We arrived in Barcelona on April 21, took a recuperation day, then started visiting our target neighborhoods, one per day. Our strategy was to head there early-ish, get breakfast, wander around for a while, find a shaded area with benches for people-watching and knitting (my husband) or reading (me). After a few frustrating days getting hangry as we searched for breakfast in our target neighborhood, we changed the plan to get breakfast close to the hotel, but continue with the rest of the agenda.
What were the criteria we were using to evaluate the neighborhoods?
- Walkability: we want to be able to ditch cars entirely and utilize walking and public transportation
- Café Life: a variety of cafés and restaurants to be able to dine at, preferably al fresco when the weather allowed
- European Charm: several story buildings (but not too many stories), with interesting architectural details, balconies (usually tiny), and painted in bright colors
- Green Space and Public Life: parks, plazas, promenades, and other places to sit, read, observe, and socialize
- Lots of small stores where daily shopping could occur
- Enough people on the streets for a vibrant feeling, but not so much that it felt crowded
- Lack of nightclubs or other facilities where loud music would be heard late into the night.
- Proximity of stores that support our hobbies (in our case, knitting, tabletop gaming, and art)
- A feeling of safety and comfort for a gay couple in our later years
- Places that supported a sense of culture and lifelong learning
Here, arranged in chronological order, are my impressions of the neighborhoods we visited.
Sant Antoni (Part 1)
This was our post-travel recuperation day, but we didn’t feel like spending the day in our hotel room. So, being curious about what “central mercats” were like, we ventured out into Sant Antoni, easy walking distance from our hotel. Sant Antoni’s central market was laid out in a cross formation. Around the outer aisles of the cross were mostly clothing and accessory stores. Pushing further into the interior we found carnicerias, fruterias, vegetable stores, nut merchants, spice merchants, and a few candy shops. Not much in the way of bakeries. Everything was so fresh! I could see ourselves shopping at a place like this for basic groceries.
After we completed our tour of the market, we found a seating area in a pedestrian plaza nearby in the shade where we did our first of many afternoon breaks. We spent a couple of hours there before the wind picked up and we decided to head back to the hotel room. We got dinner nearby the hotel, and enjoyed a quiet evening.
L’Antiga Esquerra de L’Eixample
Technically our hotel was in Esquerra, but my husband wanted to test out the Metro, so we took two trains into a distant part of the neighborhood. We surfaced near a major hospital. As we wandered around the neighborhood, my impression was, at first, that there were a lot of medical offices in the area. It felt less like a neighborhood people lived in, and more of a district that people visited for professional services. But walking out into the outskirts of the neighborhood, it started to feel more residential. We did wander through their central market, Mercat del Ninot, which had a supermarket underneath. Very convenient!
Foot traffic in the neighborhood was good, there were plenty of people waking the sidewalks, shopping in stores, and enjoying meals. It felt gently lively and vibrant. It felt comfortable. When we returned in the evening, it was a bit more busy, but since it was a kind of a holiday, it seemed that couples were out celebrating. It passed our “busy but not terribly noisy” test.
The holiday I mentioned was the Feast of Sant Jordi (or Saint George in English). We did not know this until, relaxing in our hotel room between lunch and dinner, we started hearing the sound of a parade in the street below our window. We went downstairs to investigate but we had apparently missed the parade, but could hear it down the street. As we walked in that direction, we found the sidewalks were much busier than they had been earlier. Then, we spotted a bunch of pop-up canopies in a nearby plaza (Plaça de la Universitat). It was a Sant Jordi faire, a celebration of the city’s patron saint. The tradition in Catalan regions is to exchange roses and books on the holiday, and this plaza was full of booksellers and florists. Of course, I could not pass up the opportunity to buy some books, and we also got a Sant Jordi plush dragon, as one does.
El Raval
The next neighborhood was El Raval, and since there was no easy metro or tram route to it, we walked the several blocks to it, arriving at the northern end of La Rambla del Raval. After getting breakfast, we wandered the neighborhood and visited its Mercat. This area felt like a mixture of working class and immigrant neighborhoods. Smaller apartments, very few visible air conditioner condenser units, narrow streets and narrow sidewalks, a greater variety of restaurants featuring foreign cuisines. The people on the street were from all over the globe. But it often felt like we were being eyed suspiciously. It was mildly uncomfortable.
The mercat in El Raval (Mercat de la Boqueria) was busier than the one in Esquerra. We noticed there were a lot more tourists there, and many more stalls that were selling take-away food. Given that this mercat was very close to the Gothic Quarter, one of the most touristy areas of the city, I theorized that the mercat was a tourist destination. It was difficult to move around in there, but we gave it a good look. There was a Dunkin’ and a Starbucks just outside the mercat, lending weight to my theory that it catered more to tourists than the other markets we had visited so far did.
After that, we retired to some benches in the Rambla for our now-customary knitting and reading. I was entertained by the flock of wild parakeets screeching and flying around the palm trees that lined the Rambla. Unfortunately, our relaxing time was spoiled by not just one but two attempts by thieves to steal our bags. Thanks to our situational awareness, peripheral vision, and the fact that the straps of our bags were wound around our arms, neither attempt was successful. Still, it really soured us on the neighborhood, so we returned to the hotel and crossed El Raval off our list.
