7 Days in Barcelona; GPS Catch 22; Sant Adrià de Besòs apartment; cheap and easy trams and metro; cathedrals, churros and chocolate in the Old City; Sant Roy the Goody-Goody; no Gaudi at the history museum – nada!; Barceloneta beach and Port Vell; Roy the Spontaneous ascends Montjuic; La Sagrada Familia; Roy the Wanderer at Park Güell; solace at Bar Vell; menú del día at D’Ins; menu ouvrier flashback to 2019; pig’s feet and buttifara at Mussol; A Tale of Two Markets; Barceloneta Restaurant with the Gidlows; bitterly failed Zara expedition; pricey cocktails at speakeasy Paradiso; vermut with Jefferson; paella at Port Forum
How did anyone ever get anywhere without GPS? I remember the days of paper maps and I admit they weren’t pretty. But now it seems we need two or even three devices to help us do the job of a single paper map, albeit badly mis-folded and usually held upside down.
This Spain road trip started at Barcelona Airport. From there it took two frustrating hours to find BCN Forum, a booking-com apartment in the suburb of Sant Adrià de Besòs. The rental Skoda just would not accept the address. Neither would the additional navigator that Roy had brought along. And my iPhone was refusing to activate data roaming until I could get to a place with WiFi. Catch 22, really.
Probably more out of concern for the wellbeing of her Skoda than for our personal safety, the Hertz lady had tutted about how dangerous our apartment location was. It was right next to the La Mina neighbourhood that’s known for high unemployment, poverty and crime.
But for 7 days in Barcelona, it was in fact a great choice. The apartment was sunny and comfortable, with two terraces. Security was good, with the tramline into Barcelona just 100 metres away. And when the sun came out, the neighbourhood looked a whole lot better.
The transport service turned out to be marvellous, along with the Metro trains. T-Casual tickets cost just €13 for ten journeys on train, metro, tram or bus. From Besos, we took the yellow Line 4 metro from Forum station to Jaume 1, in the heart of the Old City. Once parked, we relied on public transport for almost the entire 7 days in Barcelona.
The Old City
From Jaume 1 metro station, we wandered through a still-sleepy labyrinth of alleys past some quirky shopfronts and through to Plaça Santa Maria Del Mar.
As we had the first coffee of the day in the square (dos cafes con leche, muy caliente, por favor!), an apparently endless trail of Viking Mars passengers filed past. I love the Viking cruise experience, but I don’t love group travel. How much nicer to just find your own way – especially in a city that is so easily navigable. And with a full 7 days in Barcelona, we were able to return to the Old City several times.
7 Days in Barcelona: Top rule of travel
You may well think that Roy got off lightly, only having to admire this Barcelona Cathedral from the outside. However, I was keeping him sweet for visiting Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia later this week. And our long-established rule of happy travel as a couple is no more than one church/cathedral/temple and one museum per city.
Scenes in the Old City
I had to do it at least once: churros and chocolate (xocolata amb xurros in Catalan) at El Mesón. This is the oldest coffee shop in the city, said the charming barista. I don’t like this kind of hot chocolate: thick and gluey so it sticks to the churro, but not nearly chocolatey enough. Just coffee for the saintly Roy, of course! (Never mind, all this goody-goodiness is not going to last throughout the entire 7 days in Barcelona.).
From the Old City, it’s an easy walk to the famous Rambla*. It may be as famous for pick-pocketing as it is for shopping, so you hold on tightly to your bag. Usually a wide and gracious thoroughfare, the Rambla’s entire length is currently a noisy building site with little to recommend it. So I won’t.
(* The word rambla means a dried-up river bed, and we were to find out that Spain has plenty of them.)
7 Days in Barcelona, One Museum
On this chilly and rainy day, the MUHBA Plaça del Rei in Casa Padellàs (the Barcelona History Museum) seemed like a good idea. For one thing, it’s located in the Ciutat Vella (near Jaume 1 metro station). For another, it’s only a short walk from there to Santa Caterina market. (More on that below.)
Finding our bearings, we first poked around the Roman walls. Built in the 1st century under Emperor Augustus, they’re described as “an archaeologic complex that protected the ancient colony of Barcino”.
