Taking a pause in Barcelona

The last few days in Barcelona were great. Very nice to stay in one place a little longer and have the chance to recover from all the hopping around. In the last few days we:

• We visited a friend from Seattle who left the US 3 years ago and bought an olive farm ~2 hours south of Barcelona in a little beach town called L’Ampolla which was super cool. Turns out he also opened a restaurant in the last year and we had super great burgers there. Thanks George!

• Ryan got a haircut… always an interesting experience in a foreign country, but it turned out reasonably well.

• We shipped 2 boxes full of warmer clothes to our Mailboxes etc. mailbox in London. It’s nice to be 35 lbs lighter!
• Ryan found a gym where he could be a day pass and was able to work out for the first time in weeks – will be very sore!
• We went to the zoo and it was pretty fantastic. Zoos are always interesting in different countries… different animals and different ways of presenting them. Apparently the kids had never seen real life elephants before… they have now.

• We ate twice at a place called Burritos – which basically was a spanish copy of Chipotle (including the logo) and it was a nice break from the “restaurant roulette” of spanish food.

• We did a lot of shopping at Mango and got some nicer summer clothes for Greece. Mango is everywhere here and super cheap for stylish stuff.

Basically we did a lot of normal life stuff and it was really nice. As we spent more time there, we found that we really like Barcelona. Once you get away from the Gothic District, La Rambla and all the Goti stuff, it’s a super livable and well designed city with very friendly people. I suspect we will be back.

Btw, when I say well designed, I mean it. We noticed that it felt more pedestrian friendly than most cities and we noticed that there was a super cool park and courtyard off the patio of our building, but it took a few days to realize how intentional it all was. It’s fascinating to read about the concept of “superblocks” and how Barcelona works. We are fans! Here’s an overview: https://www.citiesforum.org/news/superblock-superilla-barcelona-a-city-redefined/ From the article

“Barcelona’s Superblocks (Superille in Catalan) became a part of global best practices for two significant reasons–a) Prioritising people over cars with a focus on accessibility, and b) following community participation rulebook. ‘Superblocks’ are 400 x 400 m units–bigger than a block, yet small than a whole neighbourhood. Through the said urban design concept, the city aims to recover space for the community, improve biodiversity, move towards sustainable mobility, and encourage social cohesion.”