Barcelona was my favorite big city in Spain. The people were so inviting and sweet, much different than France...which I'll blog about France when I'm done with Spain :). In our travels we stayed in older European hotels but in Barcelona we switched it up a bit and stayed in the brand new W. It was right on the Mediterranean and we were lucky to get upgraded to the 20th floor and have surrounding view of the sea and city. Here are the views we had from our hotel.

While in France I fell in love with Rose' wine...it was popular in Spain also

PAELLA!! The Catalan version is made with vermicelli noodles instead of rice. The pasta is cooked in seafood juice and is preferred over the rice version that we have here in the states.

Tapas in Barcelona is on every street corner. We didn't have one bad meal while we were there. Here is what a typical tapas menu looks like.

octopus in paprika and garlic

They love their charred peppers...and so did I

Garlic shrimp and behind it is the potatoes with garlic mayo drizzled on top

Jim LOVES sweets so he tried some of their fresh ice cream

Our hotel was right on the beach so we would walk into town and catch our taxi from there...here below is the boardwalk along side the beach. I saw so many naked men I tried not to take many pictures of the beach.

I love this picture below. It reminds me of Morocco for some reason :) Which is only a 1 hour plane ride from Madrid. I hope to be going back soon so I can jump over to Morocco...YEAH RIGHT...maybe in my dreams.