Ole? Ya. Right.

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The air felt different in Barcelona. Anyone who has traveled knows the sensation of stepping off the plane and onto the "bridge" and how you can smell and feel the difference in the air. The air felt heavier, and perhaps it was just my imagination, but even from the airport I felt like I could smell the salt in the air.

My flight landed about an hour before Amber's, so I sat and waited by the gate for her. It was fun listening to people speaking Catalan and Spanish - it sounded so easy and smooth, especially compared to the often fiery sounding German. People had colour on their skin... it already felt like a whole new world. As I waited I also took the time to grab the world's LARGEST tourist map. For some reason they thought it would really facilitate the lives of tourists to have a map that would double as a sleeping bag. Obviously, it was also a good idea to make it this large to help make tourists as visible as possible. Walking targets for fast talkers and pick pockets. With a few simple folds it could also be transformed into a canoe, for you and 9 of your friends.
In addition to orientating myself on the map, I finished reading a little bit about the city from an ap i downloaded to my phone from Lonely Planet. It was a bit troublesome to discover that Barcelona is the pick pocketing capital of the world. Every third sentence reminding travellers to watch their things - even a a message come on the airport's PA system to warn you of thieves. Needless to say they got my attention.

Finally, my beautiful wife and friend came out of the gate. Amber and I met at the U of A, and have done several shows together. In 2007 we married on Facebook and have been together ever since. So when we reunited, it was just like that scene from Love Actually where everyone meets at the airport. Tears, laughter and then she was hot so she took off her clothes while I shielded her and she changed into a dress. That was a deleted scene from the film. This was our very late honeymoon.

From there we were taking the train into the city, which would connect us to the metro and get us to the apartment I found on Airbnb. This is where we first learned that the signage in Barcelona isn't really what I would call.... Good. Later we would find ourselves trying to find something and would see a sign pointing in one direction, follow it, only to find another sign telling us to go the opposite way. This became standard - and it was always a gamble trying to decide which sign to believe... So eventually, after even just trying to find A sign we found our way to the train station. We bought tickets and started to walk through a rather long underground hall way.

As we were about to get on to an escalator a young 20 something both, well dressed and cute, stepped out in front of us and seemed to be trying to figure out if he should go right or left - each way leading to a train going in a different direction. After a moment he decided to ask us, two girls with giant packs strapped to their bags, speaking English, whether he was going in the right direction. And by ask us I mean ask Amber. And by doing so, stepped in front of me, separating us, and proceeded to go down the escalator with Amber as I followed about one stair behind. Immediately I was suspicious, especially because of the way he separated us, so I was watching him really carefully.

Then I seriously started getting goosebumps and a little voice, or I'll call it my guardian angel dallas gendall, told me to turn around - sure enough right when I did a ten year old boy had gotten his hand in my purse and was trying to hide my little passport carrier/wallet (there's no money in it) underneath his shirt. LIKE A NINJA (no really) I grabbed his shoulder, grabbed my carrier and screamed in his face in the tone of a woman death warrior sent from the bowels of hell to prevent thieves from messing with her shit. Pardon the language - but that's the official tag line.

Quickly I turned around to Amber to make sure she was alright and said, "That kid just tried to steal my passport." What I wanted to do after that was turn around, grab the adult and kick him in the man parts (16 years of soccer was going to pay off - i would have called this move the "canadian sterilization"). After he fell to the floor I would have sat on him, and then amber could have hit the emergency button. I would have also liked to have caught the kid but he was obviously working for the adult (although I'm sure they're both working for someone else).

But what actually happened was by the time I turned back around they had both disappeared. Actually. It's as though they beamed themselves back to thievery planet, so they could discuss where they're plans went wrong.

Needless to say after that I was a little on edge. I'm actually not sure how he got in my bag the way he did. It was zipped up in a pocket, inside my bag, that was also zipped up. I will always enjoy the fear he had in his eyes when I screamed my face off at him.

Eventually we got on the train, made our simple transfer - and emerged out on to the street for our first real look at Barcelona. But it was about 11pm at this point... so mostly we saw a few drunk people, and a lot of creepy guys just started and made rude noises. It didn't take us long to find our apartment but when we did... boy was it special.

When we got to the front door and were let it, we walked into a magical wonderland. A magical wonderland that smelled like about 23 out houses that have been sitting full in the sun for a week, and looked like something out of a horror movie. It was dirty, the stairs were rickety and uneven... and the smell. I wish there was a way for me to share that special gift from the gods with you. As we walked up the stairs of this smelly crack den, all I could think was that this would be one of those times where the lobby is terrible but the apartment itself is pretty nice. After all, I'd seen the pictures on Airbnb and it had a positive review - so how bad could it be? We walked up flight after flight after flight of stairs with our heavy packs on our backs. Both creeped out and mystified by these weird little windows that seemed to look out into the middle of the building.

