Travel Journal: Barcelona, Spain

Oh hey there blog, my old friend. It’s been a while. I’ve been focused on other things in 2019, but after an amazing trip to Spain for both work and vacation, I decided it was time to dust things off and share. Never mind that its three months after the trip took place… hey, its been a full season for me!

Every two years or so, my organization holds a World Staff Conference (WSC), bringing together staff from all of our 15 offices that are located around the world. Our most recent WSC was this year in late August in Barcelona, Spain! For this trip, I also brought along my mom for a vacation after the conference was done. As usual with my travel journals I have split up my blog posts in a way that made most sense to this particular trip. Enjoy! 

Catch up on my other posts about this trip here:
Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Pals and Calella de Palafrugell, Catalonia, Spain
Palau de la Musica and the Arc de Triomf
Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
Montjuic and the Olympic Park
Gothic Quarter and the Mercat de la Boqueria
Doors of Spain
Park Güell
Montserrat

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For my first post, I just want to share a little about the trip overall and my work conference, which also gives me the opportunity to share some of my “random” photos, meaning those that don’t really fall into their own specific post 🙂

Overall, we loved Barcelona! It was a great location for a conference, which went really well. With so many colleagues around the world that I connect with frequently over email, I always love reconnecting with everyone all together in person. The opportunity to regroup and refocus is extremely important for us, as is just getting to know each other better and enjoying each other’s company. In the Communications Department, we are working on a really fun campaign for our 40th anniversary in 2020, so we also brought along some friends from our creative agency so they could meet more of our staff and get a closer look at what USW is all about. This included my friend Jodi, who is a consultant for the agency. I first met Jodi when I worked for Kansas Pork right out of college, and I am so happy that we have been able to reconnect recently. Jodi also joined my Mom and I for a few days of vacation.

A few thoughts and memories about our overall experience…

• Leading up to the trip, I don’t think anyone I spoke to had anything bad to say about their own experiences in Barcelona. From what we read online, there was some concern about pick-pocketing, theft, etc. We witnessed the aftermath of someone realizing they had been pick-pocketed once, and there was one time that we felt a little uneasy while we were sitting for a long time waiting for an outdoor show, but overall, we followed all of the standard safety tips and tricks and felt really safe.
• Neither my Mom nor I speak Spanish, just a few common phrases here and there, but we did not have any trouble overall with the language barrier.
• For the conference, we were obviously at a hotel, but for the vacation part of the trip, we booked a rental through VRBO, and other than an early morning that involved me yelling at the washer and dryer that we couldn’t figure out… we were so happy with our choice! I did a lot of research on location and rental options and chose an adorable little studio apartment that was very central to a lot of what we wanted to visit, including the La Sagrada Familia, which was just two blocks away. In my opinion, VRBO and AirBnb is the way to go, at least in Europe. It was very affordable for what we got and just gave us the space to spread out and relax a bit more than a standard hotel allows.
• Barcelona was very walkable (granted, we really like to walk) and really easy to navigate. At first, I used a paper map of the city that I snagged from my conference hotel and then just used Google Maps on my phone once I got a general idea of the city’s layout. Before leaving, I had done my research on using the city’s Metro, but we never ended up feeling like we needed it. There are also taxis on virtually EVERY corner, so whenever we were in a time crunch or tired of walking we hopped in one for pretty cheap.
• This might be an unpopular opinion, or maybe I just didn’t go to the right places (I promise we mostly ate at non-tourist trap places), but I was a little underwhelmed by the food, especially how excited I was for all the tapas. Don’t get me wrong; I’d still probably give it a B+ overall, but I felt like our choices quickly became repetitive, and I only had three or four meals that I was still thinking about well after the fact.
• I think we were there at a good time of year. The weather was great, and the crowds weren’t too bad most of the time.
• I had read quite a bit about the fact that before the Summer Olympics came to Barcelona in 1992, the city wasn’t a huge tourist destination. But then afterward, it became one of the top European destinations, and there have been influxes of anti-tourism movements over the years. Obviously, I can’t speak to a local’s perspective of the impact of tourism, but I thought Barcelona was a very clean and friendly city that is very proud of its history and culture. I loved learning that because of Barcelona’s unique location, the area’s specific micro-culture, including religion, food, architecture, and more, is the result of a variety of influences from other parts of Western Europe and North Africa.
• This last comment will be very specific to my mom and I, but last year around this same time we were on a family vacation to Italy where we were hopping from city to city every 1 to 3 days. For OBVIOUS reasons, staying in one city for 11 days creates a much different experience because we had more time to relax and really get to know Barcelona. I don’t know that either of us would say that we prefer one experience over the other, because they were both amazing trips and different in other ways besides timing. For me, I think it just made me appreciate both experiences a bit more… and definitely makes me want to go back to Italy and take more time on some of my favorite parts of that trip.

