Spain: Barcelona

Barcelona wins the award for the most lively city we’ve visited thus far. It seems everywhere you turn in this fair city of 1.6 million Spaniards, there lies a dramatic sculpture, a vibrant piazza or a buzzing beachside café. Boasting over two thousand years of enthralling history, Barcelona is a hip city that seems to relish mixing the varied architecture of its past with contemporary art and design. We stayed just a bit out of central Barcelona in a fun, quieter residential area called Gracia, where we found some great tapas to hold us over until dinnertime, which is very late here in Spain.

We spent several days in Barcelona canvassing the spacious city on foot, taking in the sites on Spain’s most famous boulevard, La Rambla, wandering the ancient, cobblestone streets in Barri Gotic and, of course, gawking at Gaudi’s work-in-progress, La Sagrada Familia (photo on left), a church that has been under construction since 1882. (Good news: they are projecting completion sometime around 2020!) Additionally, we really enjoyed walking along the beaches and the waterfront area, and we even managed to find our way to the old Olympic village near the hilly Montjuic district.

Luckily for us, we were in Barcelona for the city’s celebration of Carnivale, which included small (seemingly impromptu) parades around the city and a major parade down Av del Parallel on Saturday night. A crippling downpour of rain cut the impressive parade short, but it also gave us a good excuse to nestle into a café to sip tasty sangria instead.