We finally get to our apartment and knock at the door. We hear a female voice say "just a minute." So we wait. And wait. And as we wait we can hear a lot of shuffling and plastic bag moving inside. And we wait some more. At least five minutes must have gone by, and by this point I'm waiting for the old woman from the Goonies movies (Mama Fretelli) to open the door. But lucky for us it is a normal, cute, 20 something Spanish girl. She welcomes us and we chat for a while until she tells us that "your room is the one on the right." Our room, our room? But we rented the whole apartment. Turns out, her posting was inaccurate and that she has rented the other bedroom in the apartment to some friends. And there's no lock on the bedroom door, which virtually means we're sharing an apartment with strangers in a sketchy building. I've already just been pick pocketed... I'm sure you can imagine how I feel about that.

Next she tells us that she had cleaned out the apartment after the busy summer rental season, and so if we needed anything she would bring it tomorrow. So in the mean time we only had one sheet for the two of us, and no pillows. Great. When I asked about the wireless internet (which was also on the posting) she told me it was just one of those sticks - but I only had my iphone ... so that wouldn't work for me. So far, Barcelona wasn't doing a great job of winning me over. Ole? Ya. Right.

Then she gave us the tour. It was all pretty normal until it came to the toilet. To go to the toilet you had to basically walk out on to the balcony, and then there was a little toilet room outside. It was perfectly enclosed and private, but the toilet seemed like it hadn't been clean since the 70's. To make the image slighting clearer - imagine that the building was round, and like a donut had a whole cut out in middle of it. Everyone had balconies in the middle (where the donut whole is), so on those "balconies", everyone had little plastic roofs, and toilet rooms. It must have gotten very wet when it rained because when you stuck your head out to look, lots of people had laundry hanging out there. When I said we were walking up the stairs and sort of mystified by the windows - you could see out into the middle of the building from the stairwell, effectively watching people come in and out of their toilet rooms.

Realistically the apartment itself wasn't that bad. It was reasonably clean, it was big and the kitchen seem to be well equipped - but it wasn't at all what we thought we were paying for. Especially sharing with strangers, not knowing them, it was just like being in a hostel. Also I had asked for two beds (which she said was fine) but the second "bed" was this really gross couch. I slept on there with my travel sheet, and amber used the bed. But seeing as we had no pillows we each had to use a gross cushion from the bed/couch.

After the host left, Amber and I decided we needed to get some dinner, no matter what time it was - so we walked back to the main street. Eventually we came upon a restaurant, which didn't seem touristy at all. We each decided we would try paella. It was really delish, but neither of us paid attention to how much it was... so it was a bit of a shock to find out how much it was. To save my pride I won't tell you how much it was. But it rhymes with bwenty euros each. At least it was really good.

As we ate we decided we needed to get out of our terrible apartment. So I got on ye ol' iphone and flipped through airbnb. We found a different place that seemed great and was in our price range so I wrote to the guy. About ten minutes later, Enrique wrote me back and said the place was available and we could look at it. So we made arrangements to see it the next day. We liked him already.

The next day we accidentally woke up quite late. We packed up our stuff, and told our old host we would be leaving (we sort of lied but we just wanted to get out of there). Before hauling our bags to a new apartment, we decided we wanted to make sure it was okay. So we took the metro to where the airbnb said the new apartment was, grabbed some breakfast and ate it in a very cute square. Enrique had agreed to meet us at 2pm to show us his place. As it turns out the map on Airbnb was wrong... we were a good 20 minute walk away - so we reorientated ourselves... and EVENTUALLY found where we needed to be. The second we walked to the front door of Enrique's place, Amber and I knew we made the right decision.

Enrique was very cute, very sweet and hardly spoke English. We both swooned a little. When he really couldn't find a way to point or explain, he used google translate on his iphone. He took us up to the place and it was a very clean, very modern, very cool bachelor pad. He'd already stocked the Fridge with loads of water (you can't drink the water there), there were towels rolled on the bed and shampoo in the shower. There was even a washing machine. And most importantly, a Buddha statue/fountain making a calm splashing noise. Right there and then, I logged on to his wireless and through the site took the apartment. We felt soo much better. An hour later we had gone back to the crack den, collected our things, and made it back to Enrique's. Two happy Canadians in a bachelor pad with a giant mirror wall.

Don't worry, I made a video of the crack den's stair case. Once I edit it in imovie, you too can see it (but sadly won't be able to smell).

Finally, after almost wasting an entire day - we were able to start enjoying Barcelona.

Ole? Okay!

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Photos

the expensive paella
paella!