Welcome to my travel blog! :) Read all about my adventures from the UK to the world! With stories, reviews, inspiration and more from a travel blogger. Check out the palces I've been to below.
On the 2nd day we went shopping on La Rambla and Plaça De Catalunya. There are so many shops, and I got to check out Desigual, a brand which I like the look of but never bought anything from. They have stores all over Barcelona, as do Zara, they are everywhere!
We went to El Triangle too, and had a proper look around. It houses a few different shops like Havaianna, it’s pretty good but I was expecting it to be bigger.
We saw one of the most famous food markets in Barcelona, Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria aka La Boqueria, and I got a photo I wanted. If you like food or want to try something local, it’s the place to go.
There were some crazy Boca Juniors fans who were singing and banging their drums, and had a huge flag so I had to get a photo of them. It was a good atmosphere and they drew a little crowd.
A trip to Barcelona would not be complete if you didn’t incorporate football into it, so going to see the stadium, Camp Nou is something really good to do. You can get the city tour bus which stops there, get the West Route and it’s stop 13.
If you aren’t a football fan don’t worry, it’s a big complex and includes a really nice place to eat, and they do a good selection of food and drinks.
We started off the morning at a place called Level for a drink. Since we walked for miles on the first day and wanted to get a good look around the city, we went on an open top bus tour. Barcelona It was €26, and you could hop on and off at loads of different points. There are 2 routes, and we took the best one I think, which went around loads of the sights including: Plaça d’Espanya, The Spanish Village, World Trade Center, Font màgica de Montjuïc, The Olympic Stadium and of course the Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou. It goes up to the cable cars and there is an amazing view of the entire city, however we stayed on the bus.
The whole city tour bus is a great idea, if you’re in Barcelona you should definitely try it.
In the 2nd part of the day we went from the Cathedral down to Plaça de Catalunya which you could say is the main square of Barcelona, think of Trafalguar Square combined with a bit of Oxford Street. There is the big square with lots of shops around, El Triangle is there and El Corte Inglés, a huge department store.
The Hard Rock Café is also there, so I had to go in and get myself a t-shirt to add to my collection which I will blog about later. We went to Plaça de Catalunya a fair bit, since it’s in the middle of most things.
We only spent a bit of time in Plaça de Catalunya on the first day, just for a little look around to get our bearings.
Day 1 of Barcelona. Arriving at the amazing, cool and posh like hotel, I love it! 😀 We stayed in L’Eixample and our hotel was just off Passeig de Gràcia, which is home to luxury brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel, Louis Vuitton etc. and lots of high end jewelers.
We had a city view, which was cool, and could look out on to the street. The hotel had a Triumph bike in it, if you like bikes that may mean something :p
On the first day we went to Sagrada Familia, aka the famous Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona. I have been here before, but when I was just a kid, it is a must have place to go if you’re going to Barcelona. We seen a couple of other buildings, cathedrals and churches too.
I was amazed by the streets, the roads are so big! That is why you’ll see many photos of streets and roads, which were incredibly big! :p
So I am now back from Barcelona, here are some of my pics. Newcastle airport was the first port of call, and then on the flight and on to Barcelona aiport, El Prat.
The flight was delayed because there was an unidentified bag in the hold so they had to check each one…Not the greatest thing to hear or a great start! :p But the flight time was just under 2 hours which was really quick.
The new champagne bar in Newcastle airport.
The now standard “shot of the wing” which everyone seems to do on Instagram when they fly It does look pretty cool up in the air tho.
Thanks for your questions and emails, so I will answer a couple of questions for you. Bear in mind I have only been to Stockholm once so I am hardly an expert, just writing what I found 🙂
It is expensive?
I should say so! Being in the UK we always hear of Scandinavian countries being expensive, I always thought it would be, but did not expect it to be that expensive. I have been to London and Amsterdam, I found Amsterdam to be really expensive, and Stockholm is more than that! Hotels are average for a capital city, but the general living expenses are high;
Eating out, drinking, and so on. Taxi to the airport was around £40. My general rule was that most things were around twice the price than the UK (check the beer/alcohol below). Even buying the usual souvenirs I ended up spending around £30 which was a lot considering I only got a few small items.
What about bars, are they expensive?
Yep! A bottle of beer was just over £5, everywhere I went including the hotel bar in Stureplan.
If you want anything extravagant then expect to pay a lot more; For example vodka and Redbull was anywhere from £10-15, cocktails anything around the £12 and upwards mark. This was around the Södermalm area in a few different places.
Strange rules?
You can only buy alcohol from designated places and only at certain times! For example these are closed on Sundays, so you cannot buy alcohol at all! (unless you go to a bar/club/restaurant). The places which sell alcohol are called Systembolaget.
Other places might sell it but it’s weak like 2% ABV or something. So if you plan on buying alcohol for a party or for your hotel don’t leave it until Sunday or you will be disappointed.
