EDIT March 2018 - Added FOOD PHOTOS! HA!
Spring Break 2017 has come and gone, and we had a fantastic time in Barcelona! If it were up to me, I'd have parachuted into a cute little island in the Caribbean somewhere and just disconnected for a week. We've been through a lot in the past year, and have been stressed out, burned out, have had our hearts broken, and have been pretty tired. A week on an isolated island with my feet in the water and my ass in the sand sounded ideal, but I'm glad I was out-voted. We'd been longing to come back to the Continent for ages, and the Euro trading at about parity with the Dollar now made it a great time. Spain was amazing, and Barcelona is an incredible city. We can't wait to go back to Europe again!
We scored a great AirBnB right in the downtown shopping district, which maybe wasn't such a good idea, but we had plenty of space for all of us for less than what hotel rooms would have cost. I had to split all of the photos out into two different albums. In Part 1, places visited included the Gothic Quarter, Castell de Montjuïc, Park Güell, the central park area, the beach, and Casa Milà. In Part 2, you'll find photos of the spectacular Montserrat, Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, and then the ticket only area of Park Güell.
On top of Castell de Montjuïc
A cable car going up to Montserrat
Basilica de la Sagrada Familia
One of many amazing views of the city, from Park Güell.
Everybody was very friendly, it was no problem getting around, prices were very reasonable at current exchange rates, and we all had a fantastic time. This was just the change of scenery that we needed. A group of two women did try to pick pocket one of the ladies purses and my camera bag at one point. They weren't successful and we quickly shooed them off, but other than that small bit of trouble, Barcelona was amazing!
My camera gear for the trip included a Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF-S 18-135mm STM all-purpose zoom, a Tokina 12-28mm ultra-wide zoom (review coming), and then lastly the Canon 24mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens, although I used that lens mostly for food photos that I didn't include in these albums. With the Canon W-E1 WiFI adapter in the camera, I never needed to touch my laptop. I just pre-selected the nicer photos of the day via the RATE function on the camera, and then connected my phone to the camera with an app over WiFi, and sucked the photos straight down to my phone and posted some of them on social media more or less in real-time.
My Canon 5D Mark II full-frame camera definitely would have taken sexier looking images, but without the WiFi support it's suffering from a bit of digital rot these days, and I'd have been back to the old clunky workflow on my laptop, downloading photos to there, importing in Apple Aperture, selecting and rating, and then having to export back out somewhere. It's so much easier when you can just do it all straight on the camera and/or your phone! Also, I'm big on fill-flash, and the Canon full-frame bodies don't have built-in flashes, so I'd have had to dork around with a small external flash, which can be clunky. I do still want to get back to using full-frame cameras for travel, though, but I'm waiting for either a 6D Mark II to come out to consider, or for the 5D Mark IV to come down a bit in price, and then we'll talk.
Enough gear talk. Enjoy the photos! :)
