Hola from Barcelona!

So I have been to Madrid before but I was excited to go to Barcelona.  I was excited because there wasn't a whole lot to do in Barcelona so it was going to be a more relaxing city after packing in so many tourist attractions in Paris.  I was also most excited about the food in this city over anywhere else because I love tapas!

Anyways, we arrived early this morning via the night train.  The night train was an awesome way to travel because you literally sleep the entire way.  We left Paris at 10pm and then arrived in Barcelona at 9ish this morning.  After getting here, we were lucky enough to be able to check into our Barcelona AirBnB apartment early which was great since we had our backpacks.  Our AirBnb place was AWESOME!!  It was so brand new, clean, an amazing location (near all these high end stores and restaurants), and had GREAT air-conditioning!!  At some points, we had to turn the temperature up because it was so cold!  You can see pictures here: https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/495504

Anyways, after settling in for a little bit, we decided to head to the beach!  Barcelona has quite a number of beaches that are really close and we went to Barceloneta Beach which was only 20 minutes away!  It literally was only 3 metro stops!  Hanging out the beach was a ton of fun.  The weather was great, the beach was beautiful, and it was nice to just relax.  The beach was super crowded with other sun bathers (with and without their swimsuits).  There were also nice guys selling the most refreshing mojitos for 3 euros! yum!

After the beach, we had a late lunch at one of the many restaurants near by.  We had tapas and some paella which were all pretty delish but not amazing.  You could tell we were in the touristy area so that kind of explained it.  My sangria was super disappointing.  Luckily, we had some better sangria later.

After going home and getting showered, we decided to just walk around Las Ramblas.  Las Ramblas is basically just a long street with lots of shopping, restaurants, and street performers.  We walked all the way from our apartment to Las Ramblas and all the way down to the Pier which is where we went to the beach and then we came back.  Barcelona is pretty small so while they have a metro system, you can walk most of the city.  Then on the way home, we stopped in another tapas restaurant for some drinks (delicious sangria here!) and some late night snacks.  Then we went home to cold oasis that was our apartment and called it a night!