Barcelona, Spain

To all my little architecture nerds out there... this one is for you.

Barcelona is all about Gaudi! Gaudi's house, Gaudi's park, Gaudi's church. In a neat little patchwork of grubby apartment buildings and flags, our room was our very own slice of hell. Stuffy and dark with no window to the outside, a comprehensive list of restrictions ranging from the clothes we wore, to our bedroom activities. To top it all off, it was painted entirely lime green in a way that could only be described as electric as well as dirty.

Upon recommendation, Barcelona became the birth place of free walking tours for us. Fran, the chilean tour guide, greeted us with her huge purple umbrella, triple-XL coffee and equally enthusiastic stories. We spent the better half of 3 hours captivated in old gothic quarter myths, lack-lustre architectural efforts and insider tips. The narrow, winding roads of old Roman settlements, were deliberately designed so that the Roman guards (familiar with each twist and turn) could catch invaders, knowing that the invaders would most likely get lost or hit a dead-end.

Our second day was filled with La Sagrada Familia (that church that has taken AGES to build). After visiting the Palace of Versailles with an audio guide, we opted for a guided tour. Barcelona is incredibly proud of Gaudi and all that he built for the city. His architecture is unlike anything else in Barcelona, and in a city that was deliberately made to look like perfect square portions, he totally shook things up! Theres not enough words to explain why he is brilliant, so keep in mind when you see La Sagrada Familia on google or in Spain, every little detail was built with absolute intention and with a really good story or reason to back it up.

To slow things down a speck, our next destination was Park Guell. See in the tips section for Park Guell stuff. We bumped in to a brilliant (Mexican) busker, just listening and sketching for nearly 2 hours. The total peace of the afternoon was exactly what we needed.

As though our feet had only skimmed the ground we were off again. At 4am the next morning, we were in a taxi, off to Croatia.

Before too long,

Tate x

For Travellers:

- Booked guided tours online for Park Guell and La Sagrada Familia. If you choose to go without a guided tour, chances are you'll have no idea what you're looking at or why it's special (this happened to us at Park Guell).

- You can look at the majority of Park Guell without a ticket, and then a really small section is paid. Having said that... its the Gaudi section that is ticketed and it was mostly under construction when we were there. Keep in mind that you will need to book a time slot to visit Park Guell and they won't let you in if you're early!

- You can get guided tour tickets online for La Sagrada Familia for €29. Tickets start at €15 so its probably worth the extra cost. Also, fun side note... the ticket sales are funding the build. So you can say that you contributed!

- There are loads of free walking tours online, ours was "Free walking tour Barcelona". At the end of the tour you just pay what you think it was worth. We gave €10 for the two of us and that was a pretty regular donation.

- If we stayed again, I would stay in the gothic quarter, probably near La Rambla (lots of little stalls and a really great food market. El Raval is the really dodgy area of the "old town".