GR8 2CU BCN

Hard to believe, but for all our visits to Spain, we had not made the trip to Barcelona (BCN, as the hipsters call it). Madrid (twice), Malaga, Toledo and plenty in between, but not Barcelona. We decided it was high time to check out Spain's second city after hearing many friends (even Madrileños) gasp in disbelief and exclaim 'What do you mean, you've never been to Barcelona??'. 

Instead of our usual two weeks of sun, sea, sand and sodoku, we booked two city breaks back to back for our latest fortnight away. Crossing the Iberian peninsula from coast to coast, we first stayed one week in the Portuguese capital and now it was time for a week in the Catalonian capital. 

We flew from Lisbon direct to Barcelona aboard easyJet; the flight itself only took about an hour and a half, but the time difference added an hour to the journey according to my watch. At Barcelona airport we headed to the train station and waited about 20 minutes for the next connection. The train took about a half hour to reach one of the main central stations, Sants. Here we had to catch the metro for two stops, change and take another metro line a couple more stops before finally coming up for air and walking about five minutes to our accommodation. 

All in all, it was quite a hike, but it was a doddle thanks to Google Maps. What did people do before Streetview? Get mugged in dark alleys while wandering around lost with an upside-down paper map in their hands, that's what.

Instead of staying in a hotel or hostel, for the first time we booked city centre holiday apartments in both Lisbon and Barcelona. Unlike in Lisbon, where we had to wait for the owner to show up and let us in, the agent in Barcelona gave us a code for entering the apartment building so we could open a small safe that had our keys. In Lisbon, we stayed on the top two floors of a 17thC whitewashed building surrounded by cobbled lanes and stepped streets; here in Barcelona we were on the fifth floor of a purpose-built block of flats alongside a busy arterial road. Thankfully we had packed earplugs!

Despite the traffic buzzing outside, Barcelona felt sophisticated and civilised from the second we emerged from the metro stop. If you look at a map of Barcelona, you'll notice two contrasting features: a dense tangle of alleyways in the old town near the harbour surrounded by a vast grid of streets that defines most of the rest of the city. This is the Eixample (Catalan for 'extension'), a fine specimen of modern urban planning. 

Each city block in the Eixample has had its corners rounded off which makes each intersection feel like a town square. I wonder if the city planners were inspired by how wall tiles fit together?

Buildings are tall, but set back from the street and shaded by trees. The ground floors house shops and eateries, while there are large interior courtyards and gardens at the heart of each city block. But enough with the urban planning lesson, how about something to eat? 

We found a small grocery store right around the corner where everything looked nice, as it does when you're shopping on an empty stomach. Back at the flat, we devoured what I later determined was a bag of DIET crisps. Thus fortified, we set out to see what we could do about hooking our laptop up to the interwebs.

This was the first trip abroad with our new laptop. Internet access was not available where we were staying in Lisbon, so I had gone to a Vodafone shop in Lisbon and bought a USB dongle with 1G of data for €30. On the next to last day before leaving Lisbon (after nearly a week of emails, Facebook updates and photo uploads), we got a warning message saying all our data allowance was gone. No big deal, it was time to pack for Barcelona anyway. 

Once in Barcelona the staff at the Vodafone store shrugged their shoulders and said we were unable to buy more data from them; being bought in Lisbon meant the dongle was tied to Portugal's network. Despite buying it from a global corporation in the borderless EU, my shiny new dongle was now worthless, dang it. I was incandescent with righteous rage and spat out an appropriate word: basura. Trash!

We decided to drown our troubles and find ourselves a bite to eat. Luckily we weren't far from a place I had picked out from the guidebook and even better we didn't have to hang around for a table when we did find La Bodegueta ('the little wine cellar'). At the front they sell wine, oil and other goodies over a deli counter while at the back they have a kitchen churning out all sorts of little plates of hot food and cold cuts. We went for the obligatory patatas bravas (potato wedges served with both a garlicky mayonnaise and spicy salsa), a slab of blue cheese, a plate of sliced cured ham, a bowl of olives and several slices of toasted baguette doused in olive oil and plastered with tomato paste. Cava is the local sparkling wine, the champagne of Spain, served very cold in tall frosty flutes. We had two each; with all food, the bill came to €37. A tasty way to end our first day in Barcelona! Click back next time as we start to explore the city properly.