I'll be lying right by your side in Barcelona
20 Jul 2019
Today is a very special day, today Shin and I have been together for 11 years. ELEVEN years. That is not a short time by any means! One year ago we celebrated our 10 year anniversary on a beach in Barcelona. It was one of my best trips abroad ever, let's look back at what we did that day!
We started off the day by checking out from our hotel where we had already spent 2 nights, and then continued to grab some breakfast. We stayed in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona and really enjoyed our time there. We both really liked the hotel, very budget friendly but still clean and nice, good wifi and nice staff.
El Jardi
Plaça de Sant Josep Oriol, 1, 08002 Barcelona, Spain
After checking in to a slightly more expensive hotel, nearby La Sagrada Familia, we went on to do some city sightseeing. What I really love about Barcelona is that the city is so compact you can start off the day with some cultural sightseeing and then finish off with an afternoon on the beach (we used this approach all five days we were there). We decided to have a look at the famous building Casa Batlló. We did not go inside as we had already visited La Sagrada Familia the day before, and unfortunately it is very expensive. I think however, it was more than enough to just admire the facade from outside.
Casa Milà, another famous building, is just a few minutes away by foot so that was our next stop. We didn't go inside here either, but still managed to get a pretty good look from the inside of the gift shop on the ground floor of the building. This is a very impressive building and I would love to go back some day and see the famous chimneys on the rooftop. Isn't it incredible that some of the apartments still have residents!
Earlier this year I listened to Dan Brown's book Origin, a big part of the plot is set in Barcelona and one of the characters actually rents the top floor in Casa Milà. I am very glad I listened to the book after I visited Barcelona, it made the whole experience so much better!
All of the buildings mentioned here, La Sagrada Familia, Casa Batlló and Casa Milà, are of course the work of exceptional artist Antoni Gaudi. I think I must come back and write a blog post about our visit to La Sagrada Familia, I dare say it is the most amazing place I have ever visited.
Then it was time for lunch! We decided to go back to a restaurant we visited on our first night and it turned out they had a great lunch menu as well. They didn't have it in English but the staff did their best to translate to us. The lunch was great value and very good and filling, we even came back for a third time the next day. I can definitely recommend a visit;
Kserol
Carrer de Nàpols, 182, 08013 Barcelona, Spain
Then we had some well earned beach time in the afternoon. Of course we did go swimming a couple of times as well.
Finally it was time for our 10 year anniversary dinner. Shin wanted sea food of course. I had this salmon for the main course and it was very nice. But I had already filled up on a whole pitcher of Gazpacho and some olives. We absolutely had to skip dessert because there was no more room left!
This year our celebration is very different. Shin is back in Japan at the moment and I am in London so it will have to be a romantic date over FaceTime!
