Hello all and happy 2025! I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday season and a good start to 2025. I thought I would sit down and write a bit about how my family and I spent our holidays. We did two fabulous trips, one to Barcelona and one to Hawaii, and I wanted to share about our experiences and of course the amazing architecture we saw. The recaps of these trips will be broken down into a few different posts as we saw and did so much. I am starting with the first trip we took to Barcelona and this post will focus on what we did. The next post will focus more on the architecture we saw and will be a little more educational.
Our trip to Barcelona was just my husband, myself and our two girls; Norman got left happily at home. Our daughters are in high school and college and are both good travelers, so they were very excited for this trip. It was the first time that we had all gone to Spain, but both my husband and eldest daughter speak Spanish very well and most Spanish people speak beautiful English so we had no issues in terms of language.
We landed early on Christmas Eve and then drove to the hotel. We were lucky to have had an early check in at our hotel, and were able to freshen up before heading out to start to explore.
On Christmas Eve, we did not make any specific plans, as I was unsure on how we would be doing after traveling, but we ended up having lots of fun. We went to La Rambla first. La Rambla is in the Gothic Quarter of the city and was filled with lots of shops and restaurants. One area of La Rambla that we absolutely loved was the Mercat de La Boqueria. This was probably our favorite thing about the first day. My husband loves to cook, and exploring food markets is one of his favorite activities when we go aboard. We were able to get a little lunch of Iberian ham and roasted potatoes. I personally enjoyed getting to see all the different types of food that were for sale. It was crowded when we went, but I appreciated that it seemed to mostly be Barcelona locals who were buying things for Christmas dinner.
After we finished at the market, we started to walk towards the restaurant where I had made a reservation for Christmas Eve dinner. As we walked through the neighborhoods we came across the Barcelona Cathedral! We were not planning on seeing it that day, but greatly enjoyed getting to explore the outside of the cathedral.
Once I had had my fill of examining the cathedral, we finished our short walk to the restaurant. For the first night we went to La Barra del 7 Portes. It is an offshoot of 7 Portes which is a very nice restaurant in Barcelona, and serves the same dishes in a smaller format. We sampled a few different dishes but we really enjoyed the paella here, which had a wonderful combination of vegetables, seafood and meat. Afterwards, we went back to our hotel to sleep off the last of our jet lag.
The next morning was Christmas, and there was less things open then any other time of our visit, so we had a nice slow morning before heading out. We went to La Sagrada Familia. Unfortunately, we were unable to get tickets for any point of our trip, so if you want to visit, I highly recommend to get tickets in advance. However because it was Christmas Day, we were able to attend Mass in the crypt! It was in Catalan, but it was a very cool experience. Afterwards, we walked around the neighborhood. My eldest daughter was very impressed with herself for ordering some coffee and pastries for us entirely in Spanish.
Afterwards, we went back to the hotel to chill and have cocktail hour before heading to dinner. We went to Cera 23, which we enjoyed. Our favorite items were the tomato tartare and the burrata that we got for our appetizers.
For December 26th, we went to the Barcelona History Museum. We went through most of the exhibits in the main branch of the museum which is located in the Gothic Quarter. This was a really cool museum. One of the exhibits we went through explained the recent history of Barcelona and the Catalan region. We enjoyed this as we felt it helped provide a broader understanding of the formation and political structure of the area. The coolest exhibit we saw was the Roman ruins. This ruins are the largest Roman ruins outside of Rome. It was interesting, we started by the original wall of Barcelona and wound our way up into the baptistery of the first Barcelona Cathedral and the existing palace. You are on elevated platforms, but otherwise you are in the middle of the ruins of Roman Barcelona. Both of my girls said they could have spent many more time down there just exploring. While we loved everything at the museum, the Roman ruins were our family's favorite.
Once we had had our fill of ruins, we stopped for some coffee and pastries, and then started to walk around the Gothic Quarter. We stumbled upon an espadrilles shop, where my daughters and I each bought a few pairs. They are all handmade in Spain, and so it is considerably cheaper to buy nice espadrilles there than it is back home. We enjoy doing useful souvenirs, so these are perfect. In the week and a half since we have been back, we have all already worn our espadrilles multiple times. Once we had made our all important shoe purchases, we headed back to the hotel to do some dinner there, and had an early night in.
The next morning, we were up bright and early to head to the Picasso Museum! My younger daughter and I are very into art so we were excited to start what I think of as the art portion of our trip! They had an exhibit about Calatan artists from the turn of the last century, which was enlightening. We then explored the rest of museum which held the majority of their Picasso collection.
We then visited another church, called Basilica de Santa Maria del Mar. It was located in the Gothic Quarter, not far from the Picasso Museum. This was my favorite of the churches we visited and I can't wait to discuss the architecture of it in my next post, which will focus more on the architecture we saw. Next, my daughters and I explored the beach of the Mediterranean which was right next to our hotel.
For dinner, we went to a tapas restaurant called Perikete. We had lots of small plates, with seafood, ham, potatoes and more. It was a fun spot with a multitude of hams hanging from the ceiling.
The next day, our last full day in Barcelona, we got up and headed towards the Park Guell. Unfortunately, they were also sold out of tickets, but we were able to wander the neighborhood, which had a wonderful view of the city and the Mediterranean Sea. We then headed back into the city central to buy some spices before our next planned activity.
In the afternoon, we went to the Miro Museum. This was my family's favorite art museum! It was a beautiful building filled with wonderful art. It is not massive but has lots of different pieces by Miro. It was a mid century modern building that had been built spefically to be a museum of Miro's work. It was well done, and most signs were in Spanish, Catalan and English. I enjoyed the views of the city that the museum's location provided and I would happily go back just to explore the art even more. One of our favorite pieces was a sculpture that we felt captures the essence of Norm, our big yellow dog.
Later that evening, we went to Can Fisher. It was recommended to us, and we are so happy we went. It is right on the beach and we looked out on to the sea while we ate. My husband and younger daughter got sole, and my older daughter and I split a veggie paella. We also got appetizers which were awesome. It was our favorite restaurant of the trip, but I would return to any of them in a heartbeat.
We are so happy that we went to Barcelona and throughly enjoyed ourselves. I hope you enjoyed reading about the best and unforgettable highlights of our Barcelona trip! Make sure to watch our blog feed for an upcoming post about all of the architecture we saw in Barcelona!
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