Beaches and Bubbles in Beautiful Barcelona
We are NOT big city people at all. We prefer smaller cities, villages, and rural areas the most. We love to be surrounded by nature as much as possible. None of us feel all that comfortable in big cities where there are tons of crowds and people. But, we have our exceptions. And Barcelona is definitely one of them! There’s something about this city that I just love.
The girls have heard a lot about Barcelona over the years from Jon and me, especially in early 2020 when I took a trip there on my own for a little over a week. The girls seemed to instantly fall in love with this city! We spent hours upon hours walking and exploring everywhere. One day we walked for 11 straight hours, stopping a few brief times for snacks. We walked to Park Guell, to Sagrada Familia, out to the mall in the former arena, to my favourite place Poble Espanol, and a ton of other places!
Poble Espanol is such a fascinating spot. Inside here, you walk around through various quarters where you get to see the different types of architectural buildings they have in the various areas of Spain. It’s so fascinating to get to see so much varied architecture from all over the country in one spot. The buildings aren’t just pretty things to look at from the outside, either. Most are functional buildings that house restaurants, cafes, shops, and other interesting areas. There’s a monastery, a large square, an art museum, and a large playground. It’s a place to spend several hours for sure! And given we arrived on January 3, everything was still set up for Christmas, so we got the added bonus of seeing these decorations and participating in a Christmas fun fair in the playground area. It was such a fun day!
The girls love beaches, and we spent some time out at the beach on two different days. The first time, we all went. The girls loved splashing in the water and jumping over the waves. Katia came home thoroughly soaked from head to toe. LOL That girl just loves water so much! It was 18oC and sunny, which felt glorious to us. But to the locals, they must have thought we were insane as they were all bundled up for winter! It was a beautiful day in the sun. The second time was our last full day, but unfortunately, only Jon and Emmeline got to enjoy going back that day, as Katia had come down with a 24-hour flu bug.
We spent a ton of time walking the streets, enjoying churros con chocolate, eating gelato late at night before bed, staying up until midnight every day per the Spanish lifestyle, and tapas hopping. Food is one of our favourite things to indulge in. We LOVE food in our family. We rarely eat out back home, and even this year away. But when we do eat out, we always like to get a variety of appetizers or small plates and share. Spanish tapas is right up our alley and has always been one of our favourite cuisines. We hopped all over Barcelona at night, especially the one night.
I’m pretty sure some of the girls’ favourite memories of Barcelona will be walking the streets at night and tapas hopping! And bubbles. There were so many people making huge bubbles everywhere. Every time the girls saw these, they took off and had the time of their lives. At one point, we let the girls throw a few coins into the tip jar for one of them. Which was a hugely worthwhile investment, as the man brought them both up and taught them how to make the bubbles and do it themselves for a few minutes each. They were in heaven!
We didn’t know when we booked our trip to Barcelona, but we managed to come at a great time! We learned while we were in Spain in August that Christmas Day isn’t that big in Spain. Rather, the Three Kings Day is the big celebration day. On January 5 there’s always a big Three Kings Day parade. And it turned out that the parade passed by two blocks from where we were staying. We looked up the story and songs in advance to learn about the traditions and meanings behind the various floats and sections of the parade. Then made sure to go early so we got to be close to the front of the crowd for a good view. Unfortunately, it was raining that night, but that didn’t stop us from having the best time ever! The girls particularly loved the last float, where various cannons were firing candy into the crowd non-stop! The next day, on January 6, everything was more or less closed for the Three Kings Day. We kept seeing all the delicious-looking Three Kings bread everywhere, but didn’t indulge in it since it was quite large and obviously intended to be shared with lots of people!
This year away has been amazing for learning all kinds of cultural traditions in the various countries. And Christmas is a great example of that! They got to learn tons about traditions in the UK before we left in mid-December. They then got to learn about the traditions in Germany as we spent the lead-up to Christmas and the actual Christmas Day there. And then they got to learn about and experience the Spanish traditions while we were in Spain. I’m so happy they get to learn and experience all these things firsthand in what I hope will be a very memorable way!