I'd wanted to go to Barcelona ever since I read The Shadow of the Wind when I was sixteen. My English teacher lent it to me and I got through it in about three days, all those winding streets and old bookshops and secrets layered into the buildings. I remember finishing it on the bus home from school and thinking: I need to walk those streets. It took me eight years but I finally made it. Three nights. That would have to do.
I flew EasyJet from Gatwick for twenty-nine quid and took the Aerobus from Terminal 1 into Plaça Catalunya for about seven euros. Quick, easy, drops you right in the centre.
I stayed at the Mediterranean Youth Hostel in the Gothic Quarter, which was loud and chaotic and exactly what I needed. The dorms were clean, the showers were hot, and the common area had that revolving-door energy where someone new was always arriving with a backpack and a slightly overwhelmed expression. Twenty quid a night for a dorm bed, decent location, no complaints.
The Gothic Quarter is intense. Narrow medieval streets that twist into each other, every surface covered in history or graffiti or both. You turn a corner expecting a dead end and instead you find a tiny square with an orange tree and an old man reading a newspaper and a cat who looks like he's been there since the 1400s. I got lost within about ten minutes and didn't try to get unlost for hours.
On my first evening I ended up on Carrer Blai in Poble Sec, this street absolutely rammed with pintxos bars, all of them with little plates of food on toothpicks lined up along the counter. You just grab what you want, eat, stack your toothpicks, and they count them up at the end. I had four pintxos and a glass of wine for about six euros and genuinely considered never going home.
I did the Sagrada Familia on day two because you have to, and I'll be honest, I'd expected to be underwhelmed. I'm not usually a queue-for-two-hours-to-see-a-building person. But when I walked inside I actually gasped. Out loud. Like a character in a period drama.
The columns branch out at the top like trees and the stained glass throws colour across everything, blues and greens on one side, warm reds and oranges on the other, depending on where the sun is. I stayed for over an hour, just sitting in a pew, watching the colours shift as the sun moved. Book tickets online in advance or you'll queue forever. It was twenty-six euros when I went.
Afterwards I walked down Avinguda de Gaudí towards the hospital and had a cheap menú del día at a place full of workmen, three courses and a beer for eleven euros. Ate way too much. Wrote in my journal. Felt very content and very full.
The best thing I did in Barcelona was the Bunkers del Carmel. A girl called Priya from my dorm told me about it, old Civil War anti-aircraft bunkers on top of a hill in the El Carmel neighbourhood, completely free, with 360-degree views of the entire city.
We took the metro to El Carmel and then walked up, which was steep and sweaty and I complained the entire way. But then we got to the top and I shut up immediately.
You can see everything. The Sagrada Familia rising out of the grid of streets below. The sea in the distance. Montjuïc. The cranes at the port. We'd bought Estrella beers and chorizo and bread from a little supermarket on the way up and we sat on the warm concrete and ate and drank and watched the sky turn gold.
It was packed, mostly young people, backpackers, locals with guitars and bluetooth speakers and bottles of cava. Priya and I ended up talking to a group of Italian students who shared their olives with us and tried to teach me a card game I never fully understood. The sun went down behind the city and nobody moved. That kind of evening.
We scrambled back down in the dark, slightly tipsy, using phone torches to find the path, laughing at nothing in particular.
On my last morning I walked down to Barceloneta and sat on the beach with a coffee before it got crowded. The sand was cool and the sea was flat and a man was doing tai chi near the water's edge. I took my sandals off and put my feet in the Mediterranean and it was cold and perfect.
Three nights. Twenty-nine quid on the EasyJet flight. About sixty quid on the hostel. The rest on pintxos and cheap wine and a bus fare up a hill to watch the sunset from a place where people once fired anti-aircraft guns at fascists.
Barcelona is loud and messy and pickpockety and touristy and I loved every single second of it.