7 Days in Barcelona: Spain Road Trip Part 1

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.

Spain Road Trip 2026 – Prologue

Spain road trip; pictorial preview of Madrid, thanks to ChatGPT!; A Short History of Spain: Contiki 1982, Portugal/Spain 1989, 1990s Torrox and Nerja; three stages of travel; planning and plotting; learning Spanish; getting there; Hertz so good

So, this is our big trip for 2026 – a six-week-long Spain road trip! Last year, 2025, it was a cruise, Canada and the US: a Holland America cruise from Sydney to Vancouver, followed by 10 days in Vancouver and a road trip down the US west coast to California. (See here for my post on Lake Tahoe and work backwards to Vancouver, if you like.)

When I gave ChatGPT a photo of myself – hair newly waved – and asked it for a picture of me and my new iPhone in Madrid, this is what it came up with. Impressive, hey? I almost suggested we cancel our flights.

Spain road trip, Madrid
ChatGPT’s preview of me in Madrid, con mi iPhone neuvo