Leaving Lisbon and our hostel was probably one of the saddest parts of our trip, we loved it there! But I was excited to get to Barcelona, I didn't get to explore it as much as I wanted 3 years ago. The flight with TAP Portugal was pretty good, we even got free sandwiches and drinks, which surprised us because exactly zero flights we have taken (including the ones from Canada) gave us anything. I'm thinking it's because TAP is Portugal's national airline...the flight was only $163 CAD for the both of us, sweet!
Barcelona was like Rome - very hot and humid. Boo. But I don't think it was as bad as Rome, though it was getting there. At least there were beaches! Our friend Alex, whom we met up with in Rome (sorry for not mentioning you in that post!), met up with us 2 days after we arrived for some new adventures!
Hostel 1: Gracia City Hostel
Originally, we wanted to use AirBnB in Barcelona, but it ended up being expensive and no one was taking reservations as early as we were booking. So to compromise, we booked a private room in Gracia City Hostel, which looked pretty nice and had excellent reviews online. However, you shouldn't always trust the internet. It was VERY expensive for what we were getting, which was essentially a small room with a wardrobe, a double bed, and a door that only locked if you tugged hard on the door. Otherwise, you can just push the door open, awesome. On top of that, there was a 5% charge for paying with a card. There were shared bathrooms, but no big deal, I've lived in uni rez and am used to shared bathrooms. Except these bathrooms were severely inadequate. The toilets were more or less clean, but there were 2 stalls for women and 1 for men, for the entire floor. As far as I knew, we were the only private room and the rest were dorms, so that's a lot of people for 3 stalls. The showers were dingy and disgusting; only one stall locked out of four on the floor and the floors were gross. I accidentally dropped my towel while trying to hang all my stuff up, which usually isn't a big deal other than some water, but when I picked it up it had brown muck on it. Super gross. The kitchen was alright at first glance, but there were loads of flies around the sink, so that cut short any plans to cook for ourselves! They wanted €10 to do our laundry and we read that there's a chance they won't even do it on time. Overall, a very bad experience and we were rather unimpressed with the staff, although the girl who checked us in was pretty agreeable.
So that's our first hostel nightmare out of 7 weeks, which is pretty good I think. But we acted fast. After two nights, we decided we didn't want to suffer through the next four and went to get the remainder of our money back. It went off without a hitch and we immediately sat down to book another hostel close by, Generator Barcelona, which we had heard of before. We had walked by it earlier that night and decided that it looked amazing and, even though we wouldn't have a private room, it would be so much better. I'm quite proud of how we dealt with the issue , actually. Adulthood!
No pictures because I just wanted to get out of there!
Hostel 2: Generator Hostel Barcelona
About 400m away from the first hostel, it is LEAGUES ahead of it in terms of everything. We first had a 6-bed dorm with a private toilet and shower for 2 nights, then the same the next 2 nights but with 8 beds. There was AC, hallelujah, and we could do our own laundry for €3 for a wash and dry each. The lounge/hangout areas were amazing (stocked with couches, chairs, SWINGING chairs, and beanbags) and the staff were so friendly. We had arrived at 11am but check-in was at 2pm, but they kept our bags and let us hang out (and even let Meg shower) while we waited to check in. The bar/restaurant had great food as well, so if we were too lazy to go anywhere, we'd just eat there. The only negative would be the slow lifts and the fact that they were quite small, but I was happy to deal with that haha. The second room we stayed in was mostly boys, which wouldn't normally be bad, except every time we walked into the room it was probably 90% fart (Pitch Perfect 2 reference, woooooo). Not even room spray could save us. There was also a nightmare roommate who would NOT respect that others were sleeping at 3am and blundered around the room rudely, and then snored loud af and denied the rest of us sleep. Rude. Very glad to be out of there, but obviously not the hostel's fault!
Park Guell: disappointing
Park Guell was one of my favourite places in Barcelona 3 years ago, but not so much anymore. It's a beautiful park with great views of the city and some very eccentric planning by Gaudi, the famed Catalan architect with an affinity towards colourful mosaics and weird shapes. All of the park was free 3 years ago and for the previous century, but it's now charging 8 euro to even get in to see Gaudi's work. The rest of the park is still free, though. I read later that apparently tourism is the only industry working for Spain, so they have to capitalize on that. Which, okay, I get it, but still. I feel like works of art that were intended to be free (such as a PARK) should remain so. It was a bummer, I really wanted to show Meg where Gaudi intended a marketplace to be and the mosaic iguana, but not for €8 :(
Sagrada Familia: yas
Barcelona may be one of those places where I'll actually admit to liking its typical tourist sites. So, yes, La Sagrada Familia is one of my favourite places, at least in Barcelona, to visit. There's just something about seeing a building that's been in the making for over 130 years, I guess. It was more expensive this time round (re: capitalizing on tourism), but this time I got an audio guide, which I think was worth it. But going at 7:15 was not worth it because the basilica closes at 8-8:30, so we had to rush a little. I don't really want to write everything I learned about the basilica because it would take up so much space, so instead I'll just say that regardless of your religious beliefs, you should definitely visit this basilica to just marvel at its unique architecture and design. It is certainly a work of the generations, as each new generation has and will have the chance to contribute to its construction, whether that be from visitors or from the new workers toiling hard to interpret Gaudi's instructions or guidelines in their own way to complete the massive structure according to his vision.
