Barcelona, Part One: Three Days Before Setting Sail

This is Part One of our five-part Grand Anniversary Journey: Barcelona → Barcelona to Rome → Rome to Venice → Venice to Venice via the Croatian Coast and Montenegro → four days in Geneva. See the full itinerary with links at the bottom of this post.

Part one of our Grand Anniversary trip was three days in Barcelona before we boarded the Windstar Star Surf. Our good friends Celia and Fred, expats now living an hour north of Málaga, met us there. We hadn’t seen them in years, and we couldn’t wait to catch up and explore the city together before setting sail.

🛬 Settling In

Bob booked us into the Occidental Diagonal, in a quieter, prettier part of the city about a twenty-minute walk north of the Sagrada Família. We both landed around 11 a.m., grabbed a quick nap to shake off the flight, then met Celia and Fred in the lobby for a light snack and hours of catching up. Later we took a walk around the neighborhood before heading back to change for dinner at Elite Barna, a restaurant right around the corner from our hotel, which they’d booked for us. The meal was fantastic, and honestly, the best part was just how easily the four of us fell back into old rhythms, like no time had passed at all.

🚌 Seeing the City by Hop-On Hop-Off

On Celia and Fred’s recommendation, I bought tickets for the hop-on hop-off bus to get the lay of the land, and Fred had already picked up tickets for Sagrada Família the next afternoon. After a quick breakfast, we walked right past the Sagrada looking for the bus stop, only to realize we’d overshot it. We doubled back and found it directly across the street.

The Orange Route wound through the city and down toward the harbor, past the Christopher Columbus Monument, a sixty-meter column built in 1888 that marks the spot where Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage. You can actually ride an elevator up to a viewing platform at his feet, though we saved that for another trip. From there the route skirted La Rambla, ran along a stretch of the old medieval city wall, and climbed up onto Montjuïc, past Poble Espanyol, an open-air architectural museum built for the 1929 International Exposition. It’s basically a walkable, full-scale village stitched together from 117 replica buildings representing different regions of Spain, from Andalusian streets to Castilian squares, all behind a wall modeled on the ramparts of Ávila. We didn’t stop in this time, but it’s on the list for next visit. The route continued past Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona, before we finally hopped off for lunch. By then we’d been on the bus for several hours and were more than ready to get out of the heat.

Note: the Barcelona hop-on hop-off loop takes several hours to complete, so plan accordingly if you’re trying to fit in a lot in one day.

After lunch we rode a while longer before getting off near our hotel to rest. Our hotel had a fun rooftop bar, so we headed up for the view, a drink, and a little downtime before dinner.

🥘 Dinner Near La Rambla

Celia and Fred had reservations at Alegoria, a tapas restaurant down in the La Rambla district they’d been to before. We grabbed a cab over. La Rambla is Barcelona’s famous tree-lined pedestrian boulevard, and it has a surprisingly unglamorous origin: it started out as a seasonal stream and open sewer running just outside the old city walls, and wasn’t paved into the promenade we know today until the 18th and 19th centuries. It stretches about three-quarters of a mile from Plaça de Catalunya down to that same Columbus Monument we’d passed earlier, and it forms the border between the Gothic Quarter and the El Raval neighborhood. It’s usually packed with flower stalls, street performers, and tourists, so when we arrived we found the area under heavy construction, which took away from the ambiance a bit. Dinner was still excellent, but we were all tired enough afterward to call it an early night.

😳 A Lesson in Barcelona Street Smarts

The next morning we had plans to explore the Gothic Quarter and old town before heading to the Sagrada in the afternoon. We went back to the same breakfast spot as the day before, and while we sat there deep in conversation, someone stole Fred’s shoulder bag right out from under all four of us. None of us even noticed. The restaurant had surveillance video, which clearly showed a woman lifting the bag from the table right next to ours.

We’d all heard Barcelona was a hot spot for petty theft, but it’s a different thing entirely when it happens right under your nose without anyone noticing a thing. The police reviewed the footage and said they’d keep an eye out, though they weren’t optimistic. We spent the rest of the morning at Fred and Celia’s bank canceling cards and then filing a police report, both of which went smoothly enough. If you’re heading to Barcelona: keep a hand on your bag at all times, even when you think you’re paying attention.

The delay pushed our schedule back a bit, but we eventually made it down toward the Sagrada Familia area, grabbed lunch, and got to the entrance for our 2 p.m. time slot.