I HAD to take my jacket off in one bar. This was weird. It’s like a cloakroom but mandatory, you have no choice. I am not sure if this was just that particular bars rule or not, I guess it was. And you have to pay for the privilege too. This is actually much better, because everyone has to do the same, so people seemed more chilled and danced much more without big coats and jackets on 😀
How do you get from the airport to Stockholm centre/back
There is a bus, a taxi too, but I got the Arlanda Express, a train which goes from the airport terminal straight to Stockholm Central Station. This costs around £26 and is the quickest way to get to the centre of Stockholm, taking around 20 minutes.
I got a Taxi back from my hotel to the airport which was a lot slower, that cost £40.
How do you get around Stockholm? Is it big?
I don’t think it is too big. If you like to walk then you can walk around a lot to different places and they are not too far. I got the Stockholm Metro aka tunnelbana from Stureplan to Gamla Stan, but walked back.
The Tunnelbana is probably the best and easiest way of getting around, depending on where you want to go, much like the Tube in London. There are also buses and trams, but boats are also used a lot since there are many islands.
What is the airport like?
I flew to and from Arlanda, the biggest (and “main”) airport for Stockholm. It’s pretty decent size, not huge and not tiny. Arrivals you are sort of upstairs and have to go down to baggage claim and through passport control then you are out to the terminal and there are a few shops.
Departures there is a very large departure style shop with all the usual things in it, and places to eat etc. I did notice it was really really clean.
What is the money like?
Strange at first. The current exchange rate is around 10kr/£1 so if you have 100kr (which you will have a lot of) that is around £10. It is just odd when you buy stuff and it costs x-hundred kr and you are thinking it’s a huge amount for just a drink.
On the plus side it is easy once you get over that, because you just knock the ‘0’ off. They only seem to have 500kr and 100kr notes and nothing in the middle (there are 20 and 50 notes too), which is not good. They need a 200kr note, like our £20 note (I think they are getting this in the future?)
Snacks and drinks – Are there places to get these?
Yeah, Stockholm has 7Eleven’s everywhere! This was sort of a novelty for me since I am from the UK and we don’t have them here, and they are so popular and famous in America it was cool to go to one. Like everything else they are quite expensive in comparison to the UK counterparts. McDonalds is also not too cheap, over £2 for large fries 😛
What culture of people are around?
In terms of tourists I found that I heard so many Americans, they seemed to be everywhere! I did not hear much British English being spoken, maybe only by two or three people over the whole weekend. There were some German speaking people, maybe some other Scandinavian too, but mostly Swedish people enjoying Stockholm 🙂
Do many people speak English?
I spoke to a few people in stores, restaurants, bars, random Swedish people and everyone speaks English, and pretty good too. Most of the time their English is so good you’d forget you were talking to someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language 😀
So I was at Arlanda airport last week flying out of Stockholm, ahhh the memories. I was at terminal 5 of Arlanda, which deals with the international flights. The airport is actually quite small, not as small as Newcastle, but not huge, quite a nice size actually.
I was in departures and went to duty free to pick up some things, I got my Chanel Allure and I picked up some vodka. The vodka was Smirnoff Espresso, I had never seen it before so I was excited to get it; Apparently you can only get it from duty free if the label on the shelf is to be believed.
I went to pay and the guy tells me “We cannot sell alcohol if you are travelling within the EU, it’s the law”. WTF!?!? I could not believe it. Sweden is so strict with their alcohol laws, it won’t even let me take it out the country! Apparently it is true, at least according to their website, they do not sell alcohol if you are flying within the EU.
I like Arlanda airport though, it’s nice, friendly people, and very clean. When I arrived one of the first things I noticed about it was how clean it was!
So after I came back from Stockholm I flew into Heathrow, and I booked my train back to Newcastle so I would have a good few hours in London, so I could spend a little bit of time there. I did the usual tourist sight seeing type stuff, I have seen most of the sights but it’s London, so no harm in seeing them again 😛 It is a cool city, the weather was really warm and I chilled in Trafalgar Square as well as going around the usual spots.
I brought home a few presents from Stockholm, you know, the typical tourist souvenirs which you can pick up on holiday to remind you that you were there. I brought home a few things for people, and I got myself a couple of things too. A picture calendar, some boxers, a badge and wristband and a shot glass.
I also went to the Hard Rock Cafe and picked up a t-shirt to add to my little Hard Rock t-shirt collection. I now have: Edinburgh, Dublin, Sharm El Sheik, Amsterdam and Stockholm. I like to try and get different style and designs, so this is the one I got from Stockholm…
At Arlanda airport I bought myself a fragrence, why not I have not for a long time 😉 I tried the Chanel Allure homme sport Extreme and it was really nice so I picked up a bottle. Nice bottle, really nice smell, quite a strong kind of smell but is really nice.
