Some holidays leave you wondering ‘why don’t I live here?’ Every time I have visited Barcelona, I’ve spent the trip back to our rainy shores looking up how I might move there. In recent years, several friends have done just that, setting up in vast, central apartments in the Gothic Quarter or on Barceloneta by the sea, working remotely on their jobs and tans from sunloungers, and paying a fraction of London rent for the pleasure. The only thing that stops the jealousy from building up too much is visiting them in this cheap, LGBTQ friendly, sundrenched playground of a city and cosplay as a digital nomad for a weekend.
When I did just that in September – having jetted out from Gatwick on a spacious Vueling flight – I took a day off work to explore the city alone. First on your to-do list should be a coffee from Coto in Barrio Gótico, where a Cuban and Australian couple have fused the best of both of their heritages to set up a cafe that’d feel more likely in coffee capital Melbourne. It also sells lovely homeware and wine.
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Milo Boyd/ Daily Mirror)
Full of beans, I strolled in the sunshine to Club Natació Atlètic Barceloneta. The outdoor pool area costs £10, sits 10m from the sea and is the perfect place to lay down a refreshing few lengths before reading on a lounger in the late summer sun. The walk to the Montjuïc cable car (£9 one way, £14 return) isn’t long enough to stir you from your dreamy daze, which is the perfect state of mind to be in as you rise above port and city below up onto the ‘Jewish Mountain’, Montjuïc. This is the birthplace of the city and a great maze of wide, sloping roads and woodland paths connecting a Jewish cemetery, monuments left behind by the 1929 International Exhibition, including an amphitheater dug into the hill, and the 1992 Summer Olympics. The view from the high dive board over rooftops is well worth a peak.
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Milo Boyd/ Daily Mirror)
By now you will have worked up an appetite, so walk down the hill to Carrer de Blai and choose from one of the pintxos bars for a meal, however light or heavy as you desire. Nights in Barcelona can grow in many directions as you find yourself swept along the alleys into cobbled courtyards for a spritz beneath the clocktower, clubs only a few years behind Berlin in terms of edge, or as happened to me, onto one of 100 white plastic chairs in a residential street where neighbours had come together for a drag cabaret. If you aren’t quite so lucky, head to one of Barcelona’s many superb cocktail bars. Mixology is a serious business in the city and has seen the likes of Paradiso crowned the world’s best.
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Milo Boyd/ Daily Mirror)
At the end of it all, you’ll find yourself bleary-eyed on a bus back to the airport the next morning. It’s a big place full of the usual terminal traps that feel as if they’re trying to squeeze you dry of every cent you have. But there is no need to relent. Remember – In the kingdom of the €10 Pret baguette, the man with the €5 extra large BK chip bucket and €1 black Americano is the Burger King. BK is cheap and quick, vending machine water chilled and half the price of that in WHSmith, and the Starbucks terrace is sunny and free to sit in. Just make sure you don’t sunbathe for too long. El Pratt funnels non-EU passport-holding passengers into a huge snaking queue before a long, long walk to the gates. Give yourself a bit of extra time and enjoy watching latecomers sprinting through the seemingly endless terminal after indulging in one too many samples in duty-free.
Key info:
Flight: 6.45am – 9.50am Vueling Gatwick to El Prat Barcelona, 6.55pm – 8.15pm return £50
Environmental impact from flights: 476kg CO2e
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