Catalonia Trip

The first thing you should do when you come to Barcelona is check if there’s a festival you can catch. Different types of festivals happen throughout the year, and it’s very hard not to encounter one. Of course, there’s no guarantee it will interest you. We were very lucky to catch the La Mercè Festival. This has been the official festival of the city since 1871, and because hundreds of events happen in parallel all over the city within a few days, it’s a festival that feels like many festivals happening at once, taking place in September.

Folk dances at the festival

Barcelona

For those who will start exploring the city independently of the festivals, the first and most important thing to do is to buy an ARTICKETBCN. This is a kind of multi-ticket that allows entry to 6 different museums. The 6 museums in Barcelona you can enter with ARTICKETBCN are:

• Museu Nacional
• CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona
• Museu Picasso
• Museu Tàpies
• MACBA - Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona
• Fundació Joan Miró

ARTICKET BCN

This group of six is the most important cultural activity to do in the city, and on each visit, a stamp is pressed on this document, which resembles a passport. This special system enriches your experience by making it feel like a journey as you explore the historical and artistic riches of the city. Among these, you need to make a reservation for entry to Museu Picasso because they limit the number of visitors, but I don’t think you’ll have to wait in a very long line. Even though we went during a busy time, we were able to find a spot for the next hour, but when we left, the whole day was booked. So it’s best not to leave it for the evening. You can enter the other museums directly without an appointment. Since the passport is valid for one year, you don’t need to rush. This gives visitors the opportunity to enjoy each museum and deepen their experience. Besides, visiting all of them in a single day can be quite challenging. I highly recommend setting aside a lot of time especially for the Museu Nacional. This museum comprehensively presents the national history and cultural heritage.

View of Barcelona from Museu Nacional

Among these six, Museu Nacional and Fundació Joan Miró are very close to each other, and you can walk to the other after reaching one. In front of the Museu Nacional is Mirador Barcelona, and this offers a wonderful city view. Of course, don’t think of this place as separate from the museum. Think of it more as a platform at the entrance of the museum. The area from here down to Plaça d’Espanya was used as the Piromusical concert area during the 2023 La Mercè Festival. On the sea-facing side of the museum is Castell de Montjuïc. Entry here is not included in the ARTICKETBCN, but I recommend entering since you’ve come this far. The cafe located in the castle left a good taste in my mouth as it was the first place I drank Gazpacho. The surroundings of the castle are beautiful, but there are idle areas behind it.

Castell de Montjuïc

CCCB - Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and MACBA - Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, which are included in ARTICKETBCN, are side by side. The front of MACBA is a spot where skateboarders spend time. In front of CCCB, on one of our visits, we stumbled upon a public concert and a kermis-style event.

Youth spending time in front of MACBA

Both places host large temporary exhibitions. Before you go, you should check which exhibition is on what date. Museu Tàpies is another contemporary art museum included in ARTICKETBCN, but located in a slightly different place. About half of the museum space is dedicated to Antoni Tàpies’ works, and the rest to temporary exhibitions. Again, I recommend checking which exhibition is on before you go.

Concert at CCCB

On one of our visits to CCCB, there was a temporary exhibition about the Marquis de Sade, and on another, about Chris Ware. Both were very interesting exhibitions. At MACBA, the exhibitions tend to be more abstract.

An installation at MACBA

For the last museum of ARTICKETBCN, Museu Picasso, you can come to the museum and make a reservation. If you have a short wait, its own cafe is quite comfortable. If you are going to wait a bit longer, there is an Asian restaurant called UDON Born, a Mexican restaurant called La Hacienda Princesa, and a local cafe and restaurant called Bornet nearby. You can try Tapas at the latter. I recommend planning to spend at least two hours in the museum. To the east of this museum is El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria, which is free to enter. Such ancient structures might not be deeply impressive findings for those traveling from Turkey, but it’s still nice to see various ruins of the Roman Empire, even on its harsh side.

El Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria

Just north of the museum is the Arc de Triomf, and this is a structure you will constantly see as you pass by. To its east is the Barcelona Zoo, but we didn’t visit there.

At Museu Picasso, his pottery works interested me more than his paintings

While walking from Museu Picasso towards La Rambla, in the neighborhood in between, you encounter the Barcelona History Museum, MUHBA. Here you can see the ruins of the ancient city in the area. Right next to it is the Barcelona Cathedral.

Barcelona Cathedral and the concert stage set up in front of it for the La Mercè festival

I recommend walking the street named Carrer del Bisbe, which passes in front of the cathedral, from end to end. In a back street here is a Catalan restaurant called El Pintor. We had planned to eat here after researching it, but we canceled it because we weren’t here at mealtime. As you head towards the sea from here, you see various large and small squares like Plaça de la Mercè among historical buildings. These become the scene of different events during activities like the La Mercè Festival, but they should be visited and seen outside the festival as well. You can enter La Rambla from the seaside and walk up the avenue that continues to Plaça de Catalunya. Not directly on this road, but at a distance of about 100 meters from the road, there is a restaurant called L’Antic Forn where you can try local products. It’s a very nice place you will want to return to to try different things on the menu. On the other side of La Rambla, there are local stores like Tropicfeel. Tropicfeel is one of the important brands of the city. It produces products like shoes, coats, and bags. It might be the first brand to strengthen the idea of water-friendly shoes and create a demand. After this, if you continue walking on the avenue called Passeig de Gràcia, you can see the stores of more global brands and the works architected by Antoni Gaudí, named Casa Batlló and La Pedrera - Casa Milà.

Casa Milà

To visit these works, you need to wait in line. We didn’t go into them, but you can see many pieces related to Antoni Gaudí’s interior designs in many museums, large and small. Because of this, despite being a place that attracts many tourists, neither the well-above-average entrance fee nor the waiting in line appealed to us. When you head east from here, you can see the Basílica de la Sagrada Família and Sant Pau Recinte Modernista. These are structures that look very magnificent from the outside. Especially the Sagrada Família, a structure that has become the symbol of the city, and again, due to the high entrance fee, the necessity of waiting in a long line, and the lack of an exhibition inside, we chose not to go inside. Frankly, it is very sad that the inside of such a structure is left empty. I don’t know if the reason is because they never considered turning this place into a museum or if the responsible institution doesn’t have the artwork to fill it, but this is probably the only one among the important churches in Europe that is empty inside.

Basílica de la Sagrada Família

At the lower end of La Rambla is the Museu Marítim de Barcelona. This is quite a large maritime museum. Inside, there is a life-size replica of La Real, the flagship of the Spanish navy at the Battle of Lepanto.

Replica of La Real. Top view

Various artifacts belonging to this battle, which was one of the important events of Mediterranean history, cover only a small part of the museum.

A painting depicting the naval Battle of Lepanto

The museum covers many topics, from informative models about modern maritime transport to products obtained from the sea, ancient maps, the history of agricultural product trade with the new world, and even the slave trade. They express the topic of the slave trade with striking reality, and it is clearly seen that they have faced their mistakes.

Museu de la Música de Barcelona is an important music-related museum in the city. Countless instruments used from ancient times to the present, both from Catalonia and the rest of the world, have been brought together.

Some string instruments at Museu de la Música de Barcelona

In the museum, many instruments have found a place, from ancient Spanish guitars to African and Far Eastern instruments, and even familiar ones like the darbuka and kanun. Besides these, there was also a very interesting temporary exhibition about sheep bells.

Sheep bells in the temporary exhibition at Museu de la Música de Barcelona

Mercat de la Boqueria is a marketplace located in the center of the city. It is not open on Sundays and does not stay open late in the evening. Here you can find many things from local agricultural and livestock products to seafood, and from souvenirs to more seafood. Since it is on La Rambla, I recommend dropping by to look around even if you don’t plan to shop.

Mercat de la Boqueria

One of the most iconic spots in the city is Park Güell, and you must make an online reservation before coming here. When we arrived, it was around 4 in the afternoon, and they were turning away those who came to the gate without a ticket, saying the entire day was fully booked. This was supposed to be a neighborhood designed by Antoni Gaudí and financed by Eusebi Güell, but due to financial difficulties, the project was abandoned after only two residential houses and a porter’s lodge were built. There are very rich and Antoni Gaudí-specific decorations in the park section. One of the two residences built is Antoni Gaudí’s own residence, and when buying a ticket to the park, you need to buy a ticket at a level that includes this place too.

In Gaudí’s house, you can see many objects designed by him.

Other than that, there is also the porter’s lodge, which is included in the basic entrance fee of the park, and you have to wait in line to get in.

