Barcelona, Day 2

Did you bring your favorite bocadillo to meet me at Parc Güell in Barcelona, on day 2 of our trip?


No worries, I’ve brought enough sandwiches and vino to feed a village. When in Spain, I tend to fill up on these bocadillos within the first 48 hours and then I can’t think about them again for five more years. It’s always feast or famine with me when it comes to overindulging on favorite local foods. Like the time I ate my body’s weight in rambutan as soon as I landed in Singapore. Or drank seven glasses of fresh sugarcane juice in Vietnam in one sitting and then got a stomach virus (the day before my flight home) from the dirty ice. This is why gluttony is a sin. And why I always travel with Cipro these days.

This park was once a hopeful yet failed attempt at a housing site (long before we all knew what gentrification and subdivisions meant) by Count Eusebi Güell and one of my favorite architects, Antoni Gaudí. These days it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a garden complex beloved by the people of Barcelona and world at large.

You could wander around for days, weeks and never get enough of it.

No matter how difficult or cranky someone might be, I suspect there would be at least one or two elements in this huge park to bring a smile to his/her face. And certainly if you are as obsessed with mosaics as I am, then this is some kind of paradise…

When you reach the hilltop, you can see Barcelona stretching into forever–until you realize that no matter where you are in this city, you will see the church Gaudí is probably most famous for, la Sagrada Família :

One last photo op from one of the happiest places on Earth and I’ll see you at the other Gaudí masterpiece next time.

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