It’s been a month ago but in March I went to Barcelona for a week to spend some time with my sweet gf Ana. 🙂 It was the first time flying again after the my vacation to New York and it was an interesting experience to say the least. It was roughly 3 months after the dramatic and weird flight NW253 and though I was kind of nervous flying again it wasn’t too bad. But I think the following factors had to do with it. First of all it was a flight within Europe and last the other passengers were mostly Dutch. It was an early flight and I had to get up early again, hmm I have this habit of taking early flights appearantly.
Anyway, I had to be at the airport at 6am since my flight was leaving at 7am. The baggage drop off went smoothly and after passing through customs I was off to the gate. My flight left on schedule and I arrived at Barcelona airport around 9am. Ana landed at Barcelona at 8am and was waiting for me to exit at arrivals. As I said, flying wasn’t too bad. The only thing that was unpleasant was the moment of landing. The experiences of flight NW253 still came back and I was pretty anxious when we touched down at Barcelona airport. But other than that part I had no problems with flying, I guess the landings will be a bit uncomfortable for me the next few flights but that should be fine in a few more flights.
After meeting my sweetheart we were off to the bus which would take us to the city where we would have to tranfer to the subway. We got at the hotel after an hour of travelling and checked in. Since our room wasn’t ready yet we dropped our luggage and went for a stroll and some lunch at Glories. Our hotel was a 10 minute walk from here and a 15 minute walk from Sagrada Familia. After a bite to eat and a chillaxing sit at Starbucks we went back to the hotel to drop our stuff at the room and were off to downtown for dinner and a quick stroll in Passeig de Gracia.
Saturday and sunday we walked around in the Catalunya, La Rambla, Mercat de la Boqueria, Barrio Gothic and El Born area. The weather wasn’t that warm those days but it was dry and sunny. On monday we were in for a big surprise, in the morning it was raining lightly and cloudy so we decided to take it nice and easy and do indoor stuff. So we were off to La Rambla for lunch and then off to the aquarium where we walked around for a bit. After getting out of the aquarium we was it was snowing lightly so we decided to stroll around in the shopping mall next to the aquarium hoping it would stop snowing by the time we were done. Alas it didn’t and it started snowing harder. Yep we thought to have escaped the cold and snowy weather to end up in … yep snowy weather in Barcelona of all places O_o.
Luckily for us it only snowed on monday, well in Barcelona that is, because the next day it was sunny but cold and the only thing that was a reminder of the heavy snowfall on monday were the snowmen that were scattered around here and there. Tuesday was Gaudi day and we did all the touristic stuff that had to do with Gaudi. We visited Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, Casa Mila (aka La Pedrera), Casa Batllo. We had a lot of luck with the sunny weather and sunset when we were on the roof of Casa Mila. The other places we did the remainder of our vacation were Tibodabo, which was ok. The view is very nice but there’s nothing to do there. And ofcourse we did the Montjiuc area and visited Camp Nou.
It was a very nice vacation, except for that one day of snow, and I can really recommend Barcelona to all of you. I miss the fresh coconut juice at La Boqueria and nice food everywhere. Next time I visit I’ll need to do some more excursions outside of Barcelona. We didn’t manage to see the Dali village/museum and Montserrat. But there’s always a next time, and then probably also try so go to Madrid and Valencia. Anway, the flight back to Amsterdam was nice since Ana was flying to NY with a transfer in Amsterdam. So we flew back to Amsterdam together. At schiphol we had to go our seperate ways, Ana to catch her connecting flight and me to go get my luggage and go home. Can’t wait till July since Ana will be coming to Dutchland for a whole week. 🙂 But in the meantime I’ll cherish the memories of our vacation in Barcelona.
If you’re curious, pictures can be found here: Barcelona vacation March 2010
See you at the next update.