Barcelona

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We arrived in Barcelona after spending a relaxing 11 nights in Mallorca, a Spanish island. We were feeling good and ready to jump back into into spending stressful, short bursts of time in cities. Arriving late due to our plane being delayed, we headed towards the hostel slowly carrying our stuff with us. It was a longgggg walk and we were exhausted by the end of it. That night we didnt do much because of our late arrival, just cooked some dinner and went to sleep in our very noisy room shared with 8 other people.

Day 2 saw us hitting the streets to cram in as much action as we could as we only had two days to see the city. We headed to Parc Guell which is a famous park designed by Antonio Gaudi, a well respected and highly loved spanish designer who lived in the late 19th century and early 20th before tragically being run over by a tram in 1926. After this tragic death all trams were banned from Barcelona. The park is pretty special, not to mention huge. It has a crazy design and has massive areas full of coloums, others with sculptures and strange designs in the pathways and a massive cross at the top of one of the hills. From the park you can see most of barcelona spread out below. After strolling through the many pathways, seeing barcelona from a few different angles and reaching the top of the hill with the cross we decided to end our time in this pretty unique park due to it being about 31 degrees and we were dying of heat. We had expected to be there for longer so it gave us a few more hrs to experience something else of Barca. We decided to hit up the aquarium, its meant to be the biggest in europe and have an 80 metre walk through of their big tank filled with all types of fish and not to mention tiger sharks. The aquarium itself was pretty small and we dont really believe its claim to be the biggest but the walk though made it well worth it, we sat in the viewing area for about an hr watching the fish swim by, chatting and enjoying the air conditioning.

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Bee Dandy: Parc Guell is crazy. Definately not your average park. He uses a lot of coloured ceramic tiling on his designs at the park which make for a very interesting morning of exploring. I wanted to have a picnic but it's not your picnic kinda park so we just sat on the ground in the midst of all the people like the true backpackers we are 😊 The cross was my favourite thing at the park, you can see it standing proudly in the distance as you walk around. It is mounted on a hill of stone and it was scary standing on it with lots of other tourists...wondering if someone was going to accidently push me off. My skirt also blew up.

I saw my first ever moon fishies at the aquarium!

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So finished our time in the aquarium and we headed back to the hostel - all the while walking through the main streets checking out the markets and what was for sale. Funnily enough La Rambla (The main st in Barcelona) sells lots of pets including, birds, roosters, chickens, turtles, rabbits (Bee: VERY VERY CUTE LIL RABBITS <3), mice, squirrels (Well at least it looked like a squirrel), fish, guinea pigs and a few other small animals.

Back at the hostel we had a siesta for a few hours to prepare for the night ahead. We planned on getting some dinner and having some drinks out and about as we hadn't gone out for a while. For the first 45 mins we felt like things just werent going our way. We couldnt find the bar we wanted to go to, alot of the food places were expensive and we weren't sure if they were any good. Finally, we headed towards a backpackers bar called Travel Bar, simply because they do a walking tour and we went to get some more info and maybe have a drink. Once we got there though we were handed tokens for free shots and this is where the night suddenly went a different direction. What was planned to be a quiet night ended up with us jumping between 5 different pubs and 2 nightclubs. We hoped from one to the other always going where there was a happy hr and we could score some cheap drinks. Along the way we saw Manchester Bar which was the bar we were intending to go to at the start of the night but couldnt find. Making this find even better was the fact the bar tender forgot to charge me for my beer but just handed it over and spoke to the next customer. It was here where we meet Ki-Ki. A girl from Chille who was travelling Europe and staying with some family friends just outside of Barcelona. We teamed up and the night got crazy. We ended up walking back to our hostel and climbing into bed at 7am the next morning feeling pretty crap. Our last day of sightseeing was wasted on the fact I was too hung over to walk or eat. We spent the day sleeping and trying to recover. Bee was not as bad and convinced me we should at least go out and check out the food markets on La Rambla which hadnt been open the night before. After a slow walk of pain we reached the markets and had a look around. They were pretty kool and we got some really nice freshly squeezed juices to help with the hang over. We made the slow walk back to the hostel where Bee cooked up some bacon and we munched on that while we surfed the web and read the newspaper.

Bee Dandy: Smicy really doesn't seem to remember much of the night so I'll fill you in a little bit better.
Around 10:30pm:After Travel Bar we went to a cocktail bar down by the water serving 4 Euro cocktails and playing Michael Jackson...the girl working advised us where we should go next.
11pm:*Met Ki-Ki at Manchester Bar who joined our adventure to go to "La Macarena" night club where the bouncer told us it was WAY too early to go clubbing (It was about 12am now)...he told us to come back at 1:30am.
12:30am*Got more free drink vouchers, which led us to a bar I think was called "Tasty"?? The bartender let Smicy make my drink, he put like half a glass of grenadine in it erughhhh!!!!!
By the wayLosers all around Barcelona streets offer you pot (probably oregano they're selling), not safe to walk around by yourself!
1am:*The bar next door looked PACKED and there were guys playing bongo drums or some type of drum lol. Smic started talking to one of them, established his name was Tony, he was Canadian & they both loved tattoos.
1:30am:*Went back to La Macarena. It was tiny, playing weirdo music and still empty so we left in search of another club.
*Remembered another club I'd seen at advert for at the start of the night "Zen Club - Rock, techno & Sundays" and drunk me convinced drunk Smic & wasted Ki-Ki that we could FIND this mysterious Zen Club!
2am to 3am (I THINK): Walking along La Rambla on the way to Zen Club (we were finding little Zen Club cards everywhere so we figured we were going the right way), prostitutes kept coming up to Smicy...I guess Ki-Ki and me must've been invisible to them lol. Learnt that it's not a good idea to walk along La Rambla at night unless you want a hooker!
3am: Finally arrived at Zen, two levels...awesome club which I recommend to anyone wanting to party in Barcelona. Drinks were REALLY expensive though but it was so much fun. Turns out due to the techno they play in the main arena, it seems to be...not a gay club I don't think but someone where a lot of gay guys go lol. Smicy was super popular and they didn't want to believe he had a girlfriend hahahaha, poor thing.
5:15am:I remember the time exactly because I couldn't believe it was so early. We ended up sitting outside watching all the clubbers go home and telling all the people selling pastries and beer to go away.
Conclusion: This siesta business makes Spanish people party like CRAZY!


Day 3 saw us packing up our stuff and heading to the bus terminal for our hr long bus to the airport. All was going smoothly at this point, we were flying to Madrid where we had a 4 hr stop over and then onto Porto. Nothing could go wrong??? Well, it went very wrong. Right this second we are sitting in Barcelona Airport at 4pm when our flight was meant to leave at 3pm. Our flight has been delayed for 5 hrs for a reason that apparently they cant tell us. Also we just found out even though our connecting flight is with the same company they wont compensate us for missing our flight from Madrid to Porto because its not their responsibility apparently. They do not take responsibility for delays or cancellations at all. So we are not happy (Esp me!!!!) There is a flight straight to Porto at 7:05 but its going to be so expensive we arent sure if we can afford it. Our other option is spending the night at madrid airport till 5am when the next flight to porto leaves. The worst part of this story is we have a four star hotel booked in Porto. Our one splash out of luxuary after hostels for the whole trip. We got a really good deal and now we arent even spending tonight there.

I love barcelona but this has tainted a really good couple of days. Hopefully we can sort things out and get to Porto some how to enjoy the rest of our trip.

Bee Dandy: You know, after travelling for so long, things like delays don't really bother me anymore. I just try to accept them for what they are and try to calm down Smicy lol. La la la 😊

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