• NOTE: This post is based on my original blog entry.

Day 2
Unlike last year’s blister-inducing walking marathons, I had gel insoles this year. Much less painful. First and foremost, Air France sucks. Massive nuts. I hate you Air France. Some notes from this latest European outing…

  • Euros are really ugly.
  • There aren’t that many Starbucks. Color me impressed.
  • All the Spanish I learned in high school was of little use. Sorry Mrs. Thayer.
  • Air France sucks.

We nearly missed our connecting flight to Barcelona in Paris, but our luggage wasn’t so lucky. So after arriving at our hotel, we were dead tired and without our stuff. Scratch day one right there. Day two we spent roaming La Rambla, the Bari Gotic, Port Vell, Mare Magnum, the old Roman Walls, the Liceu Theater, and the Museu d’Història de la Ciutat.

Day 3
First on our agenda was La Sagrada Familia in Eixample. We had a bit of a spat while in La Sagrada Familia and ended up splitting for the rest of the day. Oh well…third day of the trip; I suppose that’s better than I anticipated. After finishing up La Sagrada and splitting, I headed over to Casa Mila (La Pedrera). I didn’t feel like waiting in line to get in, so I snapped some photos and continued on down the Passeig de Gracia and chilled out at the Placa de Catalunya, then headed to the Richard Meier-designed MACBA, hung around the area, checked out an MVRDV exhibit nearby, chilled out at a small cafe called C3BAR, then headed back down to Port Vell for some night photography.

Day 4 – New Year’s Eve
We made pretty good use of New Year’s Eve, heading straight to Montjuic in the morning to see Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, the Palau Nacional and the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, and the Font Magica firing up at sundown. We headed back to the hotel afterwards before catching a last minute bus back out for New Year’s celebrations along La Rambla. New Year’s celebrations in Barcelona are akin to riots…with alcohol. So yea, my camera was left in the hotel room (I did bring my little Canon Elph though). We looked around for new year’s fun after midnight, and everybody seemed to be headed to Mare Magnum (there were some bars and stuff on the top floor), but we couldn’t bring ourselves to club it up in a mall. Call it prejudices. So we had late night foodage and headed back to the hotel afterwards

Day 5 – New Year’s Day
We had a late start to the day, sleeping in a bit. We figured most of the stores and restaurants wouldn’t be open anyway, so we just slept until whenever we felt like getting up. When we did finally make our way outta our hotel, we continued our Montjuic romp, though by the time we started our way up to the castle the sun was already setting. So we caught a bus back down the mountain instead that took us back to the Plaça de Catalunya. The weather was meh too, so we looked for a place to eat. Many of the restaurants were closed new year’s day, so we ate at some Spanish fast food joint. After we finished, my travel buddy decides to up and disappear on me. So I’m like…ok, that’s super. I wasn’t down with heading back to the hotel just yet, so I trek’d on without her. I made my way back to the plaça and took some night shots, then headed down to Born, wandered over to the edge of the Parc de la Ciutadella, caught the subway down to Port Olimpic, took some pics of the giant Gehry peix, then chilled out the rest of the night at this little crepes shop underneath the fish. I have no idea what the name of the place was, but they had a double-decker bus (might’ve been a British Roadmaster) parked inside their shop and converted into their kitchen. Cool place. (thank you modern-day Google Maps! it was Crêperie Bretonne Annaíck and it’s still around)

I slept late the next day again (the last day of our trip) and never even made it out the door, instead hanging around the hotel neighborhood, munching on prosciutto, chocolate pudding, and a bottle of Fanta. The following day, Air France mucked our flight again, we missed our connecting flight to JFK, hung around Charles du Gaulle Airport (not the nice terminal, one of the boring terminals) for about an hour and a half, then got to catch a nice flight sandwiched between multiple sets of loud babies.