⛪ The Sagrada Família

This was one of the biggest surprises of the whole trip. We’d heard about this basilica for years, and our visit happened to land right as it was making headlines: construction reached a major milestone in 2026, the hundredth anniversary of architect Antoni Gaudí’s death, when the central Tower of Jesus Christ finally topped out at just over 172 meters, making Sagrada Família the tallest church in the world. That’s after 144 years of construction, on and off, since ground first broke in 1882. Even with that milestone reached, there were still cranes on site. Some decorative work and the final entrance aren’t expected to be finished for years yet.

The Exterior: Two Facades, Two Very Different Moods

Gaudí himself only lived to see one side of the building completed, the Nativity Facade, and it shows. It’s covered edge to edge in carvings of plants, birds, turtles, and biblical figures, all studied from life. Gaudí actually had live animals brought to the site so his sculptors could work from real models, and the whole facade feels less like stone and more like something still growing. A pair of turtles anchor the base of the central columns, one modeled on a land tortoise and one on a sea turtle, meant to represent the harmony of land and sea. A towering cypress tree crowns the central portal, topped with an egg symbolizing resurrection. The doors are covered in green leaves and small animals like lady bugs and butterfly’s.

The Passion Facade, on the opposite side, couldn’t feel more different. Gaudí wanted it to be stark and bone-like, meant to convey suffering rather than joy, and construction didn’t even begin until decades after his death. The sculptures there, added between 1987 and 2005, are angular and severe by a different artist entirely, and the contrast between the two sides is jarring in the best way. Walking from one facade to the other, you can genuinely feel a century of changing artistic style stacked right into the same building.

The Interior: Not What We Expected

We assumed the inside would match the outside, dense with the same nooks, crannies, and religious carvings. It’s the opposite. The interior is bright, modern, and almost minimalist by comparison, all soaring lines and light. Gaudí designed the columns to branch upward like tree trunks, splitting into a canopy overhead so the whole nave feels like standing in a forest of stone, dozens of columns rising toward a ceiling so high it’s genuinely disorienting to look straight up.

The stained glass is what really got us. On the east side, facing the Nativity Facade, the glass runs blue and green, catching the morning sun in cool tones meant to evoke dawn and new beginnings. On the west side, facing the Passion Facade, the glass shifts to deep reds and oranges, and in the afternoon sun the whole nave on that side glows warm and gold. Standing in the crossing as the light shifted from one end to the other was unlike anything we’ve seen in another church. The main altar itself was surprisingly clean and modern-looking, nothing like the ornate gilded altars you’d expect in a European cathedral this size.

What really caught my imagination, though, was the entrance we hadn’t even walked through yet: the Glory Facade, which will eventually be the main entrance facing the street. The facade around it is still very much a construction site, with the sculptural work not expected to wrap up until sometime in the mid-2030s. But the bronze doors themselves are already in place and have been since 2009: massive panels inscribed with the Lord’s Prayer in Catalan in raised letters, surrounded by the phrase “give us this day our daily bread” repeated in nearly fifty other languages, with a statue of St. George, patron saint of Catalonia, standing above. They’re bronze, but in the bright afternoon sun pouring through the windows that day, they actually appeared more silvery than bronze-toned. It’s a strange, wonderful thing to see a finished masterpiece of a door set into a facade that’s still very much being built around it, proof that this project has been layering in wonder as it goes rather than saving it all for one grand unveiling.

We wandered the church in a state of quiet awe, working through the audio guide on my phone and just taking it all in. Spiral staircases wound up the front corners, and a second-story balcony wrapped around, adding to the sense of scale. We were all struck by how different the inside felt from the outside, and genuinely glad we’d booked tickets in advance. Same-day entry isn’t really an option anymore.

👠 A Shoe Boutique and the Old Cathedral

After exiting, hunger took over, and we found a little restaurant on a side street near the basilica for mussels and other treats. Bob, Celia, and Fred headed back to the hotel afterward, but I had two more things on my list.

First was a boutique in the Gothic Quarter, right outside Barcelona Cathedral, where my daughter Lori had spotted a pair of flats she wanted. She’d sent me the shop’s name and a photo. I hopped the hop-on hop-off for one stop, then walked quickly through La Rambla and around the cathedral to find the tiny shop. I showed the salesperson the photo, and they had the shoes in her size. In and out in minutes.

