Barcelona Between the Sessions
Culture, gastronomy, and a city after hours
When a pharma group of 30 participants from the Netherlands arrived in Barcelona for a major congress at CCIB, the city had far more in store than the conference halls alone.
Their introduction to Barcelona began in the most fitting way - inside a historic 1911 hardware store, now one of the city's most iconic restaurants, where the group sat down to traditional Catalan cuisine before taking to the streets in GoCars, discovering Barcelona's neighborhoods in a fun and dynamic way. As evening fell, a tapas tour through the Gothic Quarter offered the perfect first taste of the oldest part of the city, its winding streets and its gastronomy telling stories of their own.
With congress commitments met by day, the evenings remained entirely theirs. Dinner at Asador de Aranda, one of Barcelona's finest restaurants known for its traditional grilled meats and authentic Spanish atmosphere, offered a welcome contrast to the pace of the conference.
The final day took the group beyond the city and into the landscape that surrounds it. A visit to Cavas Codorníu brought the group to the historic Torre de Codorníu for lunch, followed by a guided cellar tour and a tasting of premium cavas paired with local cheeses. Back in Barcelona, the farewell dinner at Tragaluz gave way to an exclusive private visit to La Pedrera, including hidden spaces and an audiovisual rooftop experience, before the evening closed with a cava toast in its courtyard - a fitting end to a program that had given this group a genuine sense of the city.
Barcelona has a way of exceeding expectations, even for those who come primarily for work.