Well I’m back in the office again and my first workday is already behind me. Last friday Soraya and I came back from a 5-day trip to Barcelona, Spain. I must say I was pretty impressed by this beautiful city. It has so many amazing facets! Finally today I found some time to write a bit about it, because I would recommend a trip to this wonderful city to anyone.

There is one famous person you can’t get around in Barcelona: Antoni Gaudi. You will find a lot of places in and around Barcelona that were created by or inspired on the work of this famous architect.

During our stay we visited two of the most well known Gaudi attractions: The Sagrada Familia and Park Güell. Before I left for Spain, I heard a lot about the Sagrada, but seeing it in real life is much more impressive. It’s really an amazing work of art and according to the audio-guide they expect it to be finished in about 20 years. The started building around 1900 or so, so you can imagine it’s hard to estimate. I can understand why, because it’s so full of detail that when you look away and look at it again you will see new things that you had not seen the first time. We were very lucky that day, because the sun was shining like it was May or June and the colored windows gave this nice atmosphere inside the cathedral.

Next up was Parc Güell. Parc Güell is not just another ordinary city park, but again this piece of Barcelona was designed by Gaudi. It has some very impressive mosaic statues, benches and buildings and together with the sunshine this was a real treat.

Next to the cultural activities, my girlfriend also noticed that Barcelona is a great place to go shopping, as we spent an entire day going in and out of stores. The Barcelona shopping district really is huge, so if you tend to go shopping be sure to bring a big bag of money.

On the last day of our visit we also went into the old part of Barcelona which contains small and characteristic streets, gardens and squares. The atmosphere here was great and we ended up at a local antiques market. Barcelona is really a great place to visit and the people are very friendly. We really liked it, so we already talked about going back one day.

An photo impression of our stay in Barcelona can be found on my Flickr page.