My Staycation in Barcelona

I have been lucky enough to spend most of my weekends abroad traveling to different cities and countries. Some of my highlights have been London, Amsterdam, Venice and Florence. However, this past weekend my roommate and I decided to stay in our home city, Barcelona, and discover what the city has to offer. Simply spending the weekend in our host country ended up being the best weekend of my semester. My roommate and I treated our stayaction as if it were a real trip, and made an itinerary (more of a bucket list) at the beginning of the week of everything we had been wanting to do all semester but had been too busy to get to because of school and traveling.

First, we started with restaurants. During the week, we always make an effort to cook rather than eat out, so we had been adding to a long list of places we were eager to try. The list included a local joint near our apartment, Firebug (ended up being AMAZING), a place my roommate’s teacher told us is, “The Best Pizza in Barcelona” at Da Micheles (also amazing and actually the pizza from the movie Eat Pray Love), an Italian restaurant on the square in the gothic quarter with the most lively atmosphere and unbelievable Gnocchi called Rosinni, and Surf House for nachos, literally right on the sand at the beach. The food we got to try topped all restaurants we had been to on our weekend trips and the best part was that they were all within walking or metro distance from our apartment.

The next portion of our list was made up of sites and activities. There was a home FC Barcelona game and we bought tickets the second we knew we were staying for the weekend because this had been a priority of ours all semester. We went to a little souvenir shop in the gothic quarter after dinner the night before and bought jerseys, hats, and scarves and clearly looked like the most obnoxious fans there. Another site we got to see was Casa Batlló, a house designed by Gaudi on Passig de Gracia. It was only $30 to go inside and get an audio tour and it was so cool to see and something we had been talking about doing for a while. It took about an hour and fit perfectly into our schedule before our dinner at Da Micheles. The last big site we saw was heading up to Montjuïc. On Montjuïc, you can find the Olympic stadium that housed the 1992 summer Olympics, the National Art Museum, and cable cars to head higher up the mountain.

Another item on our list, which seems simple, was to just walk around and experience the city. Barcelona is such a big city that even after 2 months, I still feel as though I have not seen half of it. We spent a few hours one day walking through the gothic quarter and El Born, which are the old coble stone streets filled with little shops, restaurants and live music. We also spent a portion of a day walking down the beach and sitting on the rocks at the edge of the water.

Traveling is such an amazing opportunity and I have loved every city I have been to, but after my weekend I have realized there truly is nothing like exploring around your own home (and being able to sleep in on a Sunday and not board a plane was pretty great too.)