Life of the Mayers: Spain: Barcelona

With an all too early train departure time, we found our way out of San Sebastian and on to Barcelona for the final city of our trip. It was an awesome five hours on the train cruising through awesome landscapes of vibrant green mountains (remember, we live in the desert, so all of the color was like technicolor for us!), vast river valleys, terraced farm lands, and rocky sand fields.

So we have now visited most of the major cities in Spain, between this one and a trip with did a few years ago. Barcelona sealed the deal that Spain is one of my favorite countries in the entire world.
The people. The history. The culture. The food. Just the lifestyle and feeling felt like slipping much loved hoodie.

Now let's take a walk around the city. This city is meant to be navigated on foot!

Mercado under revamp

The city was in the midst of an afternoon with sporadic rain showers, so we were bouncing in an out of places to avoid the rain drops.

La Fabrica Empanadas:

They

were

DAMN

TASTY!

Empanadas!!!!

Somehow we narrowed it down to a sample of only four!

One of the best surprises was a ramen and craft beer restaurant that we happened across: Grasshopper Ramen Bar. It was incredible. It is a small place, so I highly recommend going off peak meals times, or be willing to wait. Don't get me wrong, it is COMPLETELY worth the wait!

Grasshopper Ramen Bar: Hello ramen, my belly is super excited to have found you!

Grasshopper Ramen Bar:

We just looked! Surprise! We did NOT buy and sample something!

Local mercado

Seafood department

A craft beer microbrewery?!?! Should we stop? Haha, like there was even a real decision to be made with the man that I am married to. But this place is a good one: Garage Beer Company.

Garage Beer Company

So....disclaimer....you are going to see a few picture of random buildings. If you think it is too many, just imagine how many pictures I must have taken, as what I have selected to post is an extremely small portion of the apartment buildings that I fell obsessively in love with. Barcelona is a city filled with absolutely gorgeous architecture and detail in their buildings. Everything just feels elegant and classic. I would love to live in any of them.

Barcelona is a city for socializing over fine libations. One of our favorites was Brew Dog. It is an international chain that specializes in selling craft beers from all over the world.

Brew Dog

Brew Dog: A bar with craft beer flights and battleship...Adam's perfect place!

I would LOVE to live here!

Or here...

Ok....here....too many incredible options!

One of the places that all of the tour books tell you to visit is the Casa Batllo, designed by Antoni Gaudi (who designed the Segrada Familia - the NEXT post of the this blog). Honestly, we did not visit this place, nor did we really have any interest in it. It was enough just to walk by and see it, and with the throngs of people that were packed around it (camera is strategically high to keep them out of the frame), it was more than pleasing to pass by and not deal with it. It really is a neat building though. If in the city, it is worth a walk by...but I don't feel that we missed out on anything.