At the beginning of the year, I viewed Spain as the most important location of our year long trip. With my desire to learn Spanish, and it fitting at the end of our itinerary, I envisioned it as a capstone location. It would be a place that is foreign, but that we could navigate with some skill by speaking the language. While our Spanish skills didn’t develop rapidly in the way I envisioned, this was still the most important location in unexpected ways.

Overall Impression

Of all of the places we visited this year, Barcelona is the place I most want to live. And not in the sense of I have these dozen or so places to choose from, which one would I settle for. I legitimately would love to live in Barcelona. There are many little factors that play into this including the beautiful city, the ease of navigating with limited Spanish, the climate, and endless fun on tap. However what I love most about it is the individuality of the people, their acceptance of each other, and the unexpected togetherness that it creates. This is probably something that has to be experienced to be understood, but as I get into specific topics I’ll do my best to describe it.

Airbnb & Local Area

Our Airbnb in Barcelona is one of the nicest that we have ever stayed in. The beds are comfortable, the rooms are large, and best of all the toilet is separate from the shower.

On the down side it’s unsustainably expensive at $3,657.19 per month. It also requires climbing a brutal five flights of stairs.

We were in the El Bourne neighborhood which was a great location. It’s an easy stroll to the beach, just 15 minutes. The local neighborhood is a mix of residences and businesses, with just the right amount of tourist activity to make the people watching interesting while still not being crowded.

Beach

The Barceloneta beach is hands down my favorite of all the beaches I have ever been to. It’s the whole package rather than a specific thing. Nothing can compete with the beauty of Guam’s beaches, or the raw vast nature of Buffalo Bay Beach in South Africa. However, the whole of Barceloneta is really something special. The Beach is nice, the water is nice, the access we have is good, but most importantly, the beach has a culture.

It turns out for my taste, a beach needs people. The beaches of Barcelona have some real characters on them, and it’s so much fun to watch. You might see a topless woman walking into the ocean holding an open wooden chest of fruit. Getting blasted by a wave almost like an offering to the ocean, not even filming it for social media. Maybe you’ll see a guy with assless shorts, or someone so stoned that they are moving at sloth speed. You will no doubt see tons of nude people, ranging from could-be models to the geriatric.

What really stood out to me is that all of these far different individuals hang out right beside each-other on the beach. You don’t have the young beautiful people separating themselves from the geriatric nudes. The families hang out right beside the fruit lady and assless shorts guy.

Costs

Our June budget revealed that Barcelona was a pretty expensive location. Food and lodging were the most expensive items. On the other hand, some aspects of Barcelona were quite affordable. Transportation for example was a bargain, with essentially unlimited transportation for $28.06 per month per person.

Food

Grocery costs were the most surprising budget item, costing nearly twice as much as we thought they would. It was more expensive than even Guam. A new Aldi opened by us which we thought would provide some price relief compared to the smaller grocery stores, but the savings weren’t substantial.

Eating out was also on the expensive side, so we did very little of it. The prices were comparable to US prices, maybe around $15-$20 per person on average. The one advantage is that tipping is not expected, but it was still too costly to make it a regular thing.

Airbnb

Airbnb costs were also higher than we expected, and I think part of this may be regulatory. We had trouble finding a place period at first, and we couldn’t figure out why. During our planning and searching we just happened to change our plans, deciding to stay longer in Spain. This took us over a certain nights-stayed threshold where we found more listings. It seems there may be legislation in Barcelona that prevents short term rentals, but allows for 30+ day rentals.

As far as the cost for our Airbnb, I think part of the high price we paid was self-inflicted. We waited too long to lock in our place, and I bet we could have saved a good percentage by booking a few months earlier.

For our budget, we were able to make Spain work and stay within the ballpark of a 4% withdrawal. However it’s certainly one of the more expensive locations on our gap year.

Transportation

As I already touched on, the public transportation here is very good and affordable. When we arrived we bought four T-usual single-zone cards. Each card cost $28.06. The single zone can get you practically anywhere you will actually want to go in Barcelona, as it covers the bulk of the entire metro area. With that card you get unlimited rides in zone 1, so it’s a really good value if you plan to regularly use the metro, subway, or buses.

We only rode the metro and subway, not the buses, and they turned out to be easy to navigate and very convenient. It seemed like any train we needed was running frequently, so we never had to wait more than five minutes. Most of the trains had an electronic map displayed, so it was easy to follow the progress of your ride.

The app we used to find our routes was called CityMapper, and it was excellent. It maps out the walk to the station, the train you need to catch and the progress of stops, as well as the walk to the final destination. The real-time walking guide worked much better and was easier to follow than the same feature on google maps.

Language

Of all the places we went to where English is not an official language, Barcelona was among the easiest to navigate. It may be tied with Chiang Mai Thailand for the easiest. In both locations, we just didn’t worry about language barriers when going to restaurants or other businesses.

The one thing I found difficult was the mix of Catalan and Spanish speaking. For a Spanish learner I found it difficult to know whether I didn’t understand a Spanish phrase, or they were speaking Catalan.

There is a widespread acceptance that not everyone is speaking the same language here, and everyone works together to find a way to communicate. In America it’s common for people to get irritated at someone speaking a foreign language, but the Barcelona locals have much more tolerance for that.

Tourist Activities

If you’re the type of person who is really into tourist activities like visiting famous museums, churches, etc, then Barcelona is for you. We aren’t really those people, but we did a fair amount of it.

Everything we did was enjoyable, but like most tourist attractions we’ve been to, the experience was a little underwhelming. The major things we went to were Sagrada Familia, local churches, Park Güell, and the hospital museum.

Gym / Fitness

The gym experience here was the best of the year. I went to Okeymas fitness center which was conveniently just a couple blocks away from our Airbnb. The monthly rate was a little higher than other locations, but still a reasonable 60 euros. It would get a little busy at times, but there was enough equipment and areas that I never had to wait long.

The facility itself was very nice, with a modern layout and construction. It had both good natural lighting and artificial lighting, and the arrangement of the different areas (weight area, aerobic area, etc) worked well.

The gym was a great example of the tolerance we experienced throughout Barcelona. While working out, it’s hard to know what others speak because it’s such a mixed crowd. Communication is necessary to ask if someone is using a piece of equipment, or if an area is open. Everyone simply reverts to hand gestures and simple words to communicate. There are no territorial locals, and nobody getting pissed off demanding that we speak Spanish or Catalan.

Late Schedule

One quirky thing we did was shift our schedule WAY later than we’re used to. In CO we go to bed at about 9pm, but in Spain we went to bed at 1am. We had to start shifting toward this while we were in Portugal to ease into it. The rest of our schedule was adjusted accordingly, so we had breakfast at 11am, lunch at 4pm, and dinner at 8pm. I think that’s going to be a weird and interesting thing to look back on as we get used to our normal CO schedule.

This really helped us match the rhythm of Barcelona as well. We would hear a lot of activity out on the street until the early morning hours. On a weekend night it would be 3am-4am before the party noise would die off.

Final Thoughts

We could not have picked a better location to end the year. I wanted a place that would leave us wanting more, and Barcelona certainly did that. Along with Japan and Thailand, Barcelona is at the top of my list of favorite places this year.

Barcelona tops many “best of the year” categories. It’s the place where I had the most fun, it’s the place I most want to move, and it’s unexpectedly the place where I felt like I most fit in.