Barcelona 2023 - Day 6: Home, Epilog

We packed up in the morning, and I went out for a baguette at the corner bakery so we could turn our leftover cured meats into some sandwiches.

Around 11 AM, we checked out at the desk and stored all of our bags in these enormous lockers, in the small garage attached to the hotel. I think the garage had 10 or 12 spaces, and was completely empty.

We had about 90 minutes until we needed to mobilize, so we meandered through the shopping area of Grácia, near the metro stop we'd be using all week, toward one of the plazas.

It was a national holiday, so the square was full of kids playing soccer or bombing around on scooters. Once it got too crowded, we moved on to the next square and ate our improvised picnic lunch. Sabrina also had some leftover paella, room temperature.

We should have stayed there, people-watching, all day, but we had to eventually return to the hotel to fetch our bags and hop the metro back to the airport. We knew from our prior trips that it would take about an hour to get there, including the walking, changing metro lines, etc.

The Barcelona airport was once again an absolute pleasure to traverse, so arriving 90 minutes before the (intra-EU) flight was perfectly adequate. We even had time to browse the jamon vending machines; the US CBP frowns on bringing any meat products into the country, unfortunately, so we didn't partake.

Our flight to Lisbon was about an hour and a half, and then we had around two hour until the next leg. Originally, we thought this would be time to eat an early dinner, but with TAP apparently feeding us on the plane, we didn't bother.

Instead, we sat at a cafe for coffee and a another pastel de nata; it's almost worth connecting through the Lisbon airport just for the snacks, in my opinion.

They have an entire store just for canned fish (sardines, anchovies, etc.), in case that's something you want to bring home. It was empty, when we walked by.

Our flight back to Newark was uneventful and quiet, except for all of the people coughing, as usual. Dinner was a choice of chicken/rice or mushroom ravioli, along with a small salad, roll with butter, crackers with soft cheese, and something resembling a whipped cream/cheesecake dessert with berry compote.

It was a 7.5 hour flight, so they woke us up a few hours later to give us... a snack, I guess? It was half of some sort of spinach wrap with either a soft cheese in the middle? Or maybe it was egg salad? I'm not really sure. Also a small chocolate bar with something crunchy in it. I think it was around midnight or 1 AM, Barcelona time.

By the time we deplaned in Newark, got through customs (shockingly quickly), retrieved our bags, got back to the car, and drove home, it was after midnight EDT, which felt like 6:15 AM to us.

Closing thoughts, notes for next time, etc., in no particular order:

The public transit is exquisite. We would not have been able to see all of the sights we saw, with such scheduled precision, without the ability to zip across the city so quickly. Whether or not the Hola BCN transit cards are a good deal, price-wise, is debatable; it depends entirely on how many trips/day you might make, versus just getting a 10-trip card or whatever. The fact that it includes the L9 line to the airport made it worthwhile for us, especially because we did two extra airport trips for the Mallorca overnight. There's also value is not having to think/worry about the cost of additional metro trips, like when we just went back to the hotel to pick up our bags, water bottles, etc.

By the end of the trip, we knew the core of the metro map rather well. Transferring to the L9 involves 4 or 5 levels of escalator, and is worth taking the elevator if you have luggage. (It's very deep underground.)

The great metro coverage meant that we never had to walk more than a mile, at the most. We chose to walk around quite a bit, averaging over 9 miles per day, or something like 50 miles walked while on this trip, not counting the travel days at either end. We also got in a few good bike rides, and did some serious Stairs Days on Tuesday and Thursday.

Everyone we met from the area, whether they were working, just walking around town, or fellow tourists, was extremely friendly. People are courteous on the subway, on the street, at the airport, etc. They're all just so happy, it seems strange to us coming from the US.

The eating times and late hours of everything takes some getting used to. I absolutely loved it; Sabrina was repeatedly in disbelief at how late people were out, eating, etc. Going to see tourist attractions before 10 AM meant there were virtually no lines. Going to dinner before 9 PM was a sure way to get a table without a reservation, as the rush seems to start at 9.

The thing to keep in mind is... they're sort of in the wrong time zone, geographically. The whole country moved an hour later, in solidarity with the bulk of Europe, during WWII and just never moved back. The details are a bit more complicated than that, but the end result is it sort of isn't as late as it seems, if one is concerned about the position of the sun.

There are coffee shops absolutely everywhere; the cafe culture is amazing. Sabrina was annoyed at the lack of decent tea options, because it's very much a coffee city. The ability to get a pastry/sandwich and a coffee, at any time the sun is up, anywhere in the city, is fantastic. I could really get used to that.

There are also corner markets/grocery stores on almost every block, at least in Grácia, Eixample, and the old city areas. The relatively cheap cost of food in the city, combined with the very favorable Euro/USD exchange rate right now, meant the costs seemed reasonable to us, even at "convenience store" prices.

We had heard/read the Barcelona was an "expensive" city, but that wasn't our experience at all. Again, the exchange rate helps, but the lack of tipping and low cost of beer/wine makes dining out much more affordable. The biggest sticker shock I had was the cost of tickets to enter the tourist attractions; two tickets to one of the Gaudí houses cost more than dinner out for the two of us.

On that note, the overnight trip to Mallorca was shockingly affordable. The ability to fly from Barcelona to Palma for under $50/person is difficult to fathom, coming from a place where we'd spend more than that for round-trip bus tickets from eastern Pennsylvania to New York City and back (about a 75-minute drive each way). The hotels were also very reasonable, everywhere. Traveling off-peak or in a shoulder season certainly has its benefits.

I think if we were to do it all again, I'd probably try to arrange the Mallorca side trip to line up with the end of the trip, so when we flew from Palma back to Barcelona, we'd just stay at the airport and fly home from there, instead of taking two extra ~1 hour trips to/from downtown. This would require storing luggage at the airport, which looks do-able, and would be putting a lot of faith in Vueling/whomever not to delay/cancel a flight or otherwise screw everything up.

The day trip to Figueres could've gone better, but we couldn't forecast a problem with the train. That mostly ate up the time we'd allowed to explore the town, but it was mostly closed due to it being Sunday anyway. I don't think we could've found much to do on Sunday anywhere in the whole country, though. Additionally, the train ride wasn't as scenic as I expected it to be (based on absolutely no information whatsoever).

We had initially considered different train day-trip destinations like Sitges (close) or Tarragona (about an hour, like Figueres). In hindsight, it's good we didn't try to go to Sitges because we saw signs advertising their film festival that we would have unknowingly tried to crash. I don't know that there would've been anything interesting to do in either city on a Sunday either, but the train ride would've been along the coast at least.

Aside from the delight that is wandering around old European city centers, the Gaudí attractions are a unique experience of Barcelona. Throw in the exquisite food and friendly people, and it's a trip that I would absolutely do again, given the opportunity. Next time, perhaps we can combine it with a trip along the Mediterranean coast, either to Costa Brava, or the south of France.