K & L's Travel Blog

Kitty and I are setting out once again for Barcelona on January 10^th and will be posting to this blog for friends, family and other interested readers. We found an Airbnb apartment in the San Gervasi neighborhood where we’ll stay for a leisurely 34 days. This will be a new area for us, so we have an entirely new slate of restaurants, sites and parks to visit. Please share this site with anyone you think might be interested in following.

Our friends are often curious about our choice to keep returning to the same place. This trip marks our tenth visit to Barcelona since 2013, and though we’ve managed to fit it some other destinations, we are always drawn back to Catalonia. What drew us a decade ago was the food: it seemed every article or show mentioned Barcelona as a food destination. We even had an example of outstanding Catalan cuisine in our home town of Asheville, where Katie Button and her family had opened the fabulous Cúrate. We hoped to find the food in Barcelona as amazing as what we’d been eating in Asheville, and we weren’t disappointed.

First of all the produce and goods at the neighborhood markets are exceptional. We do find the seafood intimidating, but we challenge ourselves to expand our palates. This trip we will learn to love anchovies. Local restaurants feature bargain weekday menus with surprising quality, and tend to be our mainstays. We’ve also splurged on world-class restaurants like Disfrutar. And the wine! Excellent and also affordable. They even have a burgeoning microbrewery culture and some fine beers.

Beyond the food scene we love the vibe of a European city: it’s very easy to get around on public transportation, and although Barcelona is notoriously crowded with tourists, we’ve always found locals to be friendly and kind. True, the city is notorious for its expert pickpockets, and we’ve known several friends who have had valuables stolen and read countless stories of others. We have had some close calls ourselves, and remember a much more threatening city in 1985. As far as I know, we’ve not had anything picked, though we are fiercely proactive and I suppose, lucky. These days I feel much safer walking alone at night in Barcelona than I would in any comparable American city.

What else works for us about the city? Let me resort to a list: it’s a beautiful city topographically (between the mountains and Mediterranean); it has a mild winter climate and green parakeets; the art (formal and street) and architecture is stunning and plentiful; Barcelona’s history has a lot to teach; its streets and parks and neighborhoods are highly walkable; life moves at a slower pace and people are happy and social; and last but not least, it’s queer friendly in a way that compares with San Francisco or Berlin.

OK, enough of the listing. We’ll see what unfolds. We will start the blog mid-January and post every few days. We have planned a weekend trip to the Priorat wine region at the end of January and a day trip to Girona in February. And of course there will be plenty to see in Barcelona. I hope you will consider following and share this blog with any interested friends. I would also welcome any thoughts folks have on this question of when to venture into new territory versus returning to a more familiar destination. I’m torn, but for now Barcelona calls!