Barcelona Instagram ShoutOut Challenge

Homage to BCN is going to be joining in with the Instagram challenge below. I hope to see some other Barcelona Instagrammers joining in too!

Every day for one week, we challenge you to repost photos from your favourite Instagram profiles that you follow in Barcelona, using the same hashtag #IGShoutOutBarcelona and #SMDay — June 30th is Mashable’s Social Media Day around the world. Read the rest of this article…

What do you like least about Barcelona? The guys at OK Apartment Barcelona wanted to know. So they surveyed some of the expats in the city (850 people from 26 countries) to find out what they least liked about Barcelona. Read the rest of this article…

Esperança is an English-speaking volunteer group co-founded by Liverpudlian Julie Stephenson. The volunteers go out twice a week and distribute food, clothing and chat to the homeless in Barcelona.

I’ve been wanting to feature Esperança on the blog for a while now. When I first heard about it I felt it was deserving of as much publicity as possible, such a selfless act by Julie and her colleagues for the people of their adopted city.

So it was great to finally catch up with Julie and ask her about the project. Read the rest of this article…

Life quality scores in Barcelona vs London

Sharing my time between London and Barcelona as I do I’m lucky to be able to appreciate the pros and cons of both of these ultimately fabulous cities.

Of course the pay is much better in London, but then the cost of living is much higher, nearly 3 times as high. The weather is, of course, better in Barcelona as we are all well aware and there’s a blossoming startup scene. In fact by most metrics the cities are pretty comparable, until it comes to Housing and that Cost-of-Living where Barcelona outshines London by far. And did I mention the weather? Read the rest of this article…

Trevor: He’s not a people person

An indie feature film about a man in Spain and his daughter.
Plus wine, lamb, some ants and a cat.

How many creative expats does it take to make a film in Barcelona? Answer, not that many. At least not as many as you might think. I caught up with the screenwriter Georgina Tremayne, director Carlos Domeque and lead actor Hunter Tremayne from the soon to be filmed Trevor, a low-budget, and hopefully successfully crowdfunded feature about expats, and one in particular called Trevor (as you may have guessed). Read the rest of this article…

My name is Mat, I’m 39yrs old and I live in Southampton. (I moved down here from South of London 20yrs ago and have stayed ever since).

My first trip to Barcelona was for La Noche Vieja (New Year’s Eve) in 2004. It was around this time that the “no frills” airline boom really started to take off (no pun intended), and quite a number of my then work colleagues booked short breaks to Barcelona via Ryanair’s  Bournemouth to Girona service.

Tying in with this my family normally had a couple of nights somewhere in the UK or France for NYE, so given the great things my work colleagues said about Barcelona I suggested to the family we went to Barcelona… and that’s where my 10yr (ok, its 11yrs and counting) obsession with Barcelona started.

View from the Museu d’Història de Catalunya

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TRX Suspension Training in Barcelona

20% of gym memberships purchased in January are cancelled within the first 3 months. This rises to 60% within the first 6 months.

I completely made that up. But if I’d researched it properly I’m sure it would be close to that, if not more. I have never been a part of those statistics, I knew I would never go to the gym. I am one of the least motivated people when it comes to exercise. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. But being the wrong side of 40 you begin to realise that your ability to eat and drink what you want and stay slim no longer holds, and if you don’t keep healthy you’ll be in trouble.

So I was a prime candidate for Jamie Luke Health & Fitness, a personal trainer based here in Barcelona. Jamie contacted me and asked if I’d like to try out his particular style of personal training. My own personal trainer? I jumped at the chance. Read the rest of this article…