Barcelona, Spain in the time of Covid

I love travel because it gives me a chance to fully engage my curious mind and to get out of my daily rhythm and dive into to learning about somewhere else. On this trip I was observing another city and trying to experience travel itself during covid to see how another place was coping. I took advantage of cheap airfares and spent a long weekend walking all over the city. As for why now, I have never been to Barcelona, because I have always heard there were too many tourists. Well, as soon as covid hit and I saw pictures on the news of empty sites in Europe, I thought this was my chance to visit Barcelona and boy was I right. There were enough tourists for places to feel lively but not desperate, and so many that I couldn't see the amazing sites without fighting a crowd.

I mostly went to Barcelona to look at architecture. During the Pandemic long long walks outside are the safe thing to do and Barcelona buildings are a real spectacle. I could always see some ornate building in the distance that tempted me to walk and walk. It's interesting to see a much longer span of historical building styles than we have in the US. We are such a young country and Europe’s long life span always inspires me.While there are plenty of other architectural styles, the most important architect in the city is Antoni Gaudí, who is held as a key figure in the modernist movement, and who introduced Spain to the Art Nouveau style. His most famous work is the familiar giant La Sagrada Familia church, whose ornate imaginative facade really wowed me. Bt really it was some of the other houses he designed that really made me swoon. I loved the way the spaces flowed and themes of nature and the use of color. They exuded creativity on steroids.

While pretty buildings are nice, I like to also dive deep when I travel and on this, my second trip to Spain, I found it fascinating to make connections between colonialism and just where so much of the money came from that funded the beautiful buildings, after many many trips to Central and South America. I also was interested in the Catalan independence movement which resurged in the late oughts and seems to be going strong these days. There are posters in apartment windows and the Catalan flag hanging on buildings. These days all over the world protests movements are gaining strength. It's fascinating and a wee bit scary.

Since 2016, Barcelona has been doing incredible work to open more of its streets to pedestrians and bikes, Its famed "Superblocks" the concept of carving out islands of car-free space by routing traffic around multi-block areas, so naturally as an urban planning type travelling in the time of covid, where New York City is experimenting with Open Streets, I was really interested. I hope the New York will continue towards this path.

Another thing that felt a little different than other world cities is Barcelona is on the coast of Spain and there are long beautiful beaches and seafront with docked boats right off the subway line. I know New York has beaches too, but these seemed so close and accessible that it felt like a pretty amazing asset!

So all in all, I had an action packed four days, didn't get covid and got back home! Yay adventure!

Click HERE to see all my photos from Barcelona.