally decided he had room for food. Thank god.

At the restaurant, we ordered the fried green tomatoes and spring rolls for our appetizer and fried fish and chips for our meals. The appetizers were delicious but the entree was a little too salty for my liking and overpriced. We each got 3 small pieces of fish and a small handful of fries for roughly $14. We were originally going to get dessert as well but Drew was a little turned off by the amount of food they gave us and decided we should check out the food truck festival at the Arc de Triomf to see if they had anything good. Well, apparently Spaniards and Catalonians don't like their desserts, because out of 50 food trucks, not a single one had anything sweet, whatsoever. Regardless, it was still fun to check out.

the cone was only half full with fries...

 

We were then onto plan C for dessert: to see if any of the gelato places were still open near our hotel. Nooope. We then thought to check and see if Madeleine Mon Amour was still still open. According to google they closed at 11:00 PM and it was already past that. However, we happened to walk by it anyways and ta-da, there were still a lot of people eating in the restaurant. Drew went in to ask if they were still open and low and behold  - - they said we could order dessert. This time, we decided to sit out on the street where they had tables and chairs. It was the perfect ending to the night...especially since Drew had said he wanted to come back before we left our first hotel, which we were leaving the following morning.

Barcelona Day 4: Delicious Food

On day 4, I was rudely awakened by Drew who had already gone to the gym and wanted to hurry up and get our free breakfast at the hotel before all of the "good stuff" was gone. Mind you, there was nothing bad about breakfast at the hotel but it was a regular continental breakfast - nothing to write home about. I would have much preferred to get breakfast elsewhere but he wanted to take advantage of his SPG Platinum status to get free breakfast. Lovely.

I definitely went back to sleep immediately after we finished eating. By the time I woke up, I was craving a sandwich. I really wanted to try Foc i Oli, a hamburger joint that's currently rated #14 out of 8,303 restaurants in Barcelona on Trip Advisor. It was only slightly out of our way to Park Güell, which is where we had planned on spending the beautiful day.

After walking to the restaurant from Universtat Station, we had to wait outside to be seated because the place was tiny and only had room for roughly 10-12 people to sit down at once. Luckily, there were only two people ahead of us in line. We were seated at the bar-stools in the front window where we got to watch other couples making out on the street in front of us. I've never seen so much PDA in my life!

Drew and I both ordered "el Chivito" which is described on the menu as a sandwich with thin slices of steak, ham, bacon, mayo, salad dressing, gouda cheese, red pepper, fresh tomatoes and caramelized onions on brioche bread. We also ordered the homemade fries. They were both amazing!

After lunch, we hopped back on the metro and headed to Park Güell. I've never seen so many steep hills and stairs in my life! A half hour later, we finally got to the ticket counter only to find out that the next entry time wasn't until 4 hours later. Talk about poor planning on our part! However, instead of sulking, we decided to purchase tickets in advance for Saturday morning before we had to switch hotels. At least we got some extra exercise in!

these were about 1/10 of the steps in all!

By the time we woke up, it was almost 9 PM. Drew claimed he wasn't hungry but I still wanted to go out. I convinced him to go to El Nacional which was on the list of places I wanted to visit. It's a very touristy complex with four restaurants and four bars, kind of similar to Mario Batali's Eataly, minus the markets. We opted for La Taperia and I thoroughly enjoyed every last moment of it. At first, I was a little worried because instead of ordering off the menu for tapas, you had to raise your hand when you heard a waiter calling out the item they were circling the restaurant with...and what if they didn't call out enough items that we wanted!? Gladly, we ended up getting everything I had my eye on except for any of the paella dishes...which was fine because I would have been too full anyway. We ordered the pan con tomate, the acorn-fed iberian shoulder ham, the iberian ham croquettes, patatas bravas, and the thin chorizo simmered in cider. I finished my meal off with Crema Catalana but of course Drew was being no fun and only had a few bites of my dessert. Everything was delicious and I was surprised that the bill came to only roughly €59 including a few glasses of beer and wine.

 

Once we figured out how to obtain our check and pay (which I still don't get how this works in Spain...does someone want to explain this to me? At every single place we went to, we waited and waited for the check though the service was good otherwise. Eventually, if we couldn't get someone's attention we would just go up to the counter to pay), we headed to the cocktail bar where I ordered the L'Aperitiu and Drew ordered El Nacional, which they lit a stick of cinnamon on fire over. I loved my drink but then I ordered El Sorbeto which was a little too strong and cold for my liking. I should have known not to order a frozen drink with a sore tooth.

