Barcelona is undoubtedly beautiful. The streets, parks and buildings we saw were gorgeous, especially in the sunshine. I especially loved the Antoni Gaudi works all over the city - it's no wonder his designs are so popular and have become a bit of a symbol for Barcelona! (Google tells me today is his birthday, so happy birthday, you genius!) Park Güell in particular blew me away with its mosaics and views over the city. Montjuïc park is also amazing, full of stuff to see and do, even if we thought our legs were going to fall off after our day there. The cable cars give glorious views, just don't go if you're scared of heights!
La Boqueria food market was a lovely surprise. It's right off La Rambla and was swarming with people when we visited on Saturday. Food paradise! Stalls were piled high with fruit, meat, nuts... I just had to buy a fruit salad and "tutti fruiti" juice (cherries, orange and pineapple), perfect healthy food for the hot weather! I could probably have spent much longer wandering around in there but we had to get back to our mission of finding a police station - more on that later - so we left before we got too distracted and started salivating. I think we could probably have splashed out more food-wise, we mostly ate at cheap cafés, but we did go to a lovely restaurant one night and found it wasn't expensive at all. Thanks to it being the night of Sant Joan, a huge deal in Barcelona, we got a three course meal with a beer for £16 euros each, and those portions were generous. I had a goat's cheese salad with walnuts and raisins, then cod in tomato and garlic sauce with beans and another fruit salad for dessert. All delicious, I want to try and copy the salad at home! Even in cafés we found some good food among the other more disappointing options, I had a great Mallorcan sausage sandwich (with crispy toasted bread, yum) for lunch one day, so I think as far as cafés go it's probably just your luck.
By chance, we found ourselves in Barcelona on the night of Sant Joan festivities. It's an old Christian festival celebrating John the Baptist, and it seems to have taken on a life of its own there. After our lovely dinner we wandered around the old town finding bars, including a rock bar in the Gothic Quarter that seems to have just been called Tequila and sold "mortal shots" named after musicians who died young... bit weird, but hey, they played The Clash for me! Then we grabbed a taxi to a beach club our hostel had got us free entry to. It was absolutely amazing. The only time I've experienced such a party atmosphere at home was on Hogmanay. The club was packed and we could walk out the back door straight onto a beach full of young happy drunk Catalans with bonfires. It was like nothing I've ever experienced. If you want to go to Barcelona, go on this night. Lots of things shut down the next day, but it's totally worth it for the night before.
As much as we enjoyed our holiday, it was definitely marred by two things, one of which we'd been warned about and one we did not see coming. On the first night, Emma's phone was stolen as we were eating. Almost everyone I'd told about Barcelona warned me about pickpocketing but I didn't expect it to happen so quickly! Spending our second afternoon in a police station wasn't the nicest holiday experience, even if the policeman writing the report was rather attractive. The second was harassment and catcalling on the streets. As young women we experienced constant obvious staring, as well as comments and gestures being thrown our way from men, mostly middle aged but a few younger ones too. These ranged from the annoying but ultimately harmless "hey sexy, wow, so white!" to men beckoning us to sit near them or in one case, on their knees. I did quite a bit of reading up on Barcelona before we went and never found anything about this, and now having googled it most of the websites I've found said that it was no worse than any other European city. But it was certainly worse than anything I've ever experienced, as a European who has travelled to a few major cities. We found ourselves very uncomfortable walking around at night. It was truly bizarre and a little frightening. I know if I was to return to Barcelona I'd want to travel with some guys because I really don't want to experience something like this again.
So all in all, I'm not sure what I thought of Barcelona. Beautiful and not at all hectic for a big city, it also didn't feel very safe for us at times. Perhaps that's to be expected everywhere as a tourist, but I definitely didn't feel so vulnerable in Berlin or even Paris. I'd go back, but as a young woman I'd want to go with male friends and I'd probably try and wear clothes that covered my legs at least (which I did, mostly, but Emma had only brought shorts and dresses and felt twice as uncomfortable as I did). I'm trying not to let our bad experiences ruin my opinion of such a cool city, though, and it was lovely to get some sunshine for a change!
I'll be posting again soon cause I've had some big news about my year abroad and I'm so excited to finally get more organised! So til then, hope you're all enjoying your summers!
