We woke up in Rome with our alarm at 6 am, got ready, checked-out of our hotel and had a quick breakfast before leaving.
We caught the 7:30 am bus to the main Termini station and then an express train to Leonardo da Vinci airport. We were at the airport at 8:22 am, well in time for our 9:50 am flight. It left a little late and we took off around 10:20 am. The flight was a short one and we reached Barcelona airport around noon.
The airport is very impressive or maybe that's because we landed at Terminal 1 which was recently built in 2009. Super clean, very modern and extremely spacious - exactly what we were hoping for after dirty and crowded Rome.
We had originally planned on taking Barcelona's transit (bus and then subway) to our hotel but after doing a cost-benefit analysis, we decided that a taxi would be better. We were at our hotel a little before 1 pm and thoroughly impressed by the modern and innovative architecture. It's called "The Mirror" and is full of mirrors everywhere - our room, the lobby, the elevator and even the soap in our washroom is transparent. We're quite relieved that our hotel for the next 4 days is comfortable and clean and that the staff is very helpful.
After resting for a couple of hours, although we didn't want to leave but decided to finally venture out around 5 pm to eat something. We asked our hotel reception desk for a recommendation and they gave us a map and exact directions for a Tapas place not too far away from our hotel.
We walked around our hotel's surrounding area (L'Eixample district) for a little while. It's a relatively newer neighborhood of Barcelona at only 100-150 years old. We got to the Tapas restaurant and ordered 4 dishes. Spain is famous for tapas which are essentially small plates of tiny portions. The idea is to be able to try different varieties of food without filling up on just one thing. We loved three of our four dishes - fried potatoes with garlic mayo (called patata bravas), red pepper with cod filling and Barcelona's famous cuttlefish (like calamari). We didn't like the anchovies (a type of fish) and olives served on bread. We had enough room for dessert and ordered hot chocolate cake that was delicious - it was a small brown cupcake sized cake filled with room-temperature chocolate inside and floating in molten hot chocolate outside. Then we continued walking around a little more but it started getting chilly so we headed back to our hotel to get our jackets.
After reading up a little from our guidebook about the history of Barcelona and Spain, we left around 8:30 pm for exploring the Plaća de Catalunya and La Rambla, two famous tourist attractions. We took the subway to the Plaća de Catalunya and strolled around the La Rambla strip of road to take in the ambiance. Lots of stalls on both sides of the walking strip (that was almost twice as big as the actual road on the side) and scores of tourists and street vendors. The street vendors in Barcelona are all Pakistani, exactly as Mohsin told us. We didn't mention this about Rome but it was full of Bangladeshis and they were the street vendors and they were everywhere in Rome and the Vatican City! Similarly, we saw a lot of Turkish people in Berlin. But we knew about how they came to Berlin in our history walk-through of Berlin. When the Berlin Wall was erected, all the builders went to the East Berlin side since that's where the construction jobs were. When the construction workers couldn't come back, West Germany opened immigration to get skilled labourers and that's when a huge number of Turkish poured into Berlin. We haven't been able to find out yet why there are so many Bangladeshis in Rome and so many Pakistanis in Barcelona. We had no idea about this phenomenon before Mohsin told us. One of those quirks that you only find out when you visit a place (or when your brother tells you about it).
We took the subway back after our walk and got lost trying to find our hotel after coming out of the subway. But we liked the experience since our trendy neighborhood is fun to walk through and explore. We finally found our way back and are going to bed now.
Till tomorrow, take care and good night.
We caught the 7:30 am bus to the main Termini station and then an express train to Leonardo da Vinci airport. We were at the airport at 8:22 am, well in time for our 9:50 am flight. It left a little late and we took off around 10:20 am. The flight was a short one and we reached Barcelona airport around noon.
The airport is very impressive or maybe that's because we landed at Terminal 1 which was recently built in 2009. Super clean, very modern and extremely spacious - exactly what we were hoping for after dirty and crowded Rome.
We had originally planned on taking Barcelona's transit (bus and then subway) to our hotel but after doing a cost-benefit analysis, we decided that a taxi would be better. We were at our hotel a little before 1 pm and thoroughly impressed by the modern and innovative architecture. It's called "The Mirror" and is full of mirrors everywhere - our room, the lobby, the elevator and even the soap in our washroom is transparent. We're quite relieved that our hotel for the next 4 days is comfortable and clean and that the staff is very helpful.
After resting for a couple of hours, although we didn't want to leave but decided to finally venture out around 5 pm to eat something. We asked our hotel reception desk for a recommendation and they gave us a map and exact directions for a Tapas place not too far away from our hotel.
We walked around our hotel's surrounding area (L'Eixample district) for a little while. It's a relatively newer neighborhood of Barcelona at only 100-150 years old. We got to the Tapas restaurant and ordered 4 dishes. Spain is famous for tapas which are essentially small plates of tiny portions. The idea is to be able to try different varieties of food without filling up on just one thing. We loved three of our four dishes - fried potatoes with garlic mayo (called patata bravas), red pepper with cod filling and Barcelona's famous cuttlefish (like calamari). We didn't like the anchovies (a type of fish) and olives served on bread. We had enough room for dessert and ordered hot chocolate cake that was delicious - it was a small brown cupcake sized cake filled with room-temperature chocolate inside and floating in molten hot chocolate outside. Then we continued walking around a little more but it started getting chilly so we headed back to our hotel to get our jackets.
After reading up a little from our guidebook about the history of Barcelona and Spain, we left around 8:30 pm for exploring the Plaća de Catalunya and La Rambla, two famous tourist attractions. We took the subway to the Plaća de Catalunya and strolled around the La Rambla strip of road to take in the ambiance. Lots of stalls on both sides of the walking strip (that was almost twice as big as the actual road on the side) and scores of tourists and street vendors. The street vendors in Barcelona are all Pakistani, exactly as Mohsin told us. We didn't mention this about Rome but it was full of Bangladeshis and they were the street vendors and they were everywhere in Rome and the Vatican City! Similarly, we saw a lot of Turkish people in Berlin. But we knew about how they came to Berlin in our history walk-through of Berlin. When the Berlin Wall was erected, all the builders went to the East Berlin side since that's where the construction jobs were. When the construction workers couldn't come back, West Germany opened immigration to get skilled labourers and that's when a huge number of Turkish poured into Berlin. We haven't been able to find out yet why there are so many Bangladeshis in Rome and so many Pakistanis in Barcelona. We had no idea about this phenomenon before Mohsin told us. One of those quirks that you only find out when you visit a place (or when your brother tells you about it).
We took the subway back after our walk and got lost trying to find our hotel after coming out of the subway. But we liked the experience since our trendy neighborhood is fun to walk through and explore. We finally found our way back and are going to bed now.
Till tomorrow, take care and good night.
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