By the time we were good and liquored up, the Metro had stopped running for the night. I have something against paying for cabs so I convinced Drew to walk back to our hotel which was probably about a 50 minute walk. Little did he know I duped him into taking the more scenic route so we could see the Arc de Triomf on our way back. It only made our trip 0.18 miles longer but I'm sure he still would have complained if he had known. Also, we just so happened to stumble on the Casino he wanted to check out. It took us 10 minutes to get in with paper copies of our IDs and only 5 minutes to put €10 into a slot machine and "win" €6. I was happy because we then had euro change for tips...whoop whoop!

Barcelona Day 3: Escape from Possible Peril to Gorgeous Views

Despite still being jet-lagged, we woke up bright and early so we could have breakfast before heading off to meet up for the Montserrat, Food & Wine Tour we booked. We got there at what we thought was an hour early only to find out we arrived an hour....plus a day early! Drew and I can't still agree on whose fault it was, mine or his. Regardless, Castle Experience was more than accommodating and was able to fit us on the tour that day so we didn't need to wake up extra early again the following morning.

Sidenote...have I mentioned how efficient the Metro system in Barcelona is? We never had to wait for more than 2 minutes and 45 seconds for the next metro train to arrive and the countdowns displayed were always 100% accurate. If we had been in Boston or New York, we might have arrived to the tour departure location a day late! I was truly amazed...I didn't even think it was possible for a public transportation system to run so smoothly.

Anyways, while waiting for the tour bus to arrive, I noticed a guy wearing all black clothing carrying something that looked like a kettle-bell with a wire sticking sticking out of it; almost what I would expect a bomb to look like. He walked over to a trash can right behind Las Ramblas, put it on the ground, turned around, walked away and starting playing with his cell phone. I immediately pointed it out to Drew and one of the tour guides but was unable to find a police officer after several minutes of frantically searching for one. I did see a few other people starting to examine the object so when the tour bus was ready to leave, I hopped aboard as fast as I could.

Once on the bus, I started to feel guilty that I didn't stick around until I could find an officer. However, I was praying that the tour guide was correct in that he didn't think it was anything to worry about. I also hoped that someone else would find an officer to report it to.

After what seemed like the longest one hour bus ride of my life, we arrived at the Montserrat Monastery and our tour guide spent an hour or so explaining the history of the site, showed us around and brought us into the Monastery. I'm typically not one to be impressed by religious sites but the inside was gorgeous. It almost reminded me of Hogwarts in a way.

When services were ready to start, we went back outside and were given a few hours of free time to spend how we wished. Drew and I decided to take the Funicular further up the mountain. Once at the top, we hiked up even further and I have never seen more breathtaking views in my life!

 

 

We took the funicular back down to the Monastery once we were done exploring and headed to the gift shop...because who doesn't love shopping!? I wanted to buy a few things so we got into a short line that ended up being for a liquor tasting that was just starting rather than the check out line. What perfect timing! For $2.50 each, we were able to try 4 liquors including the Catalan Creme, which is what they're known for.

At 1:30, everyone met to get back onto the tour bus and head to our next location: Oller del Mas Vineyards. We were served a delicious Catalan-style lunch at their restaurant which included bread with ham, salad, patatas bravas, fish with a tomato salsa, chicken with a buerre blanc and pinenut sauce, wine and fresh fruit.

 

After taking our time with lunch and chatting with other couples, we headed into the vineyards to hear about how their wine is made. I was happy to learn that we could pick a few grapes off the vine to taste. They were so small yet so sweet and tasty! We then made our way into a small castle on the estate to learn even more about the wine making process and sat down for a wine and cheese tasting. I typically prefer sweeter wines so I wasn't crazy about the wines served. Out of the three provided, I preferred the most expensive...go figure. I couldn't even tell you what it was. However, I did learn one interesting fact: If you hold your hand underneath a glass of wine and can see the color of your fingernails through it, it's considered a light-bodied wine. If you only see the shadow of your fingernails, it's considered medium-bodied and if you can't see your fingernails at all, it's a full-bodied wine.

 

We returned to Barcelona at around 7 pm and I was glad to see that the mysterious object near the trash can was no longer there and that nothing had happened. Phew! After stopping in a few stores, we headed back to the hotel to wash up. Drew was still hungry because he didn't enjoy the food as much as I did on our tour (only because he refuses to eat dark-meat chicken)...but I only wanted dessert, per usual. We did a lot of walking that day and were pretty tired so we chose the only place near our hotel that had both good looking dinner and dessert: Madeleine mon Amour. I know...who eats at a French place in Spain!?

Drew still claims it was the best meal he had on our trip. He ordered the smoked salmon with green salad...while I had the Crème brûlée, lemon meringue and peach with mascarpone madeleines which were absolutely divine. Sweet dreams!