The porter’s lodge at Park Güell.

There is a hill located here with two crosses on it, and visitors do not demand much of it, but in my opinion, one of the best views of Barcelona is here.

Crosses at the top of the park.

We skipped many places in the city that I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied with, but despite everything, the Museu Egipci, which we visited out of curiosity, aroused a mixed feeling in us. This museum is the most expensive and smallest museum we entered in the city. Seeing some interesting things, having the chance to rest a bit in an air-conditioned environment in that heat, and chatting with a university student who is a fan of Turkish soap operas gave us memories to remember. We were a little more relieved when we learned that the fee we paid financed the archaeological studies conducted by Catalan teams in Egypt.

A mummy in the Egyptian museum

Barcelona is an extraordinarily expensive city to stay in. However, the Barcelona Public Transport Network is also very successful, connecting many cities to each other with a uniform ticket via metro, trains, and buses. At this point, there are two important cities that stand out to stay in. One of them is Sant Cugat del Vallès, especially preferred by students of the Autonomous University of Barcelona whose campus is located in Bellaterra, and the other is Sabadell. Our choice has always been Sabadell. These two cities easily connect to the city center with the train network and are suitable for staying.

Sabadell

Sabadell is a very good option in terms of transportation, as it is the point where two different train lines leaving Barcelona intersect again after proceeding in different directions. Hotel Urpí and Sercotel Arrahona Sabadell are hotels that can be preferred for staying. The second of these is a hotel where I also stayed and it was slightly more disadvantaged in terms of transportation. It is 800 meters from Sabadell south station and is also far from the center of Sabadell. The hotel, converted from an old factory, was architecturally very pleasant and, being in a non-touristy area inhabited by locals, led us to gain an interesting experience. We were the only tourists the place right across the street, Cal Tete, had seen in a long time. This was a very good chance for us to experience the local atmosphere. Later, staying in an Airbnb near the Sabadell north station was much more advantageous in terms of transportation. This is also a city whose streets you’ll want to spend plenty of time in. Restaurant Picuteig is a very good restaurant and I recommend you try their Iberian Secret and special cheesecakes. La Mandrágora Mágica, which you can visit both as a restaurant and a bar, is an Irish Pub with a bit of a Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings theme. Their hamburgers are wonderful. Olut Cerveseria is a bar, and they have a very nice selection. A patisserie called Genescà Xocolates makes a cookie called Laminadura típica, the traditional dessert of the city, and it is a very pleasant sweet-salty food. After coming to Sabadell, this is the thing that must be tasted the most.

Laminadura típica

In the same patisserie, they also sell a milk-like beverage made from a nut called Orxata. This has a very characteristic taste, and I again recommend you try it.

Orxata

On Sundays, as far as we could discover, markets are set up in two different places. One is around Mercat Central de Sabadell and the other is in the Creu Alta neighborhood. We didn’t encounter many local products at the stalls in Creu Alta, there were only products like towels and bags produced by some local businesses, but there were antique products at Mercat Central de Sabadell. Among these were random things like plans sold 3 for 1 Euro, old books, badges, toys, copper and bronze kitchen utensils, mirrors, photographs, ornaments, bayonets, and many more.

The marketplace around Mercat Central de Sabadell

Vilanova i la Geltrú

A city in the 4th zone accessible by train from Barcelona. There is a railway museum here called Museu del Ferrocarril de Catalunya, but unfortunately, we couldn’t visit because its opening hours were between 10:00 and 14:00. If you can time it right, it is definitely worth a visit as it is the largest railway museum in Europe. The museum we had the chance to visit was the Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer. Víctor Balaguer is a politician who held an important place in the region’s history and also gave great importance to art. It is a very large museum in proportion to the city’s size, and I recommend you set aside at least two hours.

The first hall of Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer

Here, you not only see works belonging to different art movements at different times of the region, but you also see some artifacts from Egyptian, Far Eastern, and Aztec civilizations. This was the first museum where I saw artifacts related to the Americas. Of course, these artifacts are also accompanied by artifacts from the conquistadors.

Some artworks at Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer

Sitges

This city is a place where tourists go to swim in the sea. I must say that it is not possible for someone who has seen Turkey to like these beaches. The importance of this city for us comes from the museums Museu del Cau Ferrat, founded by Santiago Rusiñol, which once served as a base for the region’s art movements, and Museu de Maricel, which means “museum of the sea and sky.” Besides these, there is another museum called Palau de Maricel, but it was a museum that could only be visited with a guide at certain times, and unfortunately, it was closed for restoration when we went. The other two structures that can be visited are entered from one entrance, and by following the route straight, you enter the second museum from the inside and exit from the second museum. Santiago Rusiñol was a factory owner who devoted himself more to art and, because he was very keen on collecting ironworks, in this building he called Cau Ferrat, meaning iron shelter, an environment was created where artists who couldn’t go to France, especially during the First World War, produced works, leading to the formation of the Sitges Luminist School.

Joaquim de Miró, work titled Sitges Beach

This museum, where you can see the ironworks from Santiago Rusiñol’s collection as well as the works of artists like Santiago Rusiñol, Joaquim de Miró, Arcadi Mas, and Felip Masó, holds a very important place in terms of Catalan art history.

Some iron artworks from Santiago Rusiñol’s collection

As a fate of seaside tourist places, the quality of restaurants here drops considerably, but we were satisfied with the place called Gaby’s Sitges, which we chose by analyzing the reviews.

Terrassa

When Spanish friends heard I went here, I got a reaction as if tourists going to Turkey went to Çorum. It is not a very touristy city. In fact, even at its most tourist-looking restaurant, Frankfurt’s Casa Vallès, no one spoke English, but with Mediterranean warmth, we somehow understood each other and had a good time. The reason we came here was that it’s very easily accessible from Sabadell and the Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya, converted from an old textile factory. This science and technology museum is both a very good opportunity to understand Catalonia’s industrial history, and the structure itself is very impressive.

The roof of Museu de la Ciència i de la Tècnica de Catalunya

In the museum, along with a fine collection of motor vehicles, some of which are concepts, and a large arcade and computer collection gathered since the 80s, there is a very nice demo of how the raw material from sheep to clothing is obtained and processed in the textile industry.

Sinclair Research, ZX Spectrum (1982)

Colònia Güell

This was a result that did not come up in any research I did before my visits. In fact, I found out about it thanks to a message I got saying “if you are curious about industrial history, it might interest you” to a question I asked on Reddit to research transportation options to go to the textile factories in Manresa and the salt mines in Cardona. I had already taken them out of the program because I couldn’t find clear information about transportation to the cities I wanted to go to beforehand, and this is how I reached one of the places I liked the most in the region by chance. Briefly, this is another Eusebi Güell and Antoni Gaudí partnership. Güell wants to establish a colony (or community) to test his socialist ideas in the real world, and Gaudí takes on the architecture. There is a large textile factory here, and they build the city where the workers working in the factory will live from scratch. Today, there is a private business in this factory, but I don’t know what it does. It is not a tourist area.

The forbidden-to-enter factory at Colònia Güell

First, they start with living areas, a church, a house where a doctor lives with his family and has his clinic, the house of the manager who runs the factory and the colony, and basic needs like a restaurant/bar. They don’t forget agricultural activities either, and an apartment-like building where 6 different families will live together is also built on the edge of the city.

The colony manager’s house

A cooperative handles the trade of basic necessities within the city, and the warehouses of this cooperative are also in the city. As far as we understand, to optimize purchase prices, the colony’s consumption materials were bought single-handedly, and the income of this cooperative was also shared within the colony. Today, since all these structures are private property, you can only wander their streets, but even this puts you in a very fascinating atmosphere. At the other end of the city, after passing the kindergartens connected to the church, you reach a school. This is a very majestic-looking structure and consists of two parts. On one side is the building where the teacher lives, on the other side are the classrooms, and there is a bridge in between so the teacher can pass between their house and the classrooms without going out onto the street.

The school and the teacher’s lodgings in the colony

The most important structure of this city is the Cripta Gaudí, which Gaudí would leave half-finished but design the Sagrada Família with the knowledge he gained here. Until making this visit, we realized that we definitely did not understand Gaudí. In the picture below, there is a model of the structure, but the realized part is only the bottom floor. In other words, before starting the main part that would be opened for worship, the project was canceled and Gaudí focused on the Sagrada Família. However, the most important point is that here we discovered that Gaudí did not actually calculate the columns and beams with organic angles using mathematical formulas. The chains you see in the top left corner of the picture are the original plan of the structure.

Cripta Gaudí model

He designed the outer lines of the structure with chains he hung from the ceiling of the room where he designed. Here, because he discovered that the shape the chain takes is naturally in balance when the structure stands inverted (i.e., upright), he modeled the entire structure three-dimensionally with chains and transferred it to paper by taking photos of it from various angles. The picture below shows more clearly how this idea works. No matter what length of arch you are going to make, when you determine its angle using a chain, you discover the shape where it will stand most balanced. It’s impossible not to be fascinated.

There are many places to eat and drink here, but the oldest of them was Ateneu Unió, and the best Patatas Bravas you can eat in Catalonia was here. Let alone a touristy place, their prices were the cheapest prices we saw in general in the region, whether touristy or not.

By the way, outside the city, as you head towards the train stop, you see an abandoned castle. This place has become a graffiti paradise, and weeds as tall as a person have grown due to neglect. I passed through the sheet metal fences surrounding the area and took a look around. But I didn’t dare to go inside. Because neither the floor nor the arches and ceilings of the structure inspired confidence. This place passed to the foundation that currently manages the colony and is planned to be utilized in some way, but I don’t think it will be anything different for a long time.

The unnamed castle in the colony

Montserrat

This is a very interesting place geographically. It has a rock type called conglomerate, and a special shape has formed due to this. After people living around here saw lights and visions related to the Virgin Mary again and again, this place became a holy site and a place of pilgrimage.

Religious facilities on the mountain and the typical rocks of Montserrat behind

The religious facilities here have developed over time and today have a successful children’s choir that continues to exist. It also has a museum with an unexpectedly rich collection of paintings, sculptures, and historical artifacts. As far as I guess, these were enriched by donations made for religious purposes and have become one of the elements attracting tourists here. The artifacts are not consistent within a religious context; in one place you see ancient Egyptian statues, in another Jewish manuscript parchment scrolls, elsewhere you see paintings by Picasso or Caravaggio, and somewhere else modern nude sculptures or postmodern art installations.

A painting Picasso did as a child

To come here, you need to have a 4-zone public transport card. While coming here by train from Barcelona, there are two stops where you can get off. One goes up the mountain by cable car, the other by a rack railway system. Because normal railway systems cannot climb steep slopes, since I wondered how we would climb the huge mountain here, we chose the rack railway system. The system, which operates in two different modes, moves on normal rails when the slope is not very steep, but at the point where the slope begins to increase, a straight gear comes to the middle of the rails and the train starts to give power not to the rails, but to a toothed wheel which I guess is suitable for this gear. In this way, it becomes possible to climb slopes of terrifying steepness with a “railway” system.

Rack railway system

There are routes that allow you to walk here after getting off the train without getting back on the train or cable car. No matter how much they interested me, it’s a good thing I didn’t use them because you already need to spend a lot of time at the top. Also, for those who want to hike, there are nice alternatives after you go up. There are different small churches on the mountain, and there are routes where you can visit them one by one. Wikiloc is a platform where I look for routes for such activities or save my own routes. I hesitate to recommend it as I haven’t needed to try alternatives, but it has been quite useful to me so far.

When you plan to come here, the ticket to tour all the facilities is quite expensive, but since you will have one of the richest experiences in the region here, I definitely recommend buying the all-inclusive ticket. Another important point is that you can’t even find drinking water here, and half a liter of water is sold for 7 Euros in a crappy fast-food restaurant. Definitely bring plenty of drinks with you because it’s already an activity with a lot of walking. It would be even better if you bring your food with you. There is more than one restaurant in the area, but looking a bit carefully, we saw details suggesting they are all operated by a single entity, meaning this place is not very tourist-friendly in terms of pricing. By the way, vehicles can come here by road. So there is no reason to raise food prices to such absurd levels.

La Mercè

Lastly, I want to talk about this festival. There is no way to describe the experience created by this festival, which starts on the first day at 8 am on La Rambla with the shots of the Trabucaires and ends with the Piromusical concert in Plaça Catalunya, where fireworks are used like musical instruments. You can look at the photos below and the subsequent videos.

Trabucaires

Piromusical

Cortège of tower-building children

Cortège of the giant puppets

Preparation of the giant puppets for the dance show

Folk dance show in front of Barcelona Cathedral

Circus at Torre Baró