Barcelona Cathedral, officially the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, sits at the heart of the Gothic Quarter and is a different animal entirely from the Sagrada. Construction started in 1298 and dragged on for about 150 years, with the ornate neo-Gothic facade we see today not actually added until the late 1800s. It’s dedicated to Saint Eulalia, one of Barcelona’s patron saints, a young girl said to have been martyred by the Romans at just thirteen. That detail lives on in a quirky tradition: the cathedral’s Gothic cloister keeps thirteen live white geese, one for each year of her short life. I didn’t have time to go inside on this pass, but it’s worth circling back to on a future trip, geese and all.

🌊 A Catamaran Chase

Second on my list was a catamaran sail around the bay, included with our hop-on hop-off tickets. Nobody else was interested, so after grabbing the shoes, I googled the address and set off on what I thought was a mile-and-a-half walk. Google, it turned out, took me to the end point of the catamaran route rather than the start, and by the time I figured out my mistake, it was too late to backtrack. I strolled the waterfront for a few minutes, accepted defeat, and started the long walk back toward the hotel. A few blocks in, hot and thoroughly done with self-guided navigation, I found a taxi stand and let someone else drive for a while.

Back at the hotel, I showered, napped, and rallied for dinner. We returned to Elite Barna for a third time since it had been so good, arriving early enough to have the place mostly to ourselves. We laughed, talked, and lingered over the meal, all a little sad knowing we’d be saying goodbye the next day.

👋 Goodbyes and Setting Sail

Our last morning, we found a different breakfast spot (a safer bet after the bag incident) with genuinely excellent French toast. Bob and I packed up and headed for the ship while Celia and Fred, with a late flight ahead of them, planned to wander a bit more before heading to the airport. Saying goodbye was hard. We met these two more than two decades ago as neighbors just north of Jackson, Mississippi, and the friendship has held strong ever since, even across an ocean. Thank you both for meeting us in Barcelona.

Bob and I arrived at Barcelona’s South Harbor ready for the next leg of the adventure: boarding the Windstar Star Surf. Embarkation on a smaller ship moves fast, and we were soon enjoying lunch up on the Veranda Deck. Bob had a surprise waiting: an upgraded suite for our anniversary, which we are both thoroughly enjoying. We set sail a bit late, around 6:30, with the full Windstar send-off: all five main sails unfurling and a hearty sea shanty blasting over the speakers. Off we go!

🗺️ What We Missed (and What’s on Our List Next Time)

Three days is honestly not enough for Barcelona, especially with a theft detour and a catamaran misadventure eating into the schedule. A few things we didn’t get to, but plan to chase down on a return visit:

Park Güell, Gaudí’s whimsical hilltop park with its mosaic lizard and curving tiled benches overlooking the city. Casa Batlló and Casa Milà (La Pedrera), his two most famous residential buildings, both just a walk apart on Passeig de Gràcia. The Picasso Museum, tucked into a row of medieval palaces in the Gothic Quarter, tracing the artist’s early years in Barcelona. The interior and rooftop of Barcelona Cathedral, including that cloister full of geese we walked right past. Poble Espanyol, which we only saw from the bus window. And Barceloneta, the old fishermen’s neighborhood turned beach district, for anyone wanting sand and a swim between excursions.

If you’ve got more than three days, or you’re willing to skip a nap or two, all of these are doable. We’ll just have to come back.

📝 Practical Notes

Book Sagrada Família tickets well in advance; same-day entry is essentially not an option anymore. The hop-on hop-off bus is a good way to get oriented in a short visit, but budget several hours for a full loop. And no matter how relaxed the cafe or how good the company, keep a hand on your bag in Barcelona. We learned that one the hard way.

🗺️ The Grand Anniversary Journey: Full Itinerary

This trip turned into a five-part journey, from this first stop in Barcelona all the way to a final few days in Geneva. Here’s the full itinerary, with links to each leg as they’re published:

Part One: Barcelona — three days on land with old friends before boarding the Windstar Star Surf. (this post)

Part Two: Barcelona to Rome — the first leg of the cruise, island and coastal stops along the way. (coming soon)

Part Three: Rome to Venice — winding up the Italian coast toward the Adriatic. (coming soon)

Part Four: Venice to Venice via the Croatian Coast and Montenegro — a loop out and back through the Adriatic’s most dramatic coastline. (coming soon)

Part Five: Four Days in Geneva — the land stay that closed out the anniversary trip. (coming soon)