Barcelona Day 2: A Few Gross Things

On the second day of our trip, (or first if you don't count time sleeping as a day), we decided to head to Las Ramblas and the accompanying area to explore. I'll have to admit that I was a little afraid after what had happened there a month prior but there were police vans blocking off the entrances to cars and plenty of officers all over the place which made me feel more secure. It's so sad that people can't go anywhere without feeling safe anymore. I really don't understand why we can't just call a worldwide truce and end all of this BS! Granted, I know it's not that simple but all of these terrible things need to stop happening.

Our first stop was to El Corté Ingles which is Barcelona's only department store. It was like a Nordstrom combined with a Sears combined with a pharmacy combined with a Williams-Sonoma combined with a supermarket. They had everything you could imagine. It was almost too overwhelming in that I had no idea what to buy and only ended up buying the one thing I forgot to pack: makeup remover wipes. How lame.

Next, we headed towards Las Ramblas. After looking at the flowers left for the victims at the opening of the street and mourning for the loss of lives, we mustered up our courage to look around. We headed towards La Boqueria to look around and saw everything from sheeps' heads to delicious juices. However, as it was almost lunchtime we decided to find somewhere to sit down and eat.

 

When we did our research to find good restaurants in advance, we didn't really think to check which neighborhoods they were in. Big mistake when you don't have 4G/LTE turned on. I heard that Plaça Reial was a cute, picturesque square with a ton of restaurants and that they were better than the restaurants right on Las Ramblas. We headed there but had no idea which restaurants were good and ended up being lured into Roma Reial. They were offering an appetizer, an entree, a dessert and sangria for only €13.50 per person. Big mistake. I ordered paella for my appetizer, which tasted okay....until I realized there was a mussel beard tossed in with the rice...so gross! The prawn was not de-veined either. I'm not sure if it's normal for places in Spain to not clean their seafood well but we didn't come across that issue anywhere else. The service was also extremely slow. Come to find out, the restaurant only had 2.5 stars on Trip Advisor. Lesson Learned: Research restaurants in the area we are headed before leaving the room.

 

After eating lunch, we headed back to the room and took another long nap. By dinner time, we were still pretty full and a little grossed out so we just wanted to grab something small. After spending a half hour browsing, we came across Las Muns which serves various Spanish inspired empanadas.

It wasn't the type of place I pictured myself eating at while in Spain but it was pretty good.

Barcelona Day 1: And We're Off!

For the past year or so, there have been some amazing deals on flights. One day while I was browsing Facebook, I saw an article about Delta/Air France having some international flights on sale. When I saw round-trip tickets to Barcelona on sale for less than $450, I jumped at the chance and booked a trip that night.

Leading up to the trip, I was a bit nervous. Normally, I have everything planned out before even booking a trip but this time, I barely even knew anything about Barcelona other than that a few friends had visited and loved it. The more I researched, the more nervous I got...would I get pick-pocketed? Is it safe after everything that's been going on in Europe? Would I like the food? Could I sit through a plane ride for that long?

I had never been on a plane for longer than 5 hours which was my biggest worry. For one, I have a fear of airplane restrooms and try to avoid them at all costs. Secondly, as some of you may know, I have fibromyalgia so sitting anywhere for more than an hour hurts like a motherf******! I asked my doctor for some medication to put me to sleep on the flight and they prescribed Xanax to me...go figure!? Unfortunately, between that and the pain medication I had for a toothache, I still couldn't fall asleep. Luckily, the pain meds helped a little and Air France had screens on the back of every seat with some good options for tv shows and movies. I ended up watching the whole first season of Big Little Lies and the flight went a lot smoother than expected.

Drew had a bunch of SPG points from a work trip he took last year and we decided to use those to stay at the Four Points Sheraton Diagonal for the first 5 nights and then The W for the last 2. The Four Points met my not-so-high expectations but it was perfect for what we needed it for. It was a 10 minute walk to the Glòries stop on the L1 Metro line, which is only 4 stops away from the Catalunya stop (one of the main hubs next to Las Ramblas and great shopping). There were also some great restaurants on Rambla del Poblenou, right next to the hotel and a shopping mall (Glòries) down the street on the way to the Glòries station. The hotel room was a clean, basic, no-frills room. We decided to do the majority of our site-seeing during our time there so there was no need to stay anywhere nicer. My only complaints were that there was no shelf in the shower to put toiletries on and no pull-out vanity mirror in the bathroom. To be fair, they did have shampoo and body wash dispensers on the wall...but I'm sure I'm not the only one that prefers to use my own stuff.

Anyways, as soon as we got to the Four Points, we showered and took a long nap. Needless to say, we pretty much wasted the day due to jet-lag. We only made it out in time for dinner at Mika Milan, which was a 2 minute walk away. We ordered 3 tapas: the goat cheese croquettes in a guava reduction, the Spanish omelette and the prawns in a plantain nest with guacamole. Okay, so maybe it wasn't the most authentic meal, but it sure was delicious.

¡Hasta luego!