🇪🇸 Sagrada and Sangrias: The Foodie Fellowship Goes to Barcelona! 🍷🥘

Pack your appetite and your walking shoes! The Foodie Fellowship is heading international again! ✈️

For this experimental weekend trip, we're proposing two days in Barcelona, exploring the city's neighbourhoods, Gaudí architecture, markets and, most importantly, eating our way through Catalan and Spanish cuisine.
Think tapas, bombas, jamón, pa amb tomàquet, croquetas, seafood, cava, vermut and, naturally, a sangria or two, with the Sagrada Família, Gothic Quarter, Park Güell and Mediterranean waterfront squeezed in between meals.

⚠️ IMPORTANT - THIS TRIP IS NOT CONFIRMED YET
This is an experimental event.
The trip will only definitely go ahead if we have at least 4 people committed to attending by 23 September 2026, one month before the weekend.
The itinerary, restaurants, accommodation and travel arrangements below are suggestions rather than a definitive plan. Once we know who is genuinely joining, we will create the final itinerary together and make bookings based on the group's preferences and budget.

Please RSVP only if you are seriously interested in joining the trip.

✈️ Getting to Barcelona

Suggested option: Fly Friday evening, 23 October
The most practical low-budget option is likely to be a direct flight from the Netherlands to Barcelona–El Prat Airport (BCN) on Friday evening, returning Sunday evening.
Transavia currently advertises Barcelona flights starting from approximately €54 from Eindhoven, €72 from Rotterdam/The Hague and €84 from Amsterdam, depending on date and availability. Vueling is currently showing Amsterdam → Barcelona on 23 October from €75 one way.

For planning purposes, I would budget roughly:
✈️ Return flight: €130–€200

🛏️ Accommodation
To keep this trip affordable, the proposal is to stay somewhere central where we can walk to many of the food and sightseeing locations.
One possible base is St Christopher's Barcelona, very close to Plaça Catalunya. A central hostel makes sense for a short trip because we really only need somewhere to sleep.
Another possibility is to find inexpensive twin/double rooms and split rooms between two people.
Estimated accommodation budget: around €45–€65 per person per night

🍴 TENTATIVE ITINERARY

🇪🇸 Friday 23 October - ¡Bienvenidos a Barcelona!
Evening
✈️ Fly from the Netherlands to Barcelona.
After landing, we'll travel into central Barcelona, check into our accommodation and meet for a relaxed first drink and some late tapas.
Nothing too ambitious tonight - Saturday is going to involve a lot of walking and even more eating.

Tonight we will have our first tapas, cerveza, cava or sangria of the weekend. 🍷

🥘 Saturday 24 October - Markets, Old Barcelona, Bombas & Sagrada Família

09:00 — Breakfast at La Boqueria
We start the weekend at the famous Mercat de la Boqueria, browsing the stalls and picking up breakfast and snacks.
Rather than sitting down for one enormous meal, the idea is to try several things: jamón, cheeses, olives, pastries, fruit juices and whatever else catches our attention.
Perfect Foodie Fellowship behaviour.

10:30 - Gothic Quarter
From La Boqueria we'll explore Barcelona on foot:
📍 La Rambla
📍 Plaça Reial
📍 Gothic Quarter
📍 Barcelona Cathedral
📍 El Born
Mostly free, atmospheric and conveniently located between meals.

12:30 - Barceloneta & traditional tapas
We'll walk towards Barceloneta for lunch.
One possible destination is La Cova Fumada, a small old-school tapas bar where dishes are typically around the €10–20 range. It is currently open on Saturdays during the morning/lunch period.
This would be the place to try simple traditional dishes, seafood and bombas: potato-and-meat croquettes associated especially with Barceloneta.
Because it is small, whether this works will depend on our eventual group size. We can choose an alternative once we know who is coming.

14:00 - Barceloneta Beach
After lunch, we'll take a digestive stroll along the Mediterranean waterfront and Barceloneta beach.
Free sightseeing is very important when your travel philosophy involves spending the saved money on food.

16:00 - Sagrada Família ⛪
Time for the "Sagrada" part of Sagrada and Sangrias.
We'll visit Gaudí's extraordinary Sagrada Família.
The standard individual ticket currently costs €26 and includes the audioguide.
People who don't want to pay for entrance can obviously admire the basilica from outside and meet the rest of us afterwards.

18:00 - Passeig de Gràcia
We'll stroll back through central Barcelona, passing some more of Gaudí's architecture, including Casa Milà and Casa Batlló.
Seeing the façades from outside = €0. 😁

20:30 - Tapas & Sangria Night 🍷
For Saturday night, the idea is a casual, inexpensive tapas crawl rather than an expensive restaurant.
A possible stop is La Tasqueta de Blai in Poble-sec, where the listed price range is around €10–20.
We'll order lots of different things, share everything and hopefully discover some new favourites.
And yes, given the name of this trip, sangria will have to make an appearance somewhere.
🍷 Tapas
🍺 Cerveza
🥂 Cava
🍹 Sangria
🫒 Questionable quantities of olives
Afterwards, anyone who still has energy can explore Barcelona's nightlife.

🌳 Sunday 25 October - Gaudí, Catalan Lunch & One Last Feast

09:00 - Catalan-style breakfast
Coffee, pastries and something savoury to prepare ourselves for another day of walking.
We'll try to track down some pa amb tomàquet - bread rubbed with tomato, olive oil and salt, one of the simplest staples of Catalan cuisine.

10:00 - Park Güell
We'll head up to Gaudí's colourful Park Güell for panoramic views over Barcelona.
Standard admission currently costs €18.
Again, anyone wanting to minimise costs can skip the paid attractions and join us afterwards.

12:30 - Gràcia
After Park Güell, we'll wander through Gràcia and slowly make our way back towards the old city.
This gives us some time simply to explore Barcelona rather than rushing from attraction to attraction.

14:00 - Catalan Sunday lunch
For our main Sunday meal, one possibility is Bodega La Puntual in El Born, a Catalan restaurant and tapas bar with a current listed price range of approximately €20–30 per person.
The exact restaurant will depend on our final group size and reservations.
The goal is simple: one good shared Catalan meal before we leave Barcelona.

16:00 - El Born / Ciutadella / final food hunt
We'll keep the final few hours flexible.
Possible options:
🌳 Parc de la Ciutadella
🏛️ Arc de Triomf
🛍️ Exploring El Born
☕ Coffee and something sweet
🧀 Buying edible souvenirs
🍷 "One final sangria" becoming two final sangrias

18:00–19:00 - Head to the airport
We'll collect our bags and head back to Barcelona–El Prat for an evening flight home.
Barcelona's 2026 public-transport prices are fairly manageable: a 1-zone T-casual currently costs €13, while the airport metro ticket costs €5.90.

💰 ESTIMATED BUDGET
This is intended to be a relatively low-budget international weekend.
Approximate costs per person:
✈️ Flights: €130–€200
🛏️ Two nights accommodation + tourist tax: €100–€140
🥘 Food & drinks: €70–€110
⛪ Sagrada Família: €26
🌳 Park Güell: €18
🚇 Airport + local transport: €20–€30

Estimated total: approximately €365–€525 per person

🇪🇸🍷 Who's ready for Barcelona?
Two days.
One city.
Several Gaudís.
An unreasonable number of tapas.

Sagrada and Sangrias - let's see if we can make this one happen! 🇪🇸🥘🍷