L’Eixample Dreta
We took the Metro to this neighborhood and popped up in the middle of an intersection of pedestrian malls. Lovely! We breakfasted at Boldú, a cafe that sold doughnuts in the shape of meeples. As we wandered this neighborhood, we were delighted by the number of tree-lined pedestrian malls, more than anywhere else we had found outside of the area known colloquially as “Gaixample”. The area definitely felt upscale residential, and we found it a good fit for what we were searching for.
We visited the mercat, Mercat de la Concepción. It had a plant store/florist at the entrance, which was awesome! The market itself was similar to the other markets we visited, but without the tourist focus. Again, we could see ourselves doing our semi-weekly shopping there.
We then wandered further, eventually coming to Passeig de Gracia, the street on which all of the major clothing and luxury goods outlets could be found. There are also two different Gaudi-designed apartment buildings. It’s a broad street, with broad sidewalks, trees and benches, and lots of retail. We took our break in Plaça de Catalunya, near the Apple Store. More wild parakeets, too many pigeons, and people of all walks of life and social status. It was fairly comfortable to rest there, no feelings of impending theft.
After a lunch of paninis, we returned to the hotel. We ventured back to Dreta to determine what the nightlife scene was like. We actually found the noise level had increased along some of the streets from the daytime levels. But nothing like full-on nightclub level “thump thump” music. If we avoided living on one of those more lively streets, we could be very comfortable there.
Gaixample
Technically this was a rest day, but the gay neighborhood of Barcelona, Gaixample (say “gay zhampla”), was adjacent to our hotel, so we wandered around that area for a while. This is a roughly five by four block area where there are many gay-owned or gay-catering shops, restaurants, hotels, and more adult businesses. There are rainbow flags everywhere, quite an assortment of bars (including two bear bars across the street from each other, Honey and Bacon). This is the area on our trip where we felt most welcomed and safe. It’s super pedestrian friendly, lots of charming European architecture, and quirky stores. If we could live anywhere in Spain, without considering money, we’d both love to live in this neighborhood. Unfortunately, apartments for rent are few and far between, and the prices are very high. This, on top of the higher hit for us from Spain’s wealth tax in the Catalonia autonomous community, means we’re not likely to find something with our budget in Gaixample. Oh well.
El Poble-Sec (and Sant Antoni Part 2)
This neighborhood borders on Montjüic, and we could see that the streets along the residential area started climbing the hill the further south they went. We did find a nice pedestrian mall that ran parallel to Avinguda de Paral-lel. Unfortunately that pedestrian mall had very little shade, benches, or pastry shops. We did find something when we wandered out to the Paral-lel, so we did not perish from starvation.
El Poble-Sec definitely had a “working class” feel to it. Smaller stores, smaller apartments (according to Idealista), and the streets other than Paral-lel were smaller and less grid-aligned. It was obviously not designed by the people responsible for L’Eixample. The area is known for certain streets full of tapas bars and drinking dens. There were a scattering of parks and green spaces around, but not enough to make up the deficits of this area by our criteria.
We didn’t even stay there for lunch, but chose to wander back to our hotel through Sant Antoni for a meal. We did not return to El Poble-Sec to see what the nightlife was like there. We already knew we didn’t want to live in the neighborhood.
Gràcia
Originally a village outside the boundaries of Barcelona proper, the area was subsumed into the city as the city grew and grew. It is claimed to be the center of the Catalan independence movement in the city of Barcelona, but while we saw Catalan flags everywhere they did not seem more prevalent there than other places in the city. What was more prevalent though was the use of Catalan, with very little Spanish or English. Personally, with my teensy bit of Spanish, I found signage to be rather challenging.
We tried visiting the Mercat de l’Abaceria, only to find it surrounded by chainlink fence and heavy construction equipment. Disappointed, we wandered towards a green space along Passeig de St. Joan. Along the way we discovered a nice park in Plaça de John Lennon. We could not figure out why it had been named for the famous musician. (I’ve since learned that he stayed there for a four-day holiday once.)
The park running between the streets that make up Passeig de St. Joan contained a number of interesting things: a lively bocce area with several courts, various statuary, plenty of trees and benches, and the temporary home of the Mercat de l’Abaceria, which we did wander through. We took our rest shortly after and enjoyed the atmosphere. Unfortunately though we tried to stay in the shade, the sun kept finding us.
When we went searching for a dinner location in Gràcia, we came up empty. Nothing looked appetizing, sadly. Nearing the edge of hangry, we settled for the familiarity of McDonalds.
The fact that we found it hard to find somewhere we could both eat, and the dominance of Catalan language, led to our deciding that Gràcia was not for us.
Conclusions
Barcelona is a stunningly beautiful city, at least in the right places. Other places are a little scary. But that’s true of most cities.
I feel we accomplished our mission: we’ve selected three neighborhoods that could suit our needs. L’Eixample Dreta, Sant Antoni, and L’Antiga Esquerra de L’Eixample. All of them contiguous with one another, and coincidentally the gayborhood, Gaixample, is more or less in the middle of the three.
That said, Barcelona is likely the priciest of the four cities we’re visiting this trip, and is definitely the most impacted by the housing crisis here. We’d be fools not to acknowledge that, and the negative aspects of us renting here. We shall see if Barcelona remains at the top of our list when we’re done with the trip.
One of the unexpected delights we’ve experienced is seeing places in this city we’ve visited in previous trips to the city. That church, this restaurant, this park, that pedestrian promenade. We are typically approaching them from a different direction than we originally experienced them, so sometimes the recognition arrives late, but it’s always a pleasure. Well, except for the hotel that’s under reconstruction.
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