February 2020
From Cologne I flew to Valencia for two nights before three in Barcelona. Spain is one of my favorite countries. It has great food, beautiful architecture, and a peaceful pace of life. For a time it was the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world and you can still enjoy its splendor today.
Kids were playing soccer on the roof of the building to the right.
This excellent park used to be a river, now it has dried up and is a great path for running, with playgrounds and activities spread throughout.
This was one of my more enjoyable morning runs.
Yes, I climbed it.
One of my favorite aspects of Valencia was the great street art covering the city.
The city of Arts and Sciences comes at the end of the river park and is a walk well worth it. These buildings serve as a performing arts center and a museum. We went a little further to the Aquarium.
Great Aquarium, mostly underground.
Valencia has the largest beaches I have ever seen, I was already well into the beach when I took this picture.
Valencia is a wonderful city and after a great three days it was time for a highly anticipated trip to Barcelona. We took a peaceful three hour train ride up the coast and arrived to one of the the most popular destination in Europe on a beautiful day. After dropping off our bags we headed to the Gothic Quarter for a walk around.
Cozy cats.
Put money in Ferrari and came back with food.
Like the dog parking.
Love the architecture of Gaudi. This is Casa Batllo and had a nice view of it from the hotel balcony.
Night and day. Gaudi is an incredible architect from the early 1900’s. He was largely inspired by nature and you did not see many straight lines in his works. Among his many marvels include several houses, Park Guell, and La Sagrada Familia, which he devoted the final twelve years of his life to and is still under construction almost one hundred year later.
Park Guell is incredible. Heads up, you want to buy a ticket in advance to get into the central part.
Was playing with this toy a lot.
A view of Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea.
La Sagrada Familia is perhaps Gaudi’s greatest work. Unlike any cathedral I have seen anywhere else.
100 years later and it is still under construction, these are the final plans.
Incredible detail on the Rose Door.
The columns look like trees.
If you do go to Barcelona, go to the hospital, seriously. Saint Pau hospital is amazing. It was one of the premier hospitals in the world in the early to mid 1900’s.
What a nice place to be sick.
You can see La Sagrada in the background.
Had a great dinner at El National. This location has seven restaurants inside, we chose seafood.
I chose red snapper, it was delicious.
After dinner we took a night tour of another one of Gaudi’s masterpieces, Casa Mila.
The house is divided into apartments, a few of which are still occupied and rent is only around 500 euro a month. This is because there are lots of distractions due to tours and events, still.
Each brick maker had a unique mark so they could count their bricks made.
The arches are inspired by a whale spine and Gaudi designed the furniture as well.
We got to see a light show on the roof.
For breakfast we headed to the oldest market in Barcelona.
Iberian ham is very popular, you usually get it thinly sliced with cheese.
This octopus watched us have breakfast, not sure how he felt about us eating snails.
Palau de la Muisica Catalona is magnificent.
We were lucky to see a Flamenco dance practice during our tour.
We took a ride up a cable car to see a castle.
The port of Barcelona, not beautiful but highly effective.
Stopped by the National Art Museum of Catalonia.
Barcelona beach is pretty popular, too popular in my opinion.
Architecture, food, style and nightlife are a few of the best parts of Barcelona.