Barceloneta Beach: yas
3 years ago, I spent most of my time at Platja de la Marbella, which is east of the city centre and much less busy since I believe that's sort of the "new" area of town. I did get to see a little of Barceloneta, the main beach, but never went because I heard it was always too busy. So, wanting to check it out, one of our beach days was spent here! When we got there, it wasn't too busy, so we scoped out a good place to lay our blankets down, applied some sunscreen (sun protection ain't no joke, kids), and headed straight for the water. My first time in the Mediterrannean! It was lovely, and a lot warmer than the Atlantic water in Lisbon. The sun was hot, hot, hot. I got a good tan. Alex burned. I'm not sure about Megan, I think she got a tan too. The beach was definitely a lot fuller when we left, so we struggled to not kick sand in anyone's face as we made our way back to the street.
Old Town: Wandering El Born
I also didn't get to see a lot of the old town last time, so this was awesome! We were mostly in the El Born region, though we wandered a bit into the Gothic Quarter and El Raval later on. I just love the narrow roads, the shops lining them, and looking up to see apartments with clothes hanging to dry. It's something you never see at home or maybe in most of North America. Perhaps it feels like a simpler place?
3 years ago, I was on a really cool motorbike tour that dropped Tiff and I off in El Born in front of an archeological site, which was all covered up. It didn't even cross my mind until we were walking along and I saw this very giant, very clean and pristine looking building that was the El Born Cultural Centre. Inside the building, which has a highly vaulted ceiling and lots of glass and metal in its structure, are the ruins of 17th century El Born. There are foundations of buildings and one big house that was occupied by a fairly noble family. The building is built on top of the ruins, which are sunken down, allowing the building's floor to be built around them to act as balconies from which you can peer down. There are also panels where you can read about the ruins as well as the 1714 succession of Spain over Barcelona and Catalonia, which I had no clue about beforehand. Best of all, all of this was free! And I like free. I feel like it's important to mention that Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, which is an autonomous region and they don't really like Spain. So much so that they speak Catalan normally, not Spanish, though Spanish is still understood and spoken.
We went back to The Old Town later that day for dinner and split a veggie paella between the three of us and had some tapas at Tapatxi, in the Gothic Quarter. It looks pretty similar to Venice's cicchetti, but I think the latter is much better.
Metro
I liked Barcelona's metro much more than Rome's (the last place we used public transport) because it doesn't stop running at 9:30 (what the heck, Rome?!) and you can buy a multi-person 10 trip card for €10, which means both Meg and I could use the same card for €1/trip instead of €2,15 for a single ticket or €32 for a 5 day ticket. Overall, the metro was really good: the trains were reliable and fast and it was easy to navigate. But there are always some snags.
Most of the metro stations have more than one entrance. Enter the wrong one? Walk 300000 miles and 80 staircases to get to the right line. Have a 10 euro note to buy a €9,95 10 trip pass? Hopefully you get a machine that takes notes! It is TOTALLY random, I guess they don't keep the machines of the most used mode of transport stocked with change. That makes too much sense. If there aren't any machines that take notes, better hope another entrance has one! I feel like there's also the perpetual smell of B.O. on the trains. It could be because it's hot and sticky outside, or that there's zero ventilation in the tunnels so you sweat while you wait for a train despite being so far underground that your ears pop, but either nobody wears deodorant or deodorant is useless in the Barcelona heat.
Paella
Hands down my favourite part of Spanish cuisine. Paella is a rice dish, made with meat or veggies, and is totally delicious. We had paella a grand total of 3 times, seafood twice and a veggie one once. Seafood paellas usually consist of clams, mussels, prawns, and squid. So delicious. They tend to be on the pricey side (though we didn't really go to any local places, just the ones catering to tourists), about €15 per person or per dish.
Our last paella was on our last night in Barcelona near Barceloneta beach at Hispano Restaurant. We were super hungry after walking from Platja Nova Icaria (about 2 or 3 beaches over). They had a deal, which was a house salad, paella, and 1/2L sangria for €16,50. Alex and I ordered the seafood paella while Meg got the veggie, but when our food came out, both seafood paellas were made in the same pan while Meg's was by itself in a smaller pan. Not really a big deal, but Meg's single veggie paella was visibly larger than the two portions that Alex and I got out of our pan. You'd think that the dishes would be the same size, but apparently not? We complained but I don't think they got it. Not that we weren't full afterwards, but it's the principle! This will henceforth be known as "The Paella Incident".
Tourist shops: DON'T
I don't usually go into tourist shops precisely because their stuff is marked up so highly, but on this trip we've kind of had to because we've needed to buy postcards, patches for our bags, and whatnot. We had a really bad experience on our last night so I'll just recount that here.
After the Paella Incident, we needed to hit up a tourist shop for patches and a sweatshirt for Alex. We went into the one we wandered into the day we went to Barceloneta beach because it was our last chance!
In short, the men working there are awful. So pushy, annoying, rude, ignorant, and would not leave you alone to browse. The other day we were in there, I saw a shirt I kind of liked, and the guy said it was €5. Not bad. But I wanted to check out some other shops before buying that one. When we came back, suddenly it was €12. For a tank top. A rather thin tank top, while the hoodie Alex was buying was also €12. Yes. That makes sense. I told the man (a different one from last time) no, that it was too expensive, and of course he then offered €9,90. I then told him that the other day, the other man (who was badgering Alex and Megan) told me they were €5. He stared at me, as if waiting for me to change my mind (no chance, dude), and when I didn't, he said "maybe you are a bit..." and gestured with his hands, implying that I was stupid, crazy, or very unreasonable at best. And you know how I LOVE sketchy guys who work in tourist shops judging my level of intelligence. I'm surprised I didn't explode on him, actually. I continued to say no and went to stand by Alex and Meg, who were trying to decide what hoodie to buy, but the guy followed me, had the shirt crