Visiting Barcelona December 2014

Visiting Barcelona for the first time together.

Although we’ve travelled to Spain three times a year for the last eleven years, for one reason or another Cynthia and I have never managed to fulfil our plan of visiting Barcelona. Or at least that was the case until this December when we managed to ‘escaparnos’ for a couple of days without our son. (Se quedó con los abuelos.) We’ve both been to Barcelona before, of course, although under very different circumstances. A lifetime ago Cynthia visited Barcelona on a school trip and spent some days making the usual rounds. For whatever reason, her memories of the place were not terribly positive. In turn, my previous visit to Barcelona in 2010 doesn’t figure in the Top Ten of my best experiences. That was the year of the Volcanic Eruption in Iceland that grounded all planes and let many thousands of travellers stranded in the whole of Europe. I was one of the unlucky many trying to get back to the UK from Salamanca. After having the good fortune to be able to spend a week with my ‘suegros’ in Madrid I finally managed to secure some incredibly expensive modes of transport (All the travel services had very kindly doubled or tripled their prices in support of the poor travellers.) one of which was a coach from Barcelona to Paris. So, it was for that reason that I arrived at the train station in Barcelona and made my way to the bus station. And that, as they say, was that. For me, visiting Barcelona was a blur of stations and nothing else. (The overnight coach had no toilets, arrived late and appeared to have been built in the early 50’s!). This time, however, we decided to make our visiting Barcelona something a little more positive and vastly more memorable. The AVE, which is the speed train that goes to all the major cities in Spain was actually more expensive than catching a flight and so we flew with Vueling from Madrid to Barcelona. Vueling is a low cost airline that is worth considering when travelling through Spain. Our visit was specifically built around the Monica Naranjo concert, which was fantastic, by the way. However, as you will see from the videos here, we managed to see many of the beautiful sights of Barcelona. We now know that the next time we will need a few days to be able to see all that this great city has to offer. Even so, our 36 hour trip definitely ‘valió la pena’. Espero que os gusten los vídeos. Gordon 🙂 If you would like to see the full range of videos, just go to  our Playlist.

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson

Video for This Spanish Lesson