Madrid -> Barcelona

​August 21, 2026 - Madrid to Barcelona

Today we slept in a bit and then got up and packed up to get ready for our transition to Barcelona. Somehow we managed to get all our souvenirs in our bags and had time to go get sandwiches for the train ride AND give many last scratches to los gatos Simon and Miño, who I think will miss us the most 🤣  

We said good bye to Madrid, Matt & Daniella and headed to the airport with all our luggage. I think I over packed and maybe the kids do too?! 🤪 We schlepped our stuff to the taxi stand by Matt & Daniella’s place and headed to the train station. 

The train ride was 3.5ish hours. We went through beautiful Spanish countryside, ate in a dining car for the first time and attempted to understand the announcements over the intercom. Finally we landed in Barcelona and made our way to the taxi stand to get to our air bnb. It’s about 20 minutes from the train station in the gothic quarter, next to Las Ramblas - a famous busy street, across from the Bogatell Market. Such a great location!! 

The cab dropped us off a little ways from the apartment because we are staying in an area where cars can’t drive. So we schlepped our stuff through the street and down a small alley to our apartment. The first door opened (phew) and we were on the 4th floor of a narrow walk up… so we schlepped our luggage up 4 flights (63 stairs) and the door opened with the code we had! 🙌🏻 The apartment is small but has 2 rooms with 2 twin beds in it. The girls were happy to have their own bed! We dumped our stuff and then headed out to get a snack at Mercat de la Boqueria which is across the street from our place basically. We walked into the Mercado and saw such wonderful fruit, candies, and snacks. As we kept walking we saw meat stalls and seafood stalls and the girls faces started turning greener and greener with disgust. There were pigs legs dangling with cuts of ham at the ready, fish heads and all kinds of seafood that smelled… like seafood… we quickly moved though this area back to the fruit and candy and the kids found empanadas with Nutella, fruit and a smoothie to drink. 

The we headed in the direction of Gaudi’s famous apartment, Casa Botlla. We got there and took photos and saw they had tickets for right then,  so I quickly bought them online and we entered. It came with an audio guide and we sprung for the silver package which had the rooftop view. 

I can’t begin to tell you how amazing this place is. It’s like a dream and hallucination all at the same time. The place is gorgeous. So many things were thought of while designing it and it’s done so beautifully. We took our time exploring all aspects of the apartment. The kids had my phone and headphones for the audio guide. They went off ahead of us listening and exploring. JP and I shared his phone and took turns listening to the audio guide together. We wandered through the house listening. It talked about the engineering and how he thought of light flow and air flow as well as the aesthetics. It was so cool! At the end of the tour there was an immersive video that was cool and dizzying. When we exited Juliet said “I want to see all of Guadi’s houses!” She loved it. She learned about this particular house in school in 3rd grade and was so excited to experiment it. We sent a photo of us next to it to her 3rd grade teacher, and he responded saying he hoped she was using lots of Spanish! So we sent him a video of her saying thanks for teaching me about Gaudi! 

Then we headed to La Pedrera, another building designed by Gaudi. We went just to look at the outside but saw they had a restaurant in this building. Naomi looked at the menu and saw some food that she liked and could eat so we quickly made a reservation. The earliest one was 9:30. It was 8:45 at the time so we hung around the area.  We found a bench and sat for a bit, then I got a text from my camp roommate about Shabbat shabombs so JP and I went and got a drinks and we sat outside on FaceTime with Bob who was at his sisters in Alexandria Virginia, a stopping point on his drive back to Florida, and Carl. At 9:28 we hung up and went to our reservation. We got there and the host said he was sorry but the restaurant was closing. I told him we had a 9:30 reservation and he said they were having trouble with their reservation platform as they don’t serve food after 9:30. 

So, the kids are hungry and it’s 9:30pm and we don’t have a reservation anywhere on a Friday night. We decided to walk back towards the apartment to see if there was anything along the way. There had to be right? This was Spain! People ate dinner late here. 

I looked at the itinerary I had made and I made a note to go to a restaurant tonight called Vinitus. I quickly googled it and as luck would have it, it was close to where we were and on the way back to our apartment! So we went there and asked if they had a table for 4. The only spot they had for us was at the bar, so we took it. Naomi looked at the menu and found a few tapas she could eat and sounded good. Juliet also found some taps that sounded good to her. So we ordered.  Naomi got Spanish tortilla, which is basically quiche with potatoes in it, and she got eggplant with cheese and mushrooms and asparagus. Juliet got chicken and ham croquettes, sausage sandwich and sausage croquettes. JP and I got all different kinds of seafood tapas. It was all really good! 

We had planned on going to a festival this evening but as it was 11:00 when we were done with dinner, we decided to go back to the apartment instead. 

We walked up 63 stairs and made it back to the apartment. The kids showered and collapsed in bed. And I’m about to so the same!