Expatriate Europe's drinking dens.

In June 2014 my girlfriend took me on a surprise holiday to Barcelona as a gift for my 21st birthday and, besides the anxiety induced by me having to find a similarly extravagant gift for her 21st later that year, Barcelona made a lasting impression on me. We saw the famous architecture, drank cheap rosé on the beaches and cycled along the seafront on rented bicycles: embracing the tourist lifestyle unashamedly as students on a city break. Yet, amongst the Lonely Planet page-filling cathedrals and beaches sat a tiny paragraph, a hidden gem, that raised my interest much more than even the most extravagant cathedral in the world.

That summer I was in the midst of preparing to write my dissertation for my final year of University. With my thesis developing around 20th Century American travel writing my delight when I discovered a minuscule entry in our Lonely Planet guide to Barcelona focusing on one of Hemingway's expatriate haunts was palpable. I swiftly dragged my girlfriend along. Whilst not as prolific as 'Shakespeare and Co.' in Paris (where I had similarly dragged my S.O the previous year) 'London Bar' turned out to be everything I imagined, seemingly frozen at the time of its conception in 1910.

Fronted by a dark wooden frame to an even darker interior, the old bar remains by the entrance: thick heavy slabs of stone worn smooth by glasses and hands, dusty bottles lining the shelves. The close right hand wall is a mirror, worn in a way that is reassuringly old - encouraging my dream that Hemingway sat where I did, or gazed at the same polished surface. The room sinks back into its darkness ending at a small stage, garishly decorated yet promisingly beaten.

For a moment I became overwhelmed with ambition to write, to recapture the long distant lifestyle of these early modern travellers, scribbling poetic clichés in my moleskin journal and dreaming of renting an apartment in the Catalonian city, working in this very bar, but I was brought back to modernity by a return to the beating sun and the sound of an atmosphere shattering selfie being taken in the musty mirror.

Carrer Nou de la Rambla, the road on which London Bar was situated, turned out to be the quickest way between our hotel and Barcelona's famous street La Rambla. My literary excursion fitted perfectly into our experience of the city and required no major detour, and I dreamt of being added to London Bar's list of famous artistic patrons.