It was during the process of moving the building, Casa Padellàs, here from a different location altogether in 1931 (it was officially inaugurated as MUHBA in April 1943), that the Roman walls were rediscovered. It’s a fascinating museum with an intellectual slant.
What, no Gaudi?
Surprisingly for any Barcelona museum, I found not a mention of Gaudi anywhere! Why not?
Apparently, Gaudi only became the focal point of Barcelona tourism through “a combination of World Heritage designations and 20th-century city branding”. No less than seven Gaudi works were declared World Heritage sites between 1984 and 2005, and were also heavily spotlighted in the 1992 Olympics. I suspect that the distinguished MUHBA administration has not seen fit to change its focus in alignment with the city’s brash young marketing team. (But this is just speculation.)
Barceloneta and Montjüic
To get to Barceloneta, we used the tram – the same tram that stops right outside our apartment and gets going each morning around 4.30am. It’s a nice walk from Barceloneta station down a wide promenade to the beach: the old fisherman’s quarter on the left, where we stopped for a leisurely dos grandes cafes (€4 for two!) and I tried to eavesdrop on the neighbouring tables.
The W Hotel at one end is a real landmark. Apparently, in warmer weather this lovely beach is frequented by fully naked people – alarmingly so for the three daughters of our Durbanite friends, the Gidlows, who have been living in Barcelona for the past couple of years. (More on them later.)
Cable car to Montjüic
People come to admire the enormous super-yachts in the Port Vell marina. One of these impressive vessels even had a tightly wrapped helicopter on deck.
Displaying a rarely-glimpsed impulsive streak, Roy decided we’d join a short queue for the cable car from the marina up to the top of Montjuïc, named for its Jewish connections. You get stunning views of the whole city and it’s a great way to orientate even the apparently un-orient-able, like me.
We had bought return tickets for about €20 each, but once up there changed our minds. We saw that a leisurely downhill stroll down through gardens would take us close to the Christopher Columbus statue end of the Rambla, close to the tram route.
Good Gaudi!
As I mentioned earlier, this city has become firmly established as the city of the Modernist architect Antoni Gaudi (1852-1926). With fully 7 days in Barcelona, we could easily have ticked off all seven of his UNESCO World Heritage Site creations, as many tourists seemed to be doing. Anyway, almost none of them come all this way and don’t visit La Sagrada Familia cathedral.
La Sagrada Familia
I studied Gaudi’s (1852-1926) Basílica de la Sagrada Familia in art history at school, and always wanted to see it. But in 1982, when I first visited Barcelona, this insanely creative cathedral had not yet become the city’s key attraction that it is today.
(We stayed at Camping La Ballena Alegre The Happy Whale, which still flourishes today, and had a sangria beach party. That six-week tour of Europe included just a day trip into Barcelona for shopping and ice cream on La Rambla.)
Never mind – La Sagrada Familia has come a long way since then. These incredible interiors, for example, had not yet been realised.
Update
A few days after our visit, on 10 June 2026, Pope Leo XIV blessed the final and tallest tower, The Tower of Jesus Christ, marking the symbolic completion of the basilica’s main exterior structure on the centenary of Gaudi’s death. This makes it the world’s tallest church, at 172.5 metres.
Belying the rule not to eat within five blocks of a major attraction, we had a great lunch at El Tastet de l’Artur. (More on that below.)
Park Güell
Taking a taxi to another of Gaudi’s masterpieces*, Park Güell, was a good idea, as it’s a long, steep climb from the nearest tram stop. Once you’re in, it’s a lovely spot to wander around.
(* Roy was largely unimpressed, it must be said. Then again, he’s not much of a park wanderer. What’s more, this was the last of our 7 days in Barcelona, and we had seen and done quite a lot.)
This year, 2026, it’s 100 years since Park Guell, initially envisaged by its owner Eusebi Guell as an upscale residential estate with plots for 60 houses, was bought by the municipality and opened to the public. (Here’s the possibly interesting background history.)
Bar Vell
There would have to be some sort of solace for Roy the Wanderer on the way back.
There was. About halfway down the hill to the Verdaguer tram stop in Diagonal Avenue, in a lovely square called Plaça Rovira i Trias, an interesting cross-section of the good people of Barcelona (and others) were whiling away the first really warm, sunny Sunday afternoon of the summer at tiny Bar Vell’s outdoor tables. Great people-watching, great G&Ts!
