Spain - Barcelona 2-5 October 2009

My (Glen) mate Brendon came over for a holiday. While he was here travelling around with his mate Carl. I decided to join up with them at one of their locations while in Europe. The hard part was trying to find a location they were going to be at on a weekend and where I had not been

before. We have to make the most of every trip away and all our money. It was decided to do Barcelona which was at the very beginning of their tour. Brendon and Carl left the day before me and I had to make my own way their on a flight and a bus ride into town. There was no problem with that at all. The transport was easy, my English worked well as my Spanish was rubbish. Making sure I always do my homework and find out how to get to my night

accommodation I didn’t have any problem getting to the correct street. The problem was when I tried to find the door to the hostel at 11pm at night. There were no big signs or bright lights or anything you come to find most hostels have to show backpackers where they are. This one just had a front just like a business with a tiny plaque next to the front door showing the name. Lucky the buildings had number either side otherwise I might have never found it.

Meeting up with the boys and it being so late, I was knackered and wished not to go out as we needed to work out a plan of attack on the city and see what the boys had found out for us to do.

Side note: The hostel we stayed at was good. It was really friendly the ppl there were great and everyone got in on the games we were playing in the kitchen. We ended up just drinking in the hostel on our last night there with the whole hostel. I can recommend it.

Day 1

Armed with what we were going to do that day we headed out to get some breakfast then headed for the local sights we purchased a

Hop on Hop off bus tour pass for 2 days. We had a Friday and Saturday to kill by wandering around the town. It was a big city and the best way to see it was by bus. We saw the Sagrada Família by Gaudi

Finished off the night with a big old dinner. That night we had a few drinks at an Irish bar catching up on the past few months and shooting the sh!t

On our way back to the hostel we stopped for a kebab, and OMG it was the best kebab ever. Why was it so good, well they used tortilla instead of pita bread. That was all but for some reason it was amazingly good.

Day 2

Waking up not so early. Carl and I left Brendon to sleep as we walked down the road and ordered

ourselves 2 coffees and ham cheese croissants in the best Spanish we had. It worked, we even got the bill using our new skills. Returning back to the hostel and finding Brendon awake and looking for us for the last 2 mins. He was not best pleased with missing out on the good stuff. That’s what you get for sleeping though you miss out on the good stuff.

Stopping to get Brendon some food we made a plan to see the rest of the bus route as we had the 2 day pass and only covered 1 route. Hopping back on the bus like we were pros know exactly what we were doing. We sat on there until we got outside of the main part of town and went up to see the gondola, not sure of the point but we didn’t go on it, being too much money. We walked around the Olympic stadium and then back to the next bus stop. We then went up to have a look at a “Perfect” city which is a full size park (Park Güell) with houses inside. This was meant to be a test to see if it could work. I don’t think it did but it still brings in the tourists and money. Heading back into town on the bus and enjoying the lazy ride in.

We had not eaten much at all that day so we went and got dressed up for a night out on the town and went to have a failed attempt at getting a proper meal. We still ate and enough food. That night we tried to check out a few clubs, some pre club club. This was a place you go to get your drinks before you go onto the big clubs later at night. I am not sure if their advertising really worked. It was pretty much a dive inside and wasn’t pumping at all, in that respect I think it was a pre club club as no one was dancing. We moved onto a couple more but they just weren’t happening. So we ended up in a couple more pubs until it was closing time.

By that time we were drunk, I’m not going to say we were wasted but drunk enough to not exactly know which direction we were going. This is when a local took the opportunity had a muck around dance with Carl and took off with his wallet. We did not know that he had taken off with his wallet until later in the wee hours when Carl went to get something out of his wallet. We spent the rest of the night making phone calls back to Aus to cancel his 1 card that was in his wallet and working out how to get a replacement. The good news for Carl was he had limited what was in his wallet so he lost only 1 card. He had bought the last round of drinks so he had absolutely no cash in there at all. All the thief got was his wallet and a London oyster card. Thanks for wasting our time dickhead!

Day 3

With Carl cashless but having Brendon there to lend him until his card returned we started the day with us looking for a place to get a big greasy breakfast, which we found. I ended up with

every breakfast meat on a roll with egg and chips thrown in. It looks bad but tasted good. We walked our way down to the beach as they were having the world finals for the Redbull air race We found a spot on the sand along with the other 50 thousand or so people and watched the plans flying around. I was an amazing sight and totally recommend anyone who has a chance to go and watch one of these or any air show it was totally worth it. We even got to see a helicopter fly upside down, not a loop but actually fly upside down!

When it was all over everyone left the beach and we headed back to the hostel. Somehow we listened to Brendon when he wanted to go home a different way. We ended up walking for around 1.5 hrs before making it back to the hostel. Yes we did see the sights included the slums, the ghetto and then finally the posh areas and a lovely park.

As we had not had any tapas and we were in Spain we found this to be an issue for us. We had to

correct this. We found an outdoor restaurant and order some tapas. Not knowing how big or how many we should order we were a bit cautious and went for 3 dishes each. Turned out the waiter did not hear all the orders and we were left with only 6 dishes for three 6ft men. This was never going to be enough. We ordered another 2 after we had all our other food. Being out side on the pavement is a special thing in Europe and costs more to eat out there or by the window. When we arrived in our t-shirt and shorts we certainly were the riffraff.

We ended the night with drinking in the hostel and playing games and having a chat with everyone else in the hostel it was a really fun night.

Day 4

Today I leave to go back home while the boys continue their holiday for another 3 weeks. What a tour they were to have. We spent the last day walking around and generally doing nothing. It was a nice way to finish a holiday without a rush. We got some lunch and then it was time for me to go. It was a wonderful time in Barcelona with mates.