So! This was the last surprise for my husbands birthday but also for my brother in laws and my sister in laws birthday too – all in one!
My other sister in law (I have 2 sister in laws – one who is older than me and one who is my age) and I had arranged this trip from August 15 and have been trying to keep this secret from everyone! – I am not going to lie this has definitely been very hard especially because I get too excited and just went to say what’s happening, but I have to say I’ve been very good with it all 🙂
My husband and I left for Barcelona from manchetser and my sister in laws and brother in law left from London. They had no ideas we would meet them at the airport and neither did my husband! It was the best thing ever I wish I took a photo or something! I can’t explain how funny it was.
We then took a taxi to our apartment, we decided to go with Airbnb and we were not disappointed. It was a beautiful flat quite central, 20 minutes from the airport but 5-15 minutes from the centre, museums and the beach. The apartment was on the third floor, it could accommodate 8 people with four rooms, two of which were double beds. It had high ceilings and stone floors. It was quite quirky with really cool doors on the walls, old school pictures and different lights. We were impressed, it had the right amount of cosy-ness too.
The weather was nice highs of 18 and lows of 11. Everyday was sunny, there were times that had a slight coldness in the air but we went with the right clothing so we were fine. Once we had settled in, we went out to the Main Street and walked all the way down to get to the beach it was a long walk but was really nice especially as we were walking in the sun. There were alot of bakeries and we picked up some bits and bobs to eat on the way…. They were very yummy!
We also stopped off at the local food market it did have a lot of meat which we were not so interested in but it also had lots of sweet stuff too.
We passed the beach and it was so beautiful, there was something so lovely and so very light at the end of the tunnel like, by seeing the beach at the end of the Main Street It was just gorgeous.
By the time we got there we were very hungry we walked to one side of the beach near the W hotel. We had a late lunch at a restaurant called Pez Vela. It was a beautiful little restaurant looking out onto the beach and sea. It had a chilling type of area with a fire in the middle. We ordered a mix of tapas and seafood and we just sat there and had really good chats.
Before we left for the apartment we went up the W hotel and went to the bar where we enjoyed the viewpoint and watched the sun set. After taking it all in we were really tired and came back to the apartment to shower and sleep. But somehow ended up having donor kebabs from the shop down the road. Where the apartment is was perfect in location as it was close to everything but it also had a lot of halal food just a few doors down so we were able to enjoy as we had that comfort there.
In the morning we had a lot planned we had decided to go to the Barcelona football ground and to the museum but that didn’t quite happen. We were very lazy and we chilled and didn’t leave the apartment till around 3pm! We were hungry by then so we went for food at a healthy place called Kale and Flax. It was surprisingly nice, they had smoothies and crazy healthy food with salmon, tuna, kale, fennel and other veggies. I went for a veggie burger of course, on a bed of veggies and lettuce it was different and filling. Oh and I also ordered a rejuvenator smoothie with mango, pineapple, strawberries, fennel, agave, yogi berries. – it was nice but gave me brainfreeze! (I did have pictures of the very cool good but I don’t know where it has disappeared to, but instead you have a picture of me :-), I was trying out a new hijab style teamed with my inayah collection dress)
We ended up back at the apartment and lazed around chatting about random stuff, playing cards and ordering pizza in. We ordered from Vitali Pizza.
Even though they did take a while to deliver the pizza was divine! We ordered margarita, buffalo cheese and tomatoe and an eggplant one.
On Sunday morning, we knew we had to be up and out early. We first went to the Barcelona football stadium, I don’t think I mentioned this before but the only reason we were in Barcelona was because my other half said i would only go to Barcelona to watch a football match. So for 6months before his 30th we booked tickets to watch the Barcelona vs Athletico Madrid match, we booked flights and everything and then were told by the club the date had changed. So we changed our flights and so on to the weekend they had now decided on. We assumed everything was fine and there wouldn’t be a change, until I received a dreaded email from them in December asking if I had received their emails and why I hadn’t confirmed. I basically ended up finding out the match had been changed back to the original date (before we changed our flight over) but it worked out too expensive so late on to change the flights. We would have spent a lot more than what we wanted to. We ended up getting a full refund and thought we could spend it as a lovely weekend full of fun other stuff instead. We will still pretty gutted we didn’t get to go to the match but instead they offered us a tour for the museum and stadium. So that’s what we did Sunday morning, I mean from a girls point of view it was alright, nothing I was excited about! Football is football to me! It was good, they had put a lot of effort into it, the museum was alot bigger than I expected and the amount of trophies they had – I had to admit I was slightly impressed. From there we took a tour of the stadium and then off to our next stop we went.
We did majority of our travelling via taxi, it was easy and wasn’t too costly. We arrived at Sagrada Familia – a Roman Catholic Church designed by architect Gaudi. Construction began in 1882 and has been in constant construction since, even now it had scaffolding up as if they
I have to admit this was very different to what I have seen in places like Paris. It was very gothicy!
Monday, our last day in Barcelona, we had booked an evening flight to leave around 7pm. So we had the whole day to enjoy. We cleared out the apartment and dropped out bags with the air bnb man.
We then stopped off for some breakfast at a very cool place called Moritz.
From there we went to the beach and hired out some electric scooters and off we went out for some fun! The scooters were definitely my favourite part of the trip. We took them all the way along the beach it went on for what seems like forever. We were able to take in the view but also have some time to ourselves too. The boys obviously were running rings round us! But we all had a good laugh and had a good time. (Look at how many boats there were?! I couldn’t even see a gap when I was there)
We took our final stop off at a restaurant called Boca Grande, it was a very posh restaurant and I wasn’t sure what I would eat as a majority of these restaurants served fish, lots of different types of fish. For staters we ordered raw tuna and white cod sashimi it was so yummy, it wasn’t fishy and the flavours were really nice. For mains we had a vegetarian paella and a fish paella and that was nice too. Oh I nearly forgot the bathroom in this place was crazy! It was dark with lots of mirrors and cool sinks and funky art work! It even had a photobooth!
After we ate we left for the airport and before we knew it we were home and our lovely trip had come to an end.
I think Barcelona is a cross between Paris and Lisbon. Barcelona is just under a 2 hour flight, it’s sunny and welcoming and I would definitely go again ! ( I actually have a list of things to do next time we go inshAllah)
~~~ Sarah ~~~
