…but not straight away. In fact, for a moment we weren’t sure we’d even make it for just a spring.

After a flight from Porto to Barcelona, a couple of metros and a walk through an interesting neighbourhood to our confusing AirBNB, we finally got to head into town to smash some pintxos. We pretty much just needed anyone to not be a total Barce-hole. Being in a town with “bar” in it’s name, we thought this should be easy, but our first few experiences managed to set the…bar, pretty low.

Ok, firstly…we did later have the best dining (and almost best anything) experience of our lives in Barcelona. 31 courses of delight, intrigue and phenomenal-ness, but nobody wants to hear about that, so I’ll just stick with the rant about our first night in BARcelona.

Bar 1, El Doucho: The guy pretty much refused to pour us a glass of wine to go with our factory pumped out snacks, despite remembering everyone elses order…so you can imagine how much we liked him.  If there’s one couple at the bar to remember the wine for!

Bar 2, No Abierto: Next attempt was a bar that came highly recommended…but was closed on Sundays, as of this week, ie. today.

Bar 3, No Dos: A cool looking bar without obviously looking touristy, but we were told we could wait outside for an hour because they didn’t want tables of two at this time.

Bar 4, Vermouth Nazi: Totally awesome looking local bar! Hooray! Everyone was drinking the same aperitivo type thing, so we approached excited, but apprehensive (because Spain). I tried to order the same thing as everyone else as politely as possible, trying to sound as least like someone who stole Cuba from them over 100 years ago, but we were told there was “no space”. When a lovely local tried to make space and pointed it out to the bar-keeper (who looked like he’d been drinking this stuff in the sun for 60 years) we were told “there’s no space, it’s not possible, NO VERMUT FOR YOU!!”, before he started laying into the other guy for being nice. On the plus side, we now knew they were drinking vermouth and we’d stopped singing “Amigos para siempre” in our heads. On the negative, I started singing “American Boy” featuring Kanye West in my head…so, welcome to BARcelona.

Bars 5 & 6, Trapos do Tourismos: We finally found a couple of nice semi-tourist traps, and really loved the pintxo lifestyle, despite getting the feeling some of the locals might have been dropping the occasional toothpick on our plate. Either that, or given we’d been (or tried to be) to 6 bars by now, we may not be the most reliable witnesses to what we’d eaten.

Bar 7, Catalano para siempre: Another, very local recommendation was open until late in the night, so with a bit of Spanish courage (I doubt that’s actually a thing), we gave it a go. Rough start again…tried saying, in Spanish, “sorry, we don’t speak Spanish, I know nothing, I come from Australia”, to which the bartender replied, in some Iberian dialect, “neither do I, I’m Catalonian…”. We know that’s what he said because a lovely man, who gave us his place at the bar (making him new favourite Spaniard…sorry, Catalonian), told us…as well as telling us the guy speaks English!! Aye carumba!!! How did anyone from this town ever think they could get a job at a BnB on the English Riviera?

Anyway…despite the various difficulties and ensuing rant that took up most of a post, we loved Barcelona, and got on so well that it felt as though I’ve known it forever, so well that the lifestyle broke us over the three days. On the day we had the 31 course meal, we also went to the markets and then got force fed house cava and tapas at Bar 2, now abierto (open). Of course, even though our AirBNB place had plenty of towels, that were grate, and doubled as exfoliators, we only had 2 rolls of TP and these happened to run out on the same day as our foodathon. I knew it wouldn’t have been a fun experience anyway, so was happy to wait for the next town…sort of like, delaying mortification.

We did much more than just visit bars in Barcelona, we also took in the sights and did our own min-Gaudi tour. Park Guell and his buildings were beautiful, but the still unfinished Sagrada Familia was spectacular. Even despite Lea taking us on a wrong turn up one of the towers, causing us to climb part of it twice! In this case I didn’t mind at all, because I got to say, “this seems a little…familia…” #2gaudy4gaudi

Thanks Barcelona, something happened when we were together, but there has come the time when, darling, we must say goodbye.