Honeymoon - Spain, Day 1

We LOVED Barcelona. It is such a clean and unique big city. We arrived at the nice Barcelona airport at 6:45 am on October 26th. We took a city bus/airport shuttle (also very nice) and arrived at our hotel around 8:30 am. Luckily, our hotel said they could have our room ready in about an hour because after two red-eye flights, WE WERE EXHAUSTED and ready to sleep in a horizontal position!!! We left our bags at the front desk and went exploring for a while. Our first stop was Santa Caterina Market - a swanky and expensive indoor market with amazing architecture (look at the roof), food, and flowers. This market was very close to our hotel.


Cody had never been to Europe before and he absolutely fell in love with the narrow streets. I happened to fall in love with them all over again. Here is my beloved by a random road on our way to the Santa Maria del Mar church.


Santa Maria del Mar church was built in 1329. It is built in the gothic style (one of my absolute favorites) and is quite large and spacious inside. Unfortunately, this church is very difficult to get a good exterior photo of because it is nesseled in between small streets and close buildings. The only good shot for the exterior was covered in scaffolding. Bust! I always HATE SCAFFOLDING and wish historic buildings could be restored AFTER I've seen them. Some of these photos have a flash and some don't. I wanted to highlight the stain-glassed windows, but also the high arches in the stone work.


After these stops our hotel room was definitely available! Now, I've stayed in Europe before and know how difficult it can be to find a nice hotel. You book it online and somehow a 4 star hotel looks like it shouldn't have received even 1 star. One particular hotel I've stayed at in Vienna was the absolute worst. With this background, I didn't expect much in terms of accomodations, but I should have known that Cody would surprise me. And he did. Our hotel was lovely and modern. We checked the internet, had a great breakfast buffet in the mornings, and enjoyed all the amenities. Here are some pictures of our hotel (I went overboard) and in Day 2's posting I will have pictures of the hotel's morning breakfast buffet.


So back at the hotel, we took a necessary nap and didn't go out exploring again until dinner. After some research we decided to go to the oldest restaurant in Barcelona, Can Culleretes (1786). Sure these "oldest" restaurants are a bit of a tourist trap because they can claim their title, but as I figure, if you've stayed in business for that long, perhaps you have good food. So off we went with our map in hand. Our hotel was so perfectly situated and we walked everywhere with only one, one-way Metro ride our entire trip in Barcelona! Here is a picture of me at dinner...the salad looks gross but it was AMAZING, as was the rest of our dinner (Catalan Cuisine). Also, the picture does not show off the nice atmosphere. Added below is a picture of the Reial plaza - very close to the restaurant and another find on our nightly stroll.