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My Final Weekend in Barcelona- an ideal 1-2 day itinerary

Published on by AdriLeave a comment

If you just have just a weekend in Barcelona here is what you should do.

First start off the morning, grabbing a coffee or breakfast at a café. Honest greens is a great affordable, excellent breakfast/brunch spot. It is like the Sweet Greens of Spain except 100x better. Another one of my favorite brunch places is called Lady Babka. In general you can walk on any street and find a local coffee spot. Or an amazing brunch place. I usually like looking on maps to plan where I want to eat. But there are SO many restaurants in Barcelona, that you’re probably better off just walking by a place and deciding to go in. Everything is made so well and is so good.

Next, I would walk or take the metro to Placa Espanya. Here you can go into a mall, which was once the old bull fighting ring. Take all the escalators to the top. And have a gorgeous free 360° view of the city.

Then from there, you can walk right up to the national Catalonian art Museum. If you go after 3pm on Saturday’s it’s free. You can either explore here or walk around the hills and garden. There are so many free beautiful gardens to walk around, picnic, read or chill. You can even walk into the Olympic soccer stadium for free during the day, where Barca plays.

There is also a really stunning and impressive cactus garden about a 15 min walk from the museum. So plenty to see and do just on the hills on Montjuïc itself. There is usually a street musician and street artist up there too. When I was walking around there was this really talented African duo. They were so sweet and we stopped and cheered them in since no one was stopping. We learned a bit about them, and they asked us how we liked Barcelona. We said we loved it, and they said they’ll make a song for us. They sang this beautiful song about “saying hello to Barcelona” which made me so bittersweet because it was my last weekend there.

If gardens and walking aren’t really your things you can take a gondola ride around the mountain. Or a cable car over the ocean to the boardwalk!

Now you’ve done a lot of walking. Time for tapas. Best time of the day. go to TAPS bar. My favorite tapas place in Barcelona. Nestled in an outer neighborhood 5 minutes away from the museum. This is the ideal spot. Here is the best valued and priced tapas. And don’t forget the sangria. I recommend all the classics, tortilla de patata, croquettes, pan con tomate (or Catalan toast), jalapeños, Spanish style sausages, etc…

Next time to catch the sunset at the beach or head up to Tibidabo for sunset. Tibidabo is a cathedral and theme park at the top of the hills surrounding Barcelona. Make sure to leave 45-55 minutes for this. You’ll take the metro then a cable car, then a bus. But it is so worth it. The hills are stunning and the 360° views of Barcelona are unbeatable.

After this if you want to grab a light bite or take a nap, you have plenty of time to do so and still go out for the night! Most clubs don’t open till 12 or 1. So you don’t want to get there till 1 or 1:30 am anyways. If going out isn’t your thing, you can go get dinner or quickly stop in a Kepab shop or street food spot.

Walking around Barcelona at night is fun because all the locals and crowds are out, as Spaniards are inherently night people. Which is an aspect of the culture that I love.

Anyways that’s all for now! Here are some photos of these spots and my day spent doing these bucket list items! This was a perfect last weekend and I actually got to explore some spots I hadn’t seen yet!

Dorm Life

Published on by Katie SandovalLeave a comment

I’ve been living in Kyoto for almost two months now, and I wanted to share a bit about what it’s been like staying at the YWCA Ajisai Dorm. Like any place, it has its pros and cons—but I think a lot depends on the person.

For me personally, one of the biggest pros is having my own restroom and shower. I also have a small hot plate, which makes it easy to cook simple meals. I was surprised to find some pots and pans were already provided when I moved in, so I didn’t have to buy any myself or worry about what to do with them later. The room itself is pretty spacious, and the other residents (not all are Doshisha students) have been nice whenever I run into them. 

Since everything you need is basically inside your room, I don’t see the other residents very often. We have signs on our doors to show if we’re in or out, but most of the time it seems like people are away. I do like having a room to myself, but I sometimes wish there were more shared spaces or community events as it can feel a little lonely at times.

A few blocks from the dorm is a garden that a lot of people like to go to, so it can sometimes be busy walking by whenever I go to class or need to take the subway. I can hear the street noise from my room as well, when people get loud, I usually just put on headphones if I need to focus. However, since there’s a fire station nearby it does scare me sometimes to hear the emergence sirens since they sound completely different to the ones back home.

There’s a convenience store nearby, which is nice whenever I want to get a snack or have to print something last-minute for class. I also like to walk about 15 minutes to a supermarket I found, since it’s also a nice way to get out of the room for a bit.

Living here has also pushed me to learn new things—like cooking different types of meals and figuring out how to properly separate trash in Japan. Which thankfully the dorm has a booklet that explains how to do this, and we were given a schedule on what days to take out which kinds of garbage (I’m still adjusting to this).

Overall, living at Ajisai Dorm has started to feel like home to me despites its ups and downs.