This was our best meal! Ciudad Condal came highly recommended by many, so we decided to let the waiter bring out what he thought was best for the group. I definitely tried some strange things that I wasn’t a fan of, but this was such a fun evening together.

Las Ramblas is Barcelona’s main strip through the city. A lot of my research told me to just avoid it since it is tourist central, but we actually really enjoyed it.

Many of the streets in Barcelona are split down the middle with a center island, which definitely helps with foot traffic congestion. Most of the restaurants on those streets actually have the majority of their seating out on these islands, which I really enjoyed because it made people-watching super easy.

Since people came to the conference from all over the world, some of us arrived a day or so earlier than others. For those early arrivals, we had the opportunity to take a half-day trip out of the city to the Jean Leon Winery, where we learned about its history, experienced Spanish wine country, and of course did a tasting!

At the main building, they had a small plot with a different type of grape in each row, and we were allowed to go through and pick and eat them. As a wine lover and an ag kid, it was fun to compare each one with what I know the final product will taste like and apply some of what I learned in a class in college about viticulture.

This indoor food court, El Nacional, was just two blocks from where we stayed for the conference. We went here with a large group for lunch one day, but we thought it was so pretty that we returned later for a snack and more time to walk around.

“Pan con tomate” is frequently served with meals here or included as an appetizer on the menu, which I was a big fan of. However, this was the one and only time that it was served to us, not prepped and ready to eat. So, of course, I was THAT TOURIST that did it wrong… I started slicing up one of the tomatoes (with a butter knife, haha) so I could eat pieces of it with the bread, but the waiter quickly came over, and kind of scolded me before he explained that you cut the tomato in half and then squeeze and scrape the tomato across the bread, and finish with drizzling oil and salt over the top. Lesson learned, be better than me, friends.

I try to visit local markets in every country I travel to, and after visiting an amazing flower market in Thailand, I’ve tried to visit markets with flowers if I can find one. (Note: in case you are new or somehow don’t know this about me — my family has owned a flower shop for 30+ years.) So, for this trip, I did some research and really thought I found one with flowers, but instead, it was just a really large flower shop that was a block away from the actual market. Regardless, my mom loved it, and it was both fun and slightly embarrassing to watch her observe the differences in floral arrangements in the United States and then proceed to take pictures of everything when we really probably weren’t supposed to.

I didn’t include any of the photos because they all were pretty dark, but my mom and I also spent a few hours at the Aquarium Barcelona. It was on our last afternoon and we were pretty tired and decided that a visit there would be a bit more relaxed than some of our other options. It might seem like a super typical tourist thing to do or more for families with small children, but we really enjoyed it. It has the only Oceanarium and the largest collection of Mediterranean sea life in Europe. It also randomly has a penguin exhibit which I made my Mom sit and watch with me for way longer than a 28-year-old should probably want to 🙂

Ok, that’s it for my random intro post, though I am sure as I work my way through the rest of my planned post, I am going to think of other notes to add to this post about our overall trip. I’ll be back tomorrow with Part One of a fun day trip we took out of the city and up the Costa Brava.

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And just for fun, here are some of my other past Travel Journal posts:

Italy -Six Day Self-Guided Hike, Rome, Venice, Florence and More
Nashville, Tennessee – Girls Weekend
London, England
Estes Park, Colorado
Thailand and the Philippines
Tumon Bay, Guam
New York City – Girls Weekend
Lake Tahoe, Nevada
Antigua, Guatemala