Barcelona, Spain
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Andi, Tory, Aden, and I woke up in Barcelona, Spain today — the 7th day of our Sun Princess cruise. Hard to believe we’ve been on the ship for a week already!
Andi and I wanted to get a jumpstart on our day in Barcelona as this was a city we were excited to explore. Andi booked us a city walking tour beginning at 10:30am this morning, so we skipped exercising in the cruise ship’s gym, and went straight to breakfast at The Eatery.
Not sure how transportation from the port terminal would go, Andi and I decided to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the starting point of the tour. We’d heard taxis are hard to come by at the cruise port, but this wasn’t the case at all. More than a dozen taxis were lined up outside the port terminal’s doors waiting to take cruise passengers throughout the city.
Andi, Tory, Aden, and I hopped into a taxi and drove about 10 minutes to the waterfront area of Barcelona. We arrived about 30 minutes before the tour started, so the four of us walked around the streets of Barcelona’s Old Town and grabbed a coffee at Hidden Coffee Roasters.
We met our city tour guide, Armando, on the steps of Barcelona’s Central Post Office. Armando isn’t native to Barcelona, but is a former history teacher who has lived in Barcelona for the past six years. He said he loves showing visitors of Barcelona the city that welcomed him.
Our first stop was to El Cap de Barcelona sculpture located in the waterfront district. This gigantic sculpture was created by American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein for the 1992 Summer Olympics which were held in Barcelona. The sculpture represents Barcelona’s beloved connection to archtect Antoni Gaudi and the city’s love of mosaic tile work.
Armando shared with us a general overview of Barcelona’s food scene, sports, geography, and history. From this vantage point in the city, we could see Tibidabo Hill in the distance, and Armando encouraged us to go there during our visit for a fantastic overlook.
He also gave us a brief history lesson about the coat of arms displayed on the central post office building. Symbolism of the city’s connection to the sea, as well as forms of communications, are present in the architecture.
We continued walking through the streets of Barcelona’s Old Town to see some of the city’s Roman ruins. Barcelona was first founded by the Romans in the latter part of the 1st century as a “vacation residence” for veteran Roman soldiers. “Barcino,” as it was called back then, was a walled city with an estimated 1,000 residents.
After seeing so many Roman ruins throughout Portugal, Spain, and Italy, we’re well familiar with spotting the characteristic rectangular-shaped stones. The holes of this wall have been filled in over time with red bricks.
Armando also shared cultural tidbits with us, like the story of the El Caganer figurine. A caganer, which literally translates to “the pooper,” is a popular figure in Christmas nativity scenes throughout the Spanish Catalonia region. The figure is seen in a squatting position doing you-know-what with its pants around its ankles. It’s not known how this tradition came about, but it’s thought to have started sometime in the 17th or 18th century. El caganer figurine is typically hidden in Catalonian families’ Christmas nativity scenes, often set off in the corner, and it’s the job of the little kids in the family to find it. We visited a El Caganer store in Old Town Barcelona selling hundreds of these figurines. There were pop culture icons, politicians, sports stars, and more depicted in this squatting position.
Next, we visited Barcelona’s Cathedral. This church was constructed in the 13th-15th centuries and is known for its many gargoyles on the roofline. We learned that the gargoyles actually perform a function — they are decorative water spouts.
The cathedral is quite detailed and impressive. Hundreds of tourists were gathered in front of the cathedral on its steps, and several street performers were gathered there as well. Armanda warned us not to accept anything from these people unless we were willing to pay for them.
Our tour group continued walking through the streets of Barcelona toward the trendy El Born neighborhood. We passed by lots of designer boutiques, cafes, and cocktail bars as well as the renowned Picasso Museum. “Works of Picasso — before he known as Picasso,” Armando said.
