Barcelona bound

Tired, a little bit hungover and missing Joan and the girls already I jumped on a short flight to Barcelona, a city I had never been to but one I had to spend the next 12 hours in before my flight back to the middle east.

I had a couple of things that I wanted to tick of the list so not knowing how the public transport system worked or whether what I wanted to do was even going to be possible in the time I had, I checked my bag into left luggage and headed into the city to explore.

First stop was La Sagrada Familia, a church I had seen in pretty much everyone’s travel photos and one I was keen to check out. I popped out of the metro right next to the church, but unfortunately the whole site seemed to be a construction site so while I got a good look at the outside there was also a load of construction cranes and hoarding which I wasn’t expecting. I also didn’t realise you needed a ticket to get inside and unfortunately it was sold out for the day so I wandered off to find some much needed lunch and hydration as my hangover weirdly really kicked into gear for the next hour or two.

From there I got back on the metro and headed for the Camp Nou, the home of Barcelona FC. Thankfully I already knew the stadium itself was being rebuilt so a tour was not on the cards I did go into the museum and the incredibly impressive 3 level club shop. The museum was cool, with loads of cool memorabilia from all the most famous eras of arguably the biggest football club in the world. Seeing their 5x Champions League trophies and the dozens of other La Liga, Copa del Ray and other trophies. The club shop itself was overwhelming and after spending a bit of time in there and picking up a few souvenirs I moved on again.

Vinyl shopping is one of my favourite things to do anywhere I go so I headed for an area just off La Rambla with my sights set on some new albums for the collection. I found an awesome little shop called Revolver Records and spent the next hour digging through crates and crates of awesome records. I managed to pick up a few new additions and with the best intentions headed out to explore La Rambla. It was about this time I quickly realized I was absolutely done for the day, my feet were aching, I was knackered and I still had a long haul flight ahead of me so I slunk back to the Metro, headed for the airport and waited for my flight back to work. Another full on but awesome tripRead more