By: Blake Beshero
Throughout my time stayed in Spain there were a lot of places that I have traveled to and enjoyed. I will be going over some of my favorite places that I have visited and recommend you go to if you ever go to Spain. I have stayed in Spain for a little over three weeks and I would highly recommend visiting Spain. Even though three weeks was a long time and felt like a long time toward the end, there were still places that I wanted to visit but never had the chance.
I stayed in Barcelona for most of my time in Spain and I can tell you it is a beautiful city. I will warn you if you are not a fan of graffiti you will probably not like Barcelona that much. It is very much a skater city. It became like this because of a very well-known game Tony Hawk Underground 2. Skateboarders would come across worldwide just to skate in the areas where Tony Hawk skated in the game.
In Barcelona you will find many great restaurants, coffee shops, and local shops. The first restaurant I would recommend going to is called La Flouta. It is a very small restaurant so get there early if you want a table, but they are known for their tapas selection. This was the first restaurant I went to when I got off the plane. It was one of the best restaurants I had been to in Barcelona. Since I wasn’t quite adjusted to the culture, I thought it was like how you order your food in America. You order one thing for yourself and not share it with anybody. What you are supposed to do is order a wide variety of tapas as they are not expensive and share it with the table. The food was amazing, and I went back a few times to get more food.
If you are looking to cook for yourself in Barcelona I would recommend going to the local markets as they have a wide variety of fresh food and produce. During my three weeks I went to the market a handful of times to buy fresh food to make dinner for my roommates. The kind of food you can find at these markets are fresh seafood like squid, oysters, and fish. You will also find stalls that sell the best ham I have ever had called Iberico ham. With these markets they are all family-owned stalls and vendors so most of them don’t speak a word of English. I learned that if you try your best at their language they will treat you very nice and sometimes help you learn more about how to speak the language. To me the market wasn’t just some grocery store it was a place for me to improve on my Spanish and learn some Catalonian.
One thing I would recommend anybody to do if they are in Europe is to go to a professional football game, or as Americans call it a soccer game. The one thing that I had on my agenda to do in Barcelona was to see an FC Barcelona game. I had been following FC Barcelona ever since I was a freshman in high school many years ago and watching the game in person was a whole new experience. If you don’t like soccer I would still go, the atmosphere of the fans was something that I have never experienced before. When you walk into those gates the fans treat you like their family. Soccer in Europe is such an emotional sport for the players and the fans, and you can really feel those emotions when you are watching the game.
If you want to explore outside of Barcelona there are many other cities I would recommend going to if you are in Spain. The first one is Girona; Girona was my favorite city that I have visited while I was in Spain. It was very calm there compared to Barcelona and Madrid but kept that beauty that European cities had. If you are a Game of Thrones fan Girona was one of their filming locations. The most iconic scene that was filmed here was the walk of shame scene from season six of Game of Thrones. Another city that is very beautiful and has a very nice beach is Sitges. Sitges is more of a touristy city but is very beautiful with its architecture and their beaches. When I went to Sitges they were
getting ready to have a music festival, there was a little bit more people there than usual. The final city I would recommend going to if you are looking to do some shop
ping while you are in Spain is the city of Madrid. Madrid has so many different stores and shops that each one has its own different style to them. I will warn you walking around Madrid is equivalent to walking around Times Square in New York City.
If you ever go to Spain I would highly recommend everything that I have said but there is a lot to do in Spain. Take your time and relax, it is a beautiful place with so many things to do. I hope this travel guide helped you in deciding what you want to do while you are in Spain.