So one thing that is kinda fabulous right now with living in Switzerland is all of the holidays in June!! The first weekend in June was a 4-day weekend, which I decided to take full advantage of!! I met up with Arian in Barcelona, Spain for some sight-seeing, scooter riding, Spanish tapas fun! For me it was an easy 1 1/2 hour flight (which is awesome!!), so by Thursday morning I was in Spain experiencing all of the culture and delicious food - yummmmm!! So after dropping our things off at the hotel and getting our scooter, we decided to walk around the area to check things out and hopefully find a place to eat because I was starving!! We didn't find too much stuff where we were so we actually ended up eating a late lunch in the hotel and kicking off the trip with a cocktail! After walking around a little bit more, we got ready and headed into town via subway (it was unfortunately raining the first day!) to this cool restaurant that was highly reccommended on the internet for locals and tourists. It was a very cool little place in the Gothic section of Barcelona and you could tell it was good because there was a long wait and a ton of locals around! We decided to wait the 45 minutes and drink some yummy cocktails at the bar :) After our wait we sat down and could not decide which dishes to try because they all looked amazing, so we got way more food than was necessary to try a few things! Arian really wanted fried cheese, which was so yummy, we also had dumplings, which were amazing, and then also some cured meats of course!! For our entrees, Arian got steak and I got some marinated pig - why not!! The desserts didn't sound that amazing and we were both full so after dinner we walked a bit to walk off all that food!
The next day was a little bit nicer, so we decided to venture down to the touristy stops via the scooter (I made sure to pray and hold on tight!!). I was very skeptical about the scooter idea at first, but Arian made an excellent choice and I was very happy he decided to get the scooter - it was pretty awesome :) So once we got on the scooter, we cruised down one of the busy streets and made a stop at this open mall type place for some breakfast - I of course got the crepe with bananas, strawberries, and chocolate sauce - not very healthy, but SUPER delicious!! :) After that, we did manage to get to the huge church (Segrada de familia) where this church has been under construction since 1882 and still has about 70-80 more years before the project is complete! This church was massive and I think every tourist in the city wanted to go because the line wrapped around the building to get inside - insane!! We didn't go inside, but walked around the area for a bit and then got a little bit closer to Las Ramblas and walked around the area. We found quite a few of these boqueria's so we ventured into them and there were just these amazing stands of fresh fruit, seafood, meats, eggs, etc! It would have been so cool to either live there or next time stay at a place with a kitchen to buy some of this fresh food and cook it yourself! We wanted an afternoon snack so we stopped at one of the restaurants in the boqueria and first got a beer. They also had this interesting platter so Arian asked the guy what it was and he was instantly sold haha! It was some sort of fried fresh fish and potatoes - it was delicious!! After that we walked around some more and made our way towards Las Ramblas and checked out all the side streets there! We tried to look for some places to eat dinner and make reservations, but no luck! We did however make a pit-stop at the places in the middle of Las Ramblas so we could people watch while enjoying a monstrous glass of Sangria :) After that we walked around a little bit more before heading back to the hotel to drop off the scooter and get ready for dinner! For dinner we were going to wing and head back to Las Ramblas via the subway (I did not want helmet hair after a fresh shower!). We were not so lucky that night with the restaurants and after walking and walking and walking some more we settled on this restaurant on Las Ramblas at about 11 pm. It was not the greatest tapas so that was kind of disappointing, but we learned our lessons on where not to eat! 
The next day we were in need of some good food, so we hopped on the scooter and headed back down to the city center to walk around and hopefully find a good lunch place! After a little walk we came across this cool restaurant overlooking one of the old streets with outdoor seating (in the nice sun, which was fantastic!!). Arian and I shared a nice mozzerella and tomato dish - fresh cheese - yummm!!!! For the lunch dish, I got the filet, which was HEAVEN!! and Arian got the risotto, which was also pretty delicious (I liked mine better though haha!). Anyways, so after our fulfilling lunch (Barcelona redeemed itself food-wise) we continued walking around and got lost down the streets and shopping! We also headed down to the harbor area and walked around to check out the area and also scope out the restaurants for dinner, which we found a nice place and made reservations :) We didn't want a repeat of the night before lol! So after getting ready for dinner we headed to the harbor for a nice dinner. I finally got some good seafood risotto :) It was a teeny bit chilly, but the weather was really nice that night!! After dinner there was also this group of people lighting a fire in a paper bag (like a lantern thing) and then it rises up into the air - it's some chinese technique that was very cool and a couple of them blew up high into the sky! One or two came down and I was concerned a beautiful sailboat would catch on fire, but luckily that did not happen :)
The next day was our last day in Barcelona :( so we got up and first order of business was to return the scooter, which was in city center...so we dropped it off and then went to check out the line for the gondola up to the spot that overlooks the city, but since it was so long, we decided to go grab lunch at this restaurant that our taxi driver said was the best in the city! So we decided to give it a shot - had a very mafia like feel lol, but my pasta with lobster and mussels was delicious!! and we met a nice couple from Florida that were really chatty so that was fun! After lunch we went back to the gondola where the line was a bit shorter, so we made our way up and got on the gondola. The view was AMAZING!!! You could see the whole city and the sea - it was really beautiful!!! We walked around up top - I got some gelato :)! and then we actually walked down a little trail instead of taking the gondola back over to the other side. We continued our walk around the city, got some souvenirs/stuff from Barcelona on Las Ramblas and then made a pitstop for some hot chocolate and churros - Yummmm!!! It was so delicious and the hot chocolate was almost like a warm pudding it was so thick!! I was in heaven :) After the food coma, we gathered our things and headed back to the hotel. We got changed for dinner and since I hadn't stepped foot on the beach yet, we walked down the beach from our hotel to Port Olimpico...it took about an hour, but it was a really pretty night and now I can say my feet have been in the Mediterranean Sea :) Plus it was another really nice night, so we headed to the Port and walked around a bit before finding this really cool restaurant. It had a really Mediterranean/Barcelona vibe! We had to wait a couple of minutes before sitting down and wound up chatting away with this couple (Mandy and Raj) who just started a month long vacation touring around Europe (jealous!!). The hostess came over and said she could seat us now if we shared a table for the 4 of us, so our new friends were fine with it and so were we, so why not! So we wound up ordering a bunch of appetizers for the table and were chit chatting the whole time. They showed us some pictures they took and what they saw (they saw completely different things!)...it was a really fun night and a great way to end the trip :) Since we had another late night instead of going out to a bar or club we headed back to the hotel since we had to be up at 4:30 in order to get to the airport on time for our flights - yikes!! When I booked the 7:30 flight it seemed like a good idea, until you work back what time you really need to wake up to get there on time lol....but it was all good and I was back in Zurich and in the office by 10:30 am!! But I will say that Barcelona was one of my new favorite cities and I will be definitely be going back there one day soon!!! :) and hopefully next time we will take a little bit longer than a week to plan it (but was a pretty awesome trip for a last minute booking!).
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