Our adventure in Spain really began in Nice, France. If you have been following along with my previous posts, you will know that Barcelona was the third major stop on our tour through Southern Europe in fall 2022. First came a nine-day tour of Italy (read about that here), followed by three spectacular days in the South of France (read about that here). Barcelona was the final major destination on our European tour before returning to Munich for our flight back home to Canada.The reason I say that our Spanish adventure really started in Nice is that we opted to take an overnight bus departing from Nice and arriving in Barcelona in the early hours of the morning to forgo the cost of overnight accommodations. Sounds smart, right? I’ll give you a list of the pro (yes, just one) and cons of this decision.

Overnight Bus Pro:

• Saving money on overnight accommodations. By opting to take an overnight bus, we were able to roll the cost of travel and accommodations up into one, thereby saving some cash to spend on other activities.

Overnight Bus Cons:

• The bus was very cold and I was not dressed appropriately for it. In hindsight I should have planned better for this. I showed up for our bus ride in shorts and a tank top after another long day in the French heat with no blanket or sweater. Luckily, I did have my pack towel, but it was slightly damp so didn’t do too much to warm me up. Lesson learned.
• The bathroom onboard was out of order. This was an unwelcome surprise. Since the bathroom was out of order, we had to make a pit stop every time a passenger needed to use the toilet. Honestly, this happened less frequently than I would have expected, but it was still inconvenient.
• It was nearly impossible to get any sleep in an upright position. I am notoriously terrible for sleeping in any type of moving vessel; airplanes, cars, buses, trains – if it’s moving, I’m not sleeping. I came prepared, armed with my melatonin, ZzzQuil, sleeping mask and earplugs but that did little for me. I must have dozed a bit, but I can’t imagine I got more than a couple hours of sleep in total.

Where We Stayed

We stepped off the bus into the warm, early morning Barcelona air and made our way from the bus stop to Kabul Party Hostel where we stayed for the duration of our time in Barcelona. When we were trip planning in our living room back in August we came across Kabul Party Hostel as an option for accommodations in Barcelona and found the descriptions of the place on Hostel World to be so hilarious that we just had to stay here. Don’t worry, we also made sure the place had a good track record and reviews. We didn’t need a repeat of what happened with our first hostel in Milan. To give you a taste of what we found so hilarious, here is a line taken directly from Kabul’s page on Hostel World:

“If you’re just looking for a place to rest in Barcelona, this is not the right place for you! If you want to have a great time, meet great people you will stay in touch with for life and enjoy Barcelona to its fullest, come live and experience Barcelona’s history, vibe, restaurants and clubs.”

I will say that Kabul Hostel had a lot of fun activities available for guests including bar crawls, tours, and socials on the rooftop patio, but it wasn’t over the top. Contrary to what they say on their page, I was able to sleep just fine the whole time we were there. I did not find it to be too wild at all. This could also be because I was just so exhausted at this point in the trip that I could literally sleep anywhere (except on the bus, evidently).

In addition to having lots of fun events and activities, Kabul Hostel has a free continental breakfast each morning and an excellent location. The hostel is located right off Las Ramblas in Plaza Real, which is in the heart of Barcelona’s tourist centre.

Day One

The check in time for our hostel wasn’t until 2pm so we had a lot of time to kill. We had arrived in Barcelona at 6:55am and at our hostel not too long after that. We paid to store our bags in the luggage room at the hostel and then ventured out into the neighbourhood to find something to eat. A short distance away from our hostel we found Federal Café where we had an excellent brunch. It’s funny, we were both so exhausted and hungry from the overnight bus that we were practically socially impaired by the time we were seated at the cafe waiting for our food. We were both just sitting in silence zoning out due to sleep deprivation. Our server even came over after we’d eaten to ask if everything was alright because we were so out of it.

After our bellies were full, we wandered back to our hostel to explore the building a bit more. We ended up taking a nap on the rooftop patio for about an hour. It was fully not intended to happen, but as soon as we lay down on those benches we were done for. We simply could not resist sleep. Of course we were still too early to check in after waking from our nap, so we returned to the streets of Barcelona to explore more.