Shopping in Barcelona
Almost the first thing I did in Barcelona was to splash out on a pair of ridiculously sparkly heels at TKMaxx at the impressive Diagonal Mar mall, just a couple of tram stops from Forum. I love TKMaxx, and this newly opened store is the first in Barcelona, with fancy brands I’d never seen before.
Also close to home was Glòries Westfield, an open-air shopping centre with Zara, Mango, H&M, and a Carrefour hypermarket where I found a seven-euro yoga mat so cheap and crappy that I used it only once.
ChatGPT recommended lunch at Mussol, located near the entrance to the mall. Good call! We had great service from a camera-shy guapo (handsome one), who served up some wonderfully authentic Catalan cuisine.
After sharing a salad, Roy had butifarra, the local speciality sausage, with beans; I had the pig’s feet. Both came with delicious fire-roasted potato. Guapo was amazed at my choice, even pointing at his own feet to make sure I understood what I was ordering.
7 Days in Barcelona: Eating & Drinking
#1 D’Ins Restaurant & Cookery School
On the first of our 7 days in Barcelona, just a couple of blocks from the apartment and smack in the middle of the dreaded El Mina neighbourhood, we found D’Ins restaurant and cookery school.
Arriving at 3pm, we were just in time: though the Spanish typically lunch between 2pm and 4pm, this is an educational institution, and they started rolling up the floorboards while I was still licking the pudding bowl clean.
See the fresh, crusty bread? Try 42 days of this with lovely Spanish butter or olive oil, and you, too, will put on 5kg.
Menús del Dia
Not fancy, but exceptional value. This was our first Spanish menú del día: an incredible €16 (about GBP 14 or A$21) for three courses, plus bread, water, beer or wine, and coffee. They also threw in an amuse bouche of hummus. Delightful!
Unlike the tradition in certain French restaurants (also called routiers) of serving a generous and well-priced menu ouvrier for workers*, Spain’s similar menú del día concept was legislated in 1965 by the Franco dictatorship. The aim was to encourage tourism so as to boost the country’s post-war economy: all restaurants had to provide a menú turístico to assure tourists could enjoy a cheap three-course meal.
(For a description of the wonderful French menu ouvrier that we enjoyed in the Dordogne area in September 2019 with Roy’s sister Lyndsay, go here and scroll down to the end of the post.)
#2 La Boquería Market
Mercado Boqueria is Barcelona’s most famous market. This first stand was picture perfect, with a friendly chap who served us a tinto verrano, a vermouth and a slice of potato tortilla to share.
Having seen it lauded online, I suggested another snack at Quim’s. A couple of mediocre white vermouths, greasy ham croquetas and a vegetable tortilla with slimy aubergines were grudgingly served by a guy with a miserable attitude and an eye on the waiting customers, whose rightful seats we were apparently occupying.
When we visited La Boquería a second time, it became clear how much of a tourist trap this market is. Yet another bar we tried, though initially appealing, delivered the same sort of offhand service and overpriced food as we’d had the day before. But the market is listed as one of Barcelona’s top attractions, so how would one know?
#3 Santa Caterina Market
This market is easily spotted because of its Modernist undulating and kaleidoscopic roof of multi-coloured ceramics on wood. (Gaudi-inspired, they say.)
It’s the city’s second-biggest market after La Boquería, more frequented by locals and far less touristy. Lunch was a couple of glasses of cava, some patatas bravas, anchovies with olives, and a plate of grilled whole baby calamari with salad. Nice place, authentic food and friendly staff.
#4 La Barceloneta
The tram took us to its last stop, Vergesa, a short walk from our Durban friends the Gidlows’ gorgeous old apartment. Right in the middle of Barcelona, it’s just down the road from one of Gaudi’s most famous creations, Casa Pedrera, on Passeig de Gràcia.
Catching up
It was good to catch up with all the Gidlows’ news. After some time in first Singapore (while we were there) and then Florida, they’ve been in Barcelona for about 2.5 years and are loving it. Bridget (27) has just graduated law school in Miami; Megan (25) has a teaching job at an international school here in Barcelona; and Emma (23) is working in the same shipping company as her dad in the cruise operations department… such a lovely family!
