Sun • Sand • Spain: #2 More than just Barcelona

There is one ubiquitous thing about all big cities in Europe, no matter how beautiful they are, there would always be a hidden treasure, somewhere in the vicinity of that place and that would surely be an unspoiled and less crowded place. Sigtuna is an example of this around Stockholm.

I thought of making most of my time by exploring such places around Barcelona. With one side of Barcelona surrounded by sea, there are three other directions to explore, if you go north, you get to explore the pristine beaches of Costa Brava, If you go south, you’ll again reach the amazing beaches of Sitges and many more towns to follow, but if you go opposite to the sea, you’ll end up on majestic mountains of Montserrat. Let’s start exploring from Montserrat itself.

Sun • Sand • Spain : #1 Barcelona

After my previous trip to Prague got screwed up, I had a couple of lessons, first was not to plan short trips and second was to see the weather forecast very carefully. On top of that, I realized that it doesn’t make much sense if I just go for a weekend to a place and complete a touristy checklist in a day or two and come back. I need to stay longer to soak in the beauty of any place. That’s why, this time, I planned a weeklong stay in Barcelona, most importantly, to satiate my craving for Sun.

I read it somewhere, “Barcelona assaults the senses in every possible way” (of course not the bad ways), and I found it to be absolutely true, the place is so enthralling that even a week after returning to Stockholm I find my mind wandering on the Catalonian beaches every now and then.

A mucked up trip to Prague

NOTE: For some reason, all the images of this post disappeared from my blog. I am trying to fix them ASAP. Meanwhile, please read the other posts

Plans and Screwed up plans

No matter how well you plan a trip, there are two things you can’t fight, bad weather and bad health. When it came to this trip, both these things were against me.

What I planned: I booked tickets to travel to Prague on my birthday and thought on to go further to Vienna from there before returning to Stockholm 4 days later.

What actually happened: I got sick just a day before I was supposed to go, and the flu was at its peak just the night before I had to go there, so I had to skip that flight and stay in Stockholm.

Reminiscing the Northern Lights

Being close to the arctic circle, Sweden is one of the best places to get visuals of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). But as Stockholm is not in the very much northern part of Sweden, it’s kind of difficult to catch a sight of Northern Lights; within past two months, I missed more than 5 chances to see the northern lights because of the cloudy sky.

March is said to be one of the best months to sight Northern Lights, as, after April, there won’t be many dark hours. However, I had my first visuals of the green skies back in October, and luckily I had enough time to find a place to set up my camera before the visuals occurred again.

Here are some pictures: