If you still don't know what Freddie Mercury and that fat opera singer were shouting about, then you really need to park your ass in an airplane seat and get over to Barcelona. While for many
Barcelona may just be the half-hour stopover on the way to the non-stop party island that is
Ibiza, the more discerning tourist will respond immediately to the allures of this northern Spanish town, the capital and pride of the Catalan region.
This smart, elegant city is like a pocket sized Paris neatly contained behind an uninterrupted shoreline of beaches and Mediterranean sea and spread out beneath a canopy of rarely broken deep blue sky. It is rivalled only by Madrid in terms of
gay presence and the supremely tolerant attitude of its citizens (we-are-so-much-more-European-than-Madrid) makes
Barcelona a city where you will feel free just to be yourself. The famously laidback Spanish approach to life means they know how to party and, if it's your thing, you can kick off your weekend on a Friday night and keep partying till early Monday morning moving from bar to club to "after" and then back to bar. But
Barcelona is about so much more than partying. Sports fans can check out the Olympic facilities built to host the '92 games. Football fans can check out FC Barcelona's stadium, the Camp Nou - one of the biggest in the world.
The city is an architect's feast with many fine examples of Gothic and colonial-period buildings as well as the quirky modernista conceptions of Antoni Gaudí.
Whether you're into doing "touristy" things or not,
Barcelona is a more than complete holiday experience.
With its very affordable stylish restaurants, its fashionable clothes and design stores, its excellent and cheap gyms, its beaches packed in the summer with dark, defined young Catalans, not to mention its balmy temperatures, it is the ultimate
gay urban ideal. Add to all this its compactness, a well-funded public transport system that makes getting around happily simple, and, last but not least,
the Mediterranean Key West that is
Sitges only a half-hour away on the train,
and the only question that needs answering is why you haven't already been!
If you're after some fab flights to Barcelona, simply click here, select the dates and you're ready to party!