We also popped into a “pintxos” bar where Armando explained how this tapas-style eatery worked. Bite-sized appetizers are placed on tiered shelves at the bar of the restaurant. Pintxos typically have layers of toast, meat, cheese, or vegetables with a toothpick stuck in the middle to hold the appetizer together. Pintxos restaurants are self-service; customers grab a plate and load up on as many of the bite-size appetizers as they’d like. At the end, the staff counts the number of toothpicks on the customer’s plate and multiplies that number by the price of the pintxos to get the total cost of the bill.
We didn’t eat at a pintxos restaurant during our city tour, but it was an interesting concept to learn about. We’ve seen tapas restaurants throughout our travels in Spain, but never pintxos!
Tory and Aden were getting unruly by this point in the tour, to the point of embarrassment. Bored of learning about Barcelona’s history, no doubt. They both regularly mess with each other, touching and poking one to annoy the other, and Andi and I usually ignore it to a point. But today, I happened to be walking by Tory as she socked Aden in the shoulder so hard I literally heard his shoulder pop. Of course, I told her she needed to knock it off & pay attention to Armando giving the city tour. Tory was instantly mad, and said that I always get mad at her when in fact, Aden pushed her into a stone wall first. With arms crossed in defiance, she stomped off down the street in Barcelona, showing no concern for the rest of the tour.
I get that learning about Barcelona isn’t high on the kids’ interest list, but Andi and I expect them to behave politely and responsibly in social settings. Andi was not pleased with their behavior, and he made his disappointment known to both kids in a dramatic scene on stone steps in a Barcelona square.
Our walking tour concluded a short time later. We thanked Armando for his information and parted ways. It was 1:00pm now, and we were all hungry. I suggested we walk back to the El Born neighborhood to find somewhere to eat for lunch, but Andi thought we could find something closer to where we were. Most restaurants don’t start lunch service until 2:00pm, so there weren’t a ton of options to choose from. We tried eating at a traditional Spanish restaurant serving a simple “plate of the day” menu, but neither Andi or I had a good vibe about it.
We left there, and tried a restaurant called Andurina instead. Based on its bar-like appearance, Andi and I didn’t have high hopes for this restaurant either, but we were all hungry and tired of looking elsewhere. The server brought us the tapas menu & Andi and I ordered a plate of fries to share, a chicken breast, fried artichokes, beef meatballs, and a potato tostada.
Within minutes, our order was brought to our table. Wow, that was fast! That never happens in Spain. Even better, the food was hot and delicious. Sure, it was tapas bar food, but it was so nice not jumping through the regular song-and-dance of long lunches.
After lunch, the four of us hopped in a cab to see the famous Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona. Our cab driver was so friendly, and spoke perfect English. He told us about his family, and life in Barcelona. Andi asked the driver to drop us off at the entrance where we could buy tickets for Sagrada Familia.
“Oh, you can only buy tickets to Sagrada Familia online. You don’t have tickets already?” our cab driver asked Andi.
Nope, we didn’t.
Andi quickly searched for tickets online as we drove toward the church and realized that tickets to Sagrada Familia were booked out through next week. Shoot! I guess we weren’t going to visit the famous Sagrada Familia church today after all. Well, go inside of the church, at least.
Visiting the Sagrada Familia Church is the top thing to do as a tourist in Barcelona. I didn’t know much more about it other than a) it’s a church, and b) it’s the masterpiece of Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi is known for his highly stylized interpretation of early 1900s Modernism. He began working on the Roman Catholic church in 1883, and continued until his death in 1926. Gaudi left detailed plans for future architects to complete his vision. Construction is expected to be completed in 2026, one hundred years after Gaudi’s death.
Even from the outside it was possible to admire some of the intricate details. Though, there’s a tall fence surrounding the entire church and security guards at each gate opening. Seeing the Sagrada Familia is a big deal in Barcelona, and unfortunately the full experience was not in the cards for our family today. Ninety-eight percent of the time, traveling with no plan and such flexibility benefits us, but sometimes we do miss out on experiences because we didn’t plan ahead. This was one such instance.
