Barcelona offers so many tourist attractions, that when you don’t have too much time it’s hard to choose what is important, what to see now and what to leave for next time. You can be sure there will be next time, since there is this first! It’s a city that will make everyone come come back for more.

We want to prompt a little how to organise your first weekend in Barcelona to feel the spirit of the city. With the baby or without. However we have to mention that trip with the stroller is quite convenient as pavements are even and metro is adjusted to disabled needs, there are lifts on most of the stations. Although you have to stay vigilent as sometimes the lifts are on the opposite corner of the station to the one you need or are a bit tricky when you need to change the trains. But still you can take the tour around Barcelona with a stroller or on the wheelchair.

1. Start with the most important Antoni Gaudi’s project, his lifework – La Sagrada Familia. It’s an astonishing, unfinished church, constantly being built since 1882. The building is totaly unique and you have never seen such thing anywhere else in the world. It’s overwhelming thanks to its height, artistry, number of details and their symbolism. The difficulty in completing the construction is its size, complexity and the necessity of reconstructing plans as original ones burned in the fire. It is planned to finish works in 2028.
   [photosetgrid layout=”353″][/photosetgrid]Make sure to take the lift to the tower and view great panorama of the city. Visit the exhibition showing how Gaudi derived his amazing ideas from nature. Plan your trip in advance and buy the tickets online. The queue line sometimes requires couple of hours waiting. With online ticket you are heading straight to the entrance. If you fail to arrange the tickets before there is one more option to save time – there is an ATM on the corner next to Mc Donalds and it sells tickest as well. It’s 19,50 euro and children up to 10 enter free of charge.
2. Walk along the seaside on Berceloneta boardwalk, wander around its charming narrow streets and look up at catalonian flagues hanging from balconies. [photosetgrid layout=”3″]
   

   [/photosetgrid]This part of the city used to be inhavbited by fishermen, hence the opinion that its restaurants offer the best fish and seafood in Barcelona. This opinion has survived till now and indeed local bars offer wide variety of seefood. Try it together with a big pot of sangria.[photosetgrid layout=”4″]

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   Although children are well received in the restaurants of Barceloneta we haven’t seen a baby high chair in any of them. When there is nice weather swim in the sea. Barceloneta beaches have been cleaned and are well maintained, in summertime are full of people.

   
   Visit Port Vell, the port with impressive yachts, and leave by aerial tramway to Montjiuc hill. It’s 11 euro one way. Baby stroller fits in the car and is free of charge including its content.

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3. Head down to National Museum Art of Catalonia with a great viev over the Placa d’Espanya. It’s is located in Palau National. A huge construction built in the twenties of 19th century in classical style for Barcelona International Exposition. Central dome was inspired by St. Peters church in Vatican. The building, indeed impressive, was later on transferred into museum. Museum – a pride of Catalonians. Interior together with the exhibition keep for next visit as they require minimum 2 hours.
   
   Road leads down to Placa d’Espanya, built for the same occasion, the square with terrible history of public hangings. It’s decorated with a big fountain right in the middle and Venetian Towers – a gateway towards the Palau.On the opposite side there is marvelous bullring in Moorish Revival style, today a shopping center with a roof top open for visitors (1 euro).
   Right behind the bullring thre is a Joan Miro Parc with his 22-meter high colorful sculpture of Woman and a Bird. Joan Miro For those who lack imagination and creativity, a word of explanation – „bird” in Catalonian means penis. Now, having in mind human sexual organs, you will find a woman and a „bird” in the sculpture without a problem.
   
