This is my second time in Barcelona and my first time there
in the middle of summer . My virgin Barcelona experience was over a week around
Thanksgiving in 2002 when I took a week off from work (actually just three days
as it works out) after having had such a good time in and around Madrid with my
bro that same week the year before. I
somewhat fell in love with the city then, rating it as one of my favorites in Europe
for its Mediterranean setting, monumental architecture, and unique vibe. As far
as sightseeing goes, though, November was a much better time for it than July.
I recall most of the week as being on the cool side but comfortable for walking
around and most of the sights not particularly overrun with visitors. July in
Barcelona is, of course, hot sunny beach weather and is also the busiest time
of the year with most places of interest mobbed.

That’s not so bad when you’re just wandering around the
city, but it’s another story if you’re interested in seeing Barcelona’s famous
buildings by Gaudi which are not all that large. You can only fit so many
people into Casa Battlo at a time. So I
wouldn’t recommend summer as a the first time to visit for someone interested
in going inside the famous buildings. Fortunately for me, that wasn’t too high
apriority for me on my second time in town, although I would have liked to have
seen the six years of progress on Sagrada Familia cathedral. I decided not to brave
the lines.

Last time in town I stayed in an authentic hostel a block or
two from Las Ramblas in the center of town . This time the best I could do was
well out in the neighborhood known as the Eixample several blocks past Sagrada
Familia. It wasn’t too far out but not as centrally located to everything.

My wanderings about town this time included some of the main
hotspots – Las Ramblas, the tree-shaded main pedestrian thoroughfare through
the heart of the city; the Boqueria market along the Ramblas, one of the most
picturesque public markets in Europe; the Barri Gotic, the rather small but
crowded medieval center of the city; and the Cathedral, not particularly
notable by Spanish standards but with great views from its rooftop.

I also wandered west of the center of town around the Plaza
de Espana and the Montjuic hill, locations respectively of the 1929 Barcelona
International Exhibition and most of the events venues including the stadium
for the 1992 Olympics. I found the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, housed in
the Palau de Catalunya built for the 1929 exhibition, to be interesting enough
for a return visit . And the great thing about it was that I had the place
virtually to myself. I guess the tourist
hordes that descend on Barcelona in summer don’t include many art lovers, or
maybe people just don’t deem a museum focused on the art of a region/nation
without many works by big-name internationally-renowned artists to be worth
visiting. I suspect the Picasso Museum in Barri Gotic would have been heaving
with visitors had I decided to go back this time.

Something especially notable about Barcelona is the
abundance of large works of public art. I call it the new Modernismo, since
much of it is abstract and avant garde and makes even the Joan Miro works
around town seem historic.

Probably one of Barcelona’s biggest appeals is its proximity
to the Mediterranean Sea and its beaches making it maybe the most Mediterranean
big city in Europe. The city has an
appealing harbor right at the end of Las Ramblas, now used mostly
recreationally as the true port facilities have been moved south a few miles .
And beyond the old fishermen’s quarter of Barceloneta on the other side is one
of the longest and most popular swathes of urban beach in Europe. I’m quite hard-pressed to think of another
city in Europe where good beaches are so close to a major city’s center. Supposedly
much of the beach area and much of the city overall was still quite seedy up
into the 1980s but all got a major facelift for the 1992 Olympics which is considered
to have been a good example of how to use an international event to thoroughly
revitalize a city.