Terry drove us to dinner at the big, busy and upscale Barceloneta restaurant, known for its seafood. It was just about warm enough to enjoy the outdoor table and its sunset view of the marina.
With another nice bottle or two of Verdejo, we shared a plate of jamón ibérico, redolent of the acorns they feed to the pigs, and served with the traditional pa amb tomàquet (bread with tomato); plus calamari rings, a delicious prawn omelette and ham and chicken croquetas. Then salt cod and white beans for Roy, sole for Terry, salmon for Kim, and crispy pork trotter on ratatouille for me – delicious. Desserts: Catalan custard for Roy, profiteroles for Kim and me… the two of us coulda-woulda-shoulda shared one portion.
#5 El Tastet de l’Artur
Before blotting my copybook by “making” Roy walk for miles on his sore hip to find what turned out to be a Zara for Kids, we had a lovely and authentically Catalan lunch at El Tastet de l’Artur. Just around the corner from La Sagrada Familia, in the Eixample area, you might have expected another tourist trap, but no: we found a jewel of a place with warm and friendly service.
Along with a couple of glasses of verdejo, we shared: cod fritters, a vegetable salad (crisp leaves topped with yummy roasted peppers) and a traditional beef fricandó – slow-cooked with vermouth and served on sautéed potatoes.
(Best not to dwell on a bitterly failed Zara expedition, which took us off the wide and graceful Passeig de Gracia, Barcelona’s Champs Elysées. Our next destination was Paradiso, at one time voted the world’s best bar.)
#6 Paradiso Bar
Warned that earlier is better for Paradiso Bar, a popular destination in the El Born area (part of the Old City), we got there within half an hour of its 4.30pm opening. It’s a speakeasy, and the reason they make you wait in line is to preserve that speakeasy feeling by letting each guest or group enter the dimly lit bar through the door of a meat fridge.
Roy’s post-Zara expedition mood was not improved by having to fork out €20 for my lovely Great Gatsby cocktail. Composed of Macallan 12DC, white truffle honey, amaro and essence of lavender, it is dramatically served under a glass cloche filled with vanilla and chocolate tobacco smoke. Sulking a tiny bit, Roy ordered his standard old-fashioned.
Just one cocktail isn’t enough, is it? Around the corner and in the lee of the Gothic 14th-century Santa Maria del Mar, we found the perfect place for a generously poured red vermouth – nine euros for two, and my husband cheered up considerably.
Herebelow is the gorgeous Jefferson. (He showed us the two-dollar bill notes featuring the President that he keeps in his wallet.)
From nearby Jaume 1 metro station, we caught an incredibly crowded metro home, changing to the tram at Verdaguer.
With 7 days in Barcelona, plus another five glorious weeks of this Spanish road trip stretching ahead, we truly don’t want to eat out all the time. Fortunately, several nearby superettes – Charter, Condis and others – make it easy to pick up a bottle of Rioja, ham, cheese and a fresh barre de pan (baguette) for supper.
#7 El Raco del Mariner, Port Forum
With timed-entry tickets to the Gaudi highlight Park Guëll booked for 3.30pm on a gloriously sunny day, we drove to Port Forum for lunch – only a few hundred metres from our apartment, as it turned out.
Roy turned his finely tuned nose up at the various restaurants – mostly Indian and Middle-Eastern – that were opening around 12 noon. Then we found El Racó del Mariner, efficiently presided over by a huge and enormously friendly black man, and recommended for its rice dishes. (It was worth having to wait for half an hour while the excellent staff had lunch before clocking in.)
Most Spanish people eat rice dishes such as paella only at lunchtime, and so did we – generally, you need to order it for two, and it’s about €20 a head. While it cooked, we shared some grilled sardines (€8) and pan amb tomate.
Up Next?
After 7 days in Barcelona packed with architectural, cultural and foodie experiences, plus a tiny bit of shopping, it’s no wonder I’ve been rabbiting on for so long. Do let me know if you’ve enjoyed reading about it!
The next post is all about our week with daughter Wendy at the lovely, low-key coastal town of Denia… a totally different sort of travel experience.