Kabul Hostel is located right on the cusp of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, which is filled with narrow streets lined with medieval architecture, charming shops, and restaurants. Other popular Barcelona attractions located nearby are Gaudí’s Casa Batllo and Casa Mila. Both of these buildings can be toured, but we opted to view them from the outside because the tour prices were so high. We wanted to save room in our budget to tour Gaudí’s most spectacular architectural achievement, the Sagrada Familia. Before returning to our hostel for check-in we explore the famous Las Ramblas and picked up some lunch at Mercado de La Boqueria, a large public market that can be accessed from Las Ramblas.

That evening we had a delicious tapas dinner at Guell Tapas and planned for an early night after a long day. Spoiler alert, that is not how our night went. After dinner, we went up to the rooftop patio for a drink where we met a group of Argentinian guests who roped us into coming along on the hostel’s planned bar crawl. It took surprisingly little to convince Alyssa and I to come along on this adventure considering how exhausted we were. We ended up having a great time. The bar crawl included three bars and a free drink at each. We met lots of people from our hostel and didn’t wrap up our night until well after 3am, which was ambitious considering that we had a tour of Sagrada Familia booked on the other side of the city for noon the next day – or later that day by the time we went to bed.

Day Two

I mentioned before that our hostel had a free continental breakfast each morning. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to try the free breakfast until our second morning because we slept through it after our big night out the previous evening. Instead of enjoying a free continental breakfast, Alyssa and I sat across from each other passing a bag of granola back and forth eating it dry by the handful before running off to make it to our pre-booked Sagrada Familia tour on time.

Despite another night of little sleep, we had a great time at Sagrada Familia. It was so spectacular. Based on advice from other friends of ours who had visited Barcelona on their own Europe trips, we pre-purchased our tour online to ensure that we were able to get a time. As you can imagine, its an incredibly popular tourist spot, so booking ahead is definitely suggested. You can buy the tickets online here. We selected the audio tour package that also gave us access to the towers. To be honest, I don’t know that it was worth the extra money to go up the towers because many of them are still under construction so the view from up there is quite obstructed. All in all it was pretty amazing to see. Gaudí, the architect, took so much inspiration from nature and incorporated it into his designs in very unique ways.

Next up for us was lunch at an Italian restaurant called Paisano Bistró. This was conveniently right around the corner from Sagrada Familia and had excellent food. It seems funny to eat Italian food in Spain, but it was exactly what we needed before hitting our next attraction: Parc Güell.

Park Güell is another one of Gaudí’s architectural masterpieces filled with green space and compelling architectural features such as the Hypostyle Hall and Nature Square. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon wandering around the park and exploring the different structural features. Gaudí’s architecture is delightful to experience because it is so different from the styles of other famous architects. I really love how much colour he incorporated into his designs and all the inspiration he takes from nature. His work is really stunning.

Slightly over a kilometer away from Park Güell is MUHBA Turó de la Rovira, more commonly known as the el Carmel Bunkers. If you’re up for a bit of uphill walking you can experience panoramic views of Barcelona from the Spanish Civil War Bunkers. We had plans to watch the sunset from here but were a bit early for that so we just stayed for about an hour to take in the view before heading back to our hostel. You can truly see the entire city from the bunkers. It’s pretty magnificent. This would be a great place to bring a picnic or some drinks to enjoy with the view.

Day Three

Something we tried to do throughout our European tour was to dedicate a day in each of our main destinations to just explore the city without an agenda. This is exactly what we did on our last day in Barcelona. We visited Ciutadella Park in the morning and then spent the rest of our day at Barceloneta Beach enjoying the sunshine and relaxing before another big travel day.

After we were all sunned out, we had a delicious tapas lunch at El Rey de La Gamba 1 followed by a gelato at Mercado de La Boqueria. Some happy news: Alyssa was able to find a watermelon gelato at the Mercado, although it was not as good as the one she tragically lost in Venice.

And so ends our time in Barcelona. We had an early flight to Munich the next morning for one final day in Europe before flying home to Toronto. I was considering not writing a post about Munich since we were really only there for a day, but we did cover quite a bit in that time, so I’ve decided that I will write a short post about it after all.

Reflecting back on this trip while writing these posts has truly been so fun. So many memories that had slipped my mind have been coming back up as I’ve gone through the pictures and our notes for proposed itineraries that we plotted while sitting in our living room in Waterloo with my monitor set up on our kitchen table. I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to experience all these incredible places and I hope some day to be able to do it again.

Thanks for following along on all my adventures, it’s appreciated! Stay tuned for my adventures in Munich 🙂

xx

Ashley

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