Holiday 2: Day 1: Barcelona Spain; Beach, Las Ramblas and getting settled

Hello everyone!

Joe and I just got back today from our second Holiday trip so I’m going to try to get blog posts and pictures up a little faster this time. To quote a “Sound of Music” song....“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.....”

BARCELONA (I fell in love with this city!)

Vacations are not suppose to begin at the crack of dawn but this one did! We were up and out the door early enough to catch the 6:40am bus to the Billund airport. Now to be perfectly honest I don’t remember what time we actually walked out the door but even though it was early, it wasn’t the earliest we had to be up to travel (more on that later!) So off to the airport we go, get our bag checked in and we’re ready for our adventures to start.
Our travel time was several hours including the hour bus ride to the Billund airport and 1 hour and 15 minute bus ride from the Barcelona Girona airport to actual Barcelona but we finally made it and found our hotel. We stayed at a nice little hotel, slightly out of the way but close enough to the Metro that it made things pretty easy to get to where we wanted to go.

Getting off the plane. I love the mountains in the background! :)

We decided that after getting some lunch we would head down to the beach to check it out. Joe and I were both very excited to be at the beach this vacation and took full advantage of it. We didn’t change into our suits or anything but just had the idea of walking around, seeing what we could see and deciding where the best place to enjoy the beach would be when we came on Saturday (which was the plan). So we get off at the Barceloneta stop on the metro and headed towards the water.

Let me tell you, the Mediterranean is BEAUTIFUL!!!!! I really loved the whole beach area. The sand was nice and soft and after a while we took our shoes off and walked along the water. The water felt amazing. Now’s a good time to point out that while we were gone this week I’m pretty sure the temperatures were in the 90s but I don’t know for sure, needless to say it was HOT! So we walked along the water and checked out the beaches for a good chunk of time.

One of the beaches with the boardwalk in the background

In the Mediterranean!


The only picture of Joe actually in the water, but I swear his feet
are in there and we got lots of swimming in! :)

And the only picture of me in the water

I only have 1 other beach to compare this beach to and that’s Virginia Beach. So I thought there were a few things missing from this beach area. I love all the little shops around the VA Beach area and they didn’t have any of those really around this beach. Plenty of restaurants but no place to buy t-shirts or other souvenirs. I missed that a little. Plus my mission in Barcelona was to find a cute hat and buy one of the fans everyone was using, kind of hard when there’s no good places to buy them.

The other thing I noticed, well something I knew going into it all, was that obviously the beach rules are a little different here. Europeans are more relaxed and it’s perfectly normal to see women go topless at the beach. Now I guess if that’s what you’re used to and you’re comfortable with it by all means go for it, but when we got to the unofficial “nude” beach the story was a little different. It’s one thing to notice someone topless at the beach but a whole different thing to see someone with nothing on at all. Joe and I didn’t really know what to do when we got to this beach except keep walking along and not draw attention to ourselves. We felt a little overdressed in our shorts and shirts. But all in all it was a great start to the beach and the only time I was able to take any pictures of the beach. We never brought the camera back because I read to much about bags being taken or items taken from bags that I was not about to risk having my camera stolen on the beach! But at least I have several pictures from the beach!

After we walked along the beach and got hungry we decided to head over to Las Ramblas area and look for some dinner. Joe was in the mood for some Paella which is a traditional Spanish dish with rice, sauce and meats. We found a little restaurant and ordered some mixed Paella. It was delicious! I think I might need to learn how to make it now because it was really good. After dinner we headed back towards the hotel, stopped at the gas station on the corner and got some supplies for our day at the beach on Saturday. It was an excellent start to our second holiday!

Las Ramblas area