Last week I had a few days on a city break in Barcelona. I booked it just before Christmas – I was looking online at various city breaks, and saw that the price of hotels were much cheaper at the beginning of January than any other time, so I went for it! It’s a place I’ve been keen to visit… I’ve been there once before for work back in 2018 (for less than 24 hours!), but didn’t really see any of the city because we were filming in the marina on the evening, and then we left on a road-trip early the next morning.
Anyway, I flew out from Manchester early last Sunday, and after taking the metro from the airport, was in central Barcelona for just after noon!
Arc de Triomf.
I was staying in the Born district of the city, right next to the Arc de Triomf and Ciutadella Park, so that was the first touristy landmark I got to see on my way to my hotel. I was staying at the Catalonia Born, which is a 4-star hotel in a really good location for getting around the city. It was really nice, and luckily they let me check in a couple of hours early so I could dump my bags and go exploring on the afternoon.
I walked down past the Arc de Triomf and had a quick look around the park, and then decided to take a bit of a tour around the city on the metro, taking in a few of the touristy areas I wouldn’t have a chance to visit during the rest of my week. The underground system in Barcelona is really good, and gets you pretty close to where-ever you want to go. I’d bought a 4 day ticket which allowed me to use all public transport, so it was so easy to get around.
Casa Batlló.
As well as checking out some more general areas, I went and had a look at a couple of the famous buildings designed by Antoni Gaudí – Casa Milà and Casa Batlló. I didn’t have time to go into either of them, but they looked pretty cool from the outside, especially Casa Batlló.