Andi, Tory, Aden, and I walked across the street to a neighboring park. It was a beautiful day in Barcelona with sunny skies and temperatures in the high 60’s. Many people filled the park’s lawn and benches soaking in the spring day. A few street performers including a bubble maker entertained kids.
What do you do when other plans fail? Get ice cream, of course. The four of us navigated our way across the street to a gelato shop where Andi, Tory, and Aden picked out treats. Andi and Aden both ordered handmade ice cream sandwiches with a big scoop of gelato sandwiched between two wafer cookies. Tory stuck with her usual scoop of chocolate in a dish.
Unfortunately, we’d cabbed away from the waterfront area to visit Sagrada Familia, so we hopped in another cab to return there. We asked the taxi driver to drop us off in the Las Ramblas neighborhood. Las Ramblas is a lively and iconic pedestrian street with music, shopping, restaurants, and street performers.
Our cab driver happened to drop us off right outside a big Sephora store and I remembered reading something about this store having a gigantic slide entrance. Tory loves all things makeup, so I asked if she wanted to check it out.
This Sephora did in fact have a giant tube slide that whizzed customers into the heart of the beauty store. We didn’t buy anything there today, but Tory and Aden had lots of fun slipping down the slide over and again. They both reported it to be FAST!
From Sephora, the four of us continued walking to Las Ramblas. The pedestrian street was packed tourists enjoying the gorgeous day.
By 4:00pm, the four of us were running out of steam. Just as we located the taxi station, Andi spotted a large open-air food market. “We gotta check it out, right?” he said, to no one in particular, as he beelined his way inside. “Why does he like these markets so much?” Tory asked me as we followed behind.
Large public markets, such as Mercat de la Bosqueria, really are cool. There’s something so electric about them as vendors sell fresh meat and produce, flowers, cheese, oils, sweets, and trinkets. In Spain, many of the vendors sell cuts of Iberian ham, often in snack-size paper cups to-go.
We even saw a sign for Nebraska beef! It always impresses me how small our world really is. At their core, people are the same wherever you go, and reminders of home are always near.
Tory and Aden saw several people walking around with chocolate-covered strawberries on a stick, and said they wanted to find some for themselves. The four of us wandered through the food stalls taking in all the sights before we eventually found the fruits stand.
What a great note to end on in Barcelona! Now, we were ready to head back to the Sun Princess ship. We hopped in a taxi outside the market and directed the driver to take us to the cruise terminal.
On the way, the taxi driver told us about an incident at the port today which caused lots of police presence and additional traffic. Apparently, 69 Bolivians arrived illegally into port on a MSC cruise ship. They were detained in Barcelona, and caused quite the back-up as police and military checked the contents of every vehicle entering and exiting the area. I was glad we had an hour of buffer time until we were due on the Sun Princess ship. We sat in traffic for at least 30 minutes waiting for our taxi to be cleared to proceed.
It was sad to see family members of the Bolivians camped out on the side of the road as we pulled up to the Sun Princess. Heartbreaking for those detained as they searched for a better life in Spain. Andi and I had a heartfelt conversation with Tory and Aden about the situation (what we knew of it, at least) and the opportunity and freedoms we have as citizens of the United States. So often, we really do take those rights for granted. Some people aren’t as lucky.
Back on the Sun Princess, the four of us changed our clothes and got ready for dinner. We decided to eat in the Horizons main dining room tonight, and had an excellent server named Augustine who took great care of our family.
After dinner, Andi, Tory, and I made our way to the Princess Arena to watch past America’s Got Talent winning ventriloquist Paul Zerdin perform. It was a really funny show.
Aden decided to ditch out on hanging with his family, and head to the Neon Grove Tweens Club on the ship. I’m glad to see he’s made so many friends this week. He’s having a great time.
We went to bed tonight tired, fed, and happy after a wonderful day in Barcelona. Tomorrow, the ship ports in Marseille, France — a new country for Tory and Aden! Should be a great time.
