Honeymoon Day 1 (and a half?): Barcelona in 36 hours!

Let me start by saying that we knew going into this vacation that there was no way that we would be able to see and do everything that we want to do in the short amount of time that we would be in each city. Barcelona was the city that we had the most time in. We flew directly to Barcelona from NYC and had a day and a half before we needed to board our cruise. As much as we knew when we got there that we should have dove right in and starting checking things off our must see list, we were SO tired from traveling. Our flight was over night and there was a 6 hour time change. When we got to Barcelona it was 10am. By the time we 1. figured out how to get to our hotel, and 2. checked in and unpacked it was probably noon. We found some food and just kind of headed off on foot with no real plan. BIG MISTAKE! Not that we didn't enjoy ourselves, but we didn't know where anything was since it was our first time there, so we weren't able to just stumble upon the big attractions (La Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, etc). The plan then changed. We decided we would get up early and go see those things first thing the next morning.

The rest of the first day, we continued to walk around with no real plan (which was really relaxing). We were able to find a NBA bar, which made Mike happy since he was missing the NBA finals while we were gone. The bar had the game from the night before playing on a big screen with no commercials, so we were able to catch the whole game in about an hour.

From there we decided to find something to eat, which is kind of difficult when you don't speak much Spanish. I had done some research, as far as, what foods to try in Barcelona, so we decided to try to find some Paella. We found a small restaurant in an alley and enjoyed a HUGE (the word huge doesn't even do it justice) dish of paella. It was AMAZING! One of my favorite things we ate while in Europe. The waiter also brought us a shot of I'm not sure what, and told us to enjoy Spain!

After dinner, we decided that we were already a little tipsy from trying different drinks while walking around so we were not really going to explore the night life of Barcelona. Depending on who you are, this may also seem like a travel fail, but I don't think so. We got a bottle of wine for me and some beer for Mike and relaxed just the two of us on the rooftop terrace of our hotel.

The next day again did not really go as planned. We slept in longer than we probably should have, but hey we're on vacation! Once we got up and around we figured we should probably pack up our things from our hotel room and get something to eat. By the time we figured out how to get to Park Guell, we realized it was quite a ways away. The park itself would take a few hours to explore (based on what I had read)... so we weren't able to go to it. This left me a little upset since it was one of the things I REALLY wanted to do and had read a lot about.

We had then wasted so much time figuring out how to get to Park Guell (and actually wasting a lot of time going the wrong way.. oops) we were both a little annoyed/frustrated, so we decided to skip La Sagrada Familia as well and head right to the ship. Luckily, there was a free cruise shuttle that picked up near not far from our hotel so we got our bags and off the ship we went.

Now I know to some it may seem that we completely wasted our time in Barcelona. After all, we didn't see really anything we had planned on seeing. I was a little disappointed, but decided not to let it ruin my vacation. After all, we were in Europe.. and this was our honeymoon! And even though we didn't make it to the big attractions we had a great time together, just wandering around. And now we have an excuse to go back!