This trip was marking the end of a wonderful year living and working in the UK. Even though the first 36h where not sunshine and rainbows. Let’s start with the morning of departure in England. I overslept and woke up like 20min before my flight departure. The lovely housekeeper at the hotel drove me to the airport but I was too late. So, I had to pay for a new flight to Barcelona, and it was also much later in the day, keep in mind my original flight was at 8:50am and my new flight was not until 3pm and also arriving at another airport in Barcelona which is much farther away. I also had two friends who where meeting me there and our flight were arriving within one hour of each other but that was not happening. I was also the only one that had contact with our Airbnb host, so I was the middleman between them and him.
So, fast-forward a few hours and I get on a plane to Barcelona, Spain where I had to pay 200 euros for a taxi to get to my Airbnb. By this point its like 10:30pm and I’m exhausted since I’ve been in the airport for like 8h.
Next day everything was good we got up and went out for breakfast in the nearby bakery. After we bought five-day metro and other public transportation pass for only 35 euros which saved us so much money instead of paying an arm and a leg for cab fares. Everything seemed nice until we got back to the apartment after a day of being a tourist. Where my bed was completely gone and my things were moved and then I get a call from Airbnb telling me that this host is illegally renting out this apartment and the police were on thir way to arrest this man and lock us out so we grabbed all our things and got out of there as fast as we could.
Our next step was to find a new place to stay with no time to spare it’s like 5:30pm at this point. Find a café with Wi-Fi and look online for a hotel at a good price that have availability that night. Finally find one only few rooms left book it on booking.com to secure a spot but one big problem its 30min away walking, I was also moving back to Canada, so I had 2 suitcases and a carryon plus my friends had their suitcases total 5. That meant no cab just because it would have cost us lots of money so off we went. Finally get there they check us in, we go up to our room and there is already another guest in there so we go back to the front desk and it was their fault so they gave us a free upgrade to one of there suites that had a private entrance.
. Okay enough of the bad news and onto the adventure of Barcelona. The rest of our days in Barcelona was wonderful. We visited sagrada de Familia and the Mercado de la Boquera. We also spent a day at the beach where I had a wonderful lunch right on the sand. It was lovely and it was a little bit expensive, but it was worth it. We also visited a museum and local art gallery and artisan shops. I also couldn’t resist the delicious rich melted dark chocolate and freshly made churros.
The one good thing that we did was we bought metro pass for five days for only 35€. This pass was also good for buses and trains. This saved us loads of money on transportation except for the very expensive cab ride on the first night. Apart from using the metro we did a lot of walking.
The weather was beautiful, sunny and hot. Apart for one night where there was a big rainstorm completed with thunder and lighting. A few weeks ago I was down at my grandparents and was visiting some of my mother’s friend and we found out that she was also in Barcelona at the same time as I was.
Chef in Travel 