07/15/2024

Well, due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, we never made it out of Peoria on Saturday. This caused us to miss our flight out of Chicago to Barcelona. So, we went back home, drove to Chicago on Sunday, and made it to Barcelona Monday night, instead of Sunday night. Because of this, we hit the ground running on arrival.

We arrived in Barcelona at 9:30am local time (2:30am CST). We entered Barcelona through a long customs line. I pre-bought our “Hola Barcelona” 4-day train card, which made my time at the kiosk a much simpler task than last time we arrived. I only had to enter a confirmation code to get our tickets. Two trains and a short walk later, and we made it to our hotel. We booked the Hotel 1898 for our stay in Barcelona. Of course, our room wasn’t ready. However, they had a 15 minute opening in their spa area, so we were able to go get changed and freshen up. Jack even had time to take a shower. After we checked our bags, it was off to find lunch.

We didn’t want to wander far, but I didn’t want to get off the busy La Rambla. We found a place just a couple blocks away that was much less busy. I knew it was a good sign when there were so many Spanish speaking people eating there. We ate at Restaurant La Taverneta Barcelona. We were running on fumes.

At the restaurant, we pulled a plan together for the rest of the day. We had a 4:00pm tour at La Sagrada Familia. We had time to kill before that, and we knew that going back to the hotel would mean sleep, which we were trying to avoid. Dan saw that there was Banksy art in Barcelona, so we looked that up and headed off to the Moco Museum.

The museum featured modern art. I admit, I am not an art buff, so I didn’t recognize the artists, other than Banksy. However, I did enjoy the museum very much and it bridged the gap between lunch and our tour.

From here, we met up with our tour for La Sagrada Familia. We toured LSG in 2019 when we were in Barcelona, but the kids were young and we were due for a refresher. This tour was a major let down. It was only an hour long, and the tour guide was very difficult to understand. Fortunately, we knew of some things from our previous tour to share with the kids. Overall, La Sagrada Familia is just beautiful and a must see in Barcelona. Here is my post from 2019. They have added the Mary Star and the 4 apostles to the exterior of the building. COVID slowed them down on their progression and they have moved the completion date to the early 2030’s.