barcelona three

Day 3 started out with a morning bus tour of the city. The difference between this tour and the hop on hop off was that we got a live tour guide and we got to do some fun activities…

What we also didn’t know about the tour was that it included a ride on the Teleferic of Montjuic (so we got to go again) and a visit to the Spanish Village, which I’ll get to in a bit.
The tour started on the busy Barcelona streets, weaving in and out of different neighborhoods. Our first stop was at the Olympic Village where my mom and I had our first chance to go down to the beach and dip our toes in the water. We also got to see a lot of older folks enjoying the beach.

From there we headed up to Montjuic where we got a history lesson about the Montjuic castle that we had visited our first day and then got a chance to ride the Teleferic again and enjoy the views.

Then we headed to one of our favorite spots in Barcelona, the Spanish Village. The Spanish Village is basically all of Spain just condensed down into a “mini village.” The buildings inside feature architecture from each of the regions in Spain and house shops that feature the food and wine of Spain along with handmade items like fans and blown glass.

It was like this little hidden gem that we didn’t even know existed before the tour and my mom and I picked up some really cool handmade items like fans (which are super popular there). I think if we had time we would have spent the whole day there just going in and out of the little shops.

Our tour then finished with a walking portion through the gothic quarter of the city. We’d been there before but it was nice to get some context and learn about the area’s history. Plus I’m a big fan of walking tours because I think the best way to see a city is on foot.

Once our tour finished we headed back to the Sagrada Familia….which I will go into detail in the next post.