A Vegan Food Guide To Barcelona

I'll admit something to you. Before heading to Barcelona, I was quite worried about finding vegan food out there. Let's face it, Spain is known for it's love of dry cured meats and cheese, which is the total opposite of vegan-friendly. However, after a little research, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the vegan scene in Barcelona is booming!

Upon opening the HappyCow app (an amazing vegan restaurant locater for those of you not in the know) when we arrived, we were greeted with hundreds of vegan eating out options in the city. Unfortunately, we only had a few days in Barcelona and only managed to check out a small portion of them but I wanted to share my favourites for any other vegan pals heading to the Spanish coastal city. So, kick back and prepare to potentially salivate your way through my vegan food guide to Barcelona...

Review | Aparthotel Silver, Barcelona

Have you ever stayed in an aparthotel before? Imagine the hospitality and service of a hotel teamed with the facilities of a rental apartment. Well, that's exactly what an aparthotel is. For those who crave a little more than a pricey minibar, travel kettle and a small selection of instant coffees on their travels, an aparthotel may be the answer. Serviced aparthotels are designed to be a home away from home, combining the service of a traditional hotel with more day-to-day living facilities in your room or apartment, whether that be a fitted kitchen or larger living area to kick back and relax!

During our first trip to Barcelona we spent our final two nights at the Aparthotel Silver in Gràcia - the more bohemian and artsy district of the city adorned with independent shops, quirky cafes, delicious restaurants and Gaudi's architectural route of Modernism. In fact, the Aparthotel Silver is located just 100 metres from the first ever home designed by Gaudi, Casa Vicens (which we somehow missed during our trip!).

Review | PEEPSHOW at CHAMÄLEON Theatre, Berlin

I'm lucky enough to be invited bi-annually to Berlin by the wonderful family over at the CHAMÄLEON Theatre to review their new shows. I've harked on about how much I adore the theatre and its home city of Berlin in my previous review posts so I'll refrain from gushing about it once again. I'll link to my previous reviews at the bottom of this post so you can read up a little more on the CHAMÄLEON Theatre as a venue as well as getting a feel for some of its previous shows.

The theatre's current spectacle is PEEPSHOW; a show curated by Australian company, Circa, who have been dubbed the "rockstars of the circus world". Circa are known to be the best of the best when it comes to contemporary circus and have even appeared at the CHAMÄLEON Theatre  a few times before in the past so my expectations of the show were pretty high. Over the course of the summer, PEEPSHOW was showcased at Underbelly Festival but the London show was just the foundations of the more developed and longer show that is currently showing in Berlin. I didn't get a chance to catch the London show and decided to consciously not do too much research beforehand so that it would be a total surprise on the evening.

Is it Worth Visiting the Blue Lagoon in Iceland?

Before we visited Iceland, we debated on whether to book a trip to the Blue Lagoon but ultimately decided against it because we felt like it was likely overhyped and a bit too touristy for our liking. Plus, we were on a budget and Iceland is not cheap! However, a couple of days into our Icelandic adventure, we started to regret the decision of not pre-booking or planning a trip to the Blue Lagoon so, on a whim, we booked our tickets & a return bus for the following day from our Airbnb in Reykjavik. You could say that the FOMO truly got the better of us. But, was it worth it?

Discovering The Vatican Museums & St. Peter’s Basilica with The Roman Guy

During our long weekend in Rome earlier this year, we took two tours with The Roman Guy; one was a personal tour of the Colosseum and the second was an early access tour of the Vatican Museums, which I'm going to cover in this post.

I had visited the Vatican Museums before on a trip to Rome many years ago but back then I didn't take a guided tour, nor did I pre-book meaning that I had to join the ridiculous winding queue to get in, which took a good few hours out of the day. Up to 25,000 people per day descend upon the Vatican City so a big draw point of The Roman Guy's tours is that they always tend to have a 'skip-the-queue' priority. Our particular tour met at 7:30am just opposite the main entrance to the museum ready for an 8am entry. The museums actually officially open at 9am but The Roman Guy's "privileged entrance" tour allows you access to the museums an hour before the general public so it's totally worth it!