4. Visit one of the Barcelona food markets; choose either Santa Caterina or La Boqueria.
   Santa Caterina market is a first roofed market in the city, bulit in 1845 on the pleace of dominican monastery of the same name. Today it represents visual innovative ideas of Barcelona – it is covered with a totaly colorful wavy roof giving it completely different character. Inside stalls full of fresh produce invite by colorful compositions.
   Same bursting with colors stands we will find in La Boqueria, with the difference in way bigger number of tourists. Watch out for your pockets and purses as Barcelona is said to have one of the biggest problems with pickpocketers and such places are their paradise. But of course we should be careful in all the touristic crowded places in the world. So keep an eye on each other and dive into the world of colours, see the wide variety of fruits, vegetables, seafood, traditional meat products, cheese or sweets. Get something to eat in one of the legendary bars of the market and grab a cup of fresh fruit juice for one or two euro.
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5. Have a walk from Arch de Triomf to the Parc de la Ciutadella to find another piece of art which Gaudi probably had his hands in – Casca da Monumental. It’s a huge fountain with golden sculpture Quadriga de l’Aurora on the top.Pass by the building of Parliament of Catalonia.And look at the Catalonians enjoying park’s atmosphere.
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6. Visit the Cathedra of St. Eulalia, niecessarily inside! Admission is 6 euro. It’s a gothic cathedral built in 14th-15th centuries together with adjacent cloister. The impressive facade was finished only at the beginning of 20th century.
   Inside, under an altar there is a crypt with church patron, St. Eulalia’s body.
   Pay atention to choir stalls also from 14-15th century with seats decorated with coats of arms of Order of Golden Fleece knights. On the outer walls there are 16th-century marble reliefs showing St. Eulalia’s life.The neighbouring cloister keeps 13 white gooses for the memory of St. Eulalia age when she died. And indeed gooses gaggle in the middle of the cloister by the fountain.
7. Hospital of St. Paul it’s a complex of modernistic buildings from the beginning of 20th century.
   That extraordinary place used to really be a hospital. It consist of main building and two rows of pavilions, each for different medical ward. All buildings are covered with orange bricks, facade of the main building is decorated with sculptures and ceramic mossaic. Place ows its name to its donator,  businessman Pau Gil. Today it’s just a museum, the hostital was transferred to a new building leaving the premises to St. Pau Art Nouveau Site. Admission is 5 euro but we cannot say anything about it as were still keeping it for our next time. The only thing we learned there is a toalet with a baby changing station.

Some will say our list is missing many places like Park Guell, like Picasso Museum, Placa Reial or Casa Batllo and others, but this is only our personal opinion, our advise what to start with because as we said at the beginning you will surely be back here.

Oh, and definitely use Aerobus to get from the city to the Airport. Althought it is possible to get there by train using T10 ticket, we advise Aerobus. You just get on it in the city center and simply jump off at the airport. Going by public transport requires using subway and train and having at least 15 minutes to transfer between them. The indicated route leads through many steps and when you are short of time you just don’t wonder where the lift is and where it will take you (because it’s on the opposite corner of the station) and you just carry a stroller to follow the route. That makes you arrive to the platform tired and mad.

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There is such place in Barcelona… London Bar
Visit to La Pedrera with the baby
Saturday in Barcelona

Barcelona’s character is largely determined by works of Catalonian artist and architect Antoni Gaudi. His works influenced the landscape of the city and attract lots of funs visiting Barcelona to admire his works. One of such works is La Pedrera, a residential building designed by Gaudi. A Building of impressive architecture and astonishing solutions for its residents. Because of its facade it was called La Pedrera – a quarry. Currently that fascade is being renovated so taking a picture of the front is not possible.
We were surprised not only by Gaudi’s solutions us but also by today administrators’ care for visitors, especially those with children. Knowing that we want to visit different floors of La Pedrera and especialy the roof we were prepared to leave our stroller somewhere downstairs. We took a baby carrier – our wooven wrap for Ola and a combination lock for the stroller. Woven wrap of course was very usefull but for strollers protection administrators arranged their own way. On the first floor, nerby the entrance there is a locker room where we could leave all our baby stuff and lock the stroller. It’s free of charge, we just needed to put one euro in the lock to close it. It’s being returned when opening a lock. With all the stuff safely left there we were ready for the tour. [photosetgrid layout=”2″]

[/photosetgrid]La Pedrera is an extraordinary residential house built at the beginning of 20th century by Antoni Gaudi for Mila family. It is widely known, among others, for its roof. There is nothing usual there. The staircases exiting on the roof are built each in different shape and decorated with ceramics. The chimneys resemble soldiers in their helmets standing on guard.

[photosetgrid layout=”33″][/photosetgrid] Casa Mila is nine floors high and from its roof there is a nice view over the roofs of Barcelona.

On the last floor of La Pedrera we found out how Gaudi created the shape of arches of the attic. He used hanging chains and observing them in the mirror he received catenary arches – a very strong construction that can be created of light materials. Same method he used in his other projects, like the church at Santa Coloma de Cervello.[photosetgrid layout=”2″][/photosetgrid]In Casa Mila they also present the apartaments designed by the famous architect. Not only the construction of the building but also interiors were planned by the artist. Including the furniture, wall tiles, and some equipment. We imagine that it must be huge fans who come to visit as they even redraw themselves the wall tiles.

All of Gaudi’s works were thought out to the smallest details. So were his designs of different types of seats.  They look strange at the first sight but they were preceded by detailed studies of human body and desinged so that they were adjusted  to its shape as much as possible.

The most surprising idea relised in La Pedrera was an underground garage! Although it was just a place where horse carts were kept at that time, it was pushing it under ground that was a farsighted idea. In the times when the automotive industry was at the beginning of its development and the shortage of space wasn’t so painful Gaudi couldn’t have had the idea how popular this solution will become.

It’s definitely a must-be place in Barcelona and 20,50 euro for the ticket is a well spent money.

From organizational tips it’s worth mentioning that tickets are sold online. It’s a big advantage to come already with the ticket for a specific time and avoid long queue lines to the ticket office. When bought far in advance, any time of the day is available. And we advise to use an audio guide offered free of charge at the entrance. Huge amount if interesting information…
And regarding baby stuff – there is a toilets on the ground floor equipped with baby changing station and diaper basket.
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Our top 7 in Barcelona
There is such place in Barcelona… London Bar
Saturday in Barcelona

Barcelona is in the top five of most popular cities in Europe. It’s full of turists round the clock, throughout the year. They run like crazy from Sagrada Familia to Park Guell, from Placa Catalunya to Placa Espanya, following Gaudi and Picasso’s footsteps. How do the residents of Barcelona live with that? Wherever you move there are hundreds of pleople from all corners of the world, constantly in the rush to see something more, to visit next place.
During our trip we decided to check how Catalonians deal with that, how they relax and how they sepnd their weekends away from crowds of tourists.

It turns out that they have a wide range of entertainment, depending on age and phisical form.

1. First and the most important sport which comes to everybody’s mind when they think about Spain is football. That’s an activity for the most fit. For children especialy. Saturday morning, in the residential area stadium is full of kids and their parents having some of footbal tournament. No wonder that Barcelona excels at football.
   
   
2. Another activity that comes right after footbal is building human towers. That sport reqires as much or maybe even more physical fitness than football. The tradition dates back to early 18th century when castells were built in relligious spirit. Today in Catalonya it lost that character and castellers build their towers just as social and fitness activity.
   So the thing is to build a tower (castell) of people as high as possible. Last person, usually a little kid, is supposed to climb to the top and raise his or her hand with 4 straight fingers as a sign of victory. The full sucess is announced when all the participants are safely back to the ground.
   All that is acompanied by live orchestra with drums and trumpets.
   From our observation, there are two kind of people engaged in the proces: heavy and strong that form lower levels and carry all the weight and light and fit who climb up to the highier positions. Each team wears one color shirts with obligatory sash tied around the waist. Sash is used to protect their back while carrying big weight and as a help for climbers.
   What’s ineteresting, is that there are different techniques of building the towers. First one involves building ground level and adding second, third and so on by people climbing on the back of those in lower levels by one after another person. The other technique builds one of the top floor first and adds bottom ones by lifting the other floors up. Hope you understand what I meant.
   We even witnessed a failure of buiding a tower and couple levels collapse. Luckily nobody got hurt, as lots of people gathered around bottom level provide security in such cases.
3. For less fit residents Barcelona offers other sports. For example pentaque. This is the game for two up to 6 people (2 teams). The main goal of the game is to throw one’s bules as close to as possible to the jack. Each bule closer to the jack than competitors brings the team one point. The game ends if one of the teams gathers 13 points. It’s a perfect entertainment for the people of all ages. It requires willingness, cleverness and not that much physical activity as football.
   
4. If you are totaly not fond of any physical exercise there are also some activities for you. Visit book market around Mercat the Sant Antoni. It’s a big outdoor roofed market of books, magazines, comics, coins, cards and so on. The bookmarket is located right next to Mercat the Sant Antoni – big, late 19th century, really impressive building, currently being renovated. We are not really sure but probably the bookmarket usually takes place next to that historical building. Interior is intended for standard stals with food. Anyway, at the bookmarket everybody will surely find something for him or herself.
   
   
5. Don’t like reading? No problem. How about lacing? This is a Catalonyan tradition from 17th century. Today it’s practiced just as a hobby by elderly women, while previously it was used for house decorating or production of Spanish traditional mantillas. Mantillas are kind of shawls which were worn by women on special occasions, often associated with roman catholic church, were before 1917 women were even required to wear them. Today laces are produced just for the pleasure of making them and are perfect way to socialize as they are often produced outisde in the groups of hobbyists.
   Intersting is the traditional way of lacing using cylinder-shaped pillows withs hundreds of pins stuck into them. The threads are led around the pins by moving, shifting small wooden spools. Pictures will show that the most clearly. The technique requires high precision and is very time consuming. Production of small lace can take months!

That’s all we saw one October Saturday. We bet there are way more attractions to be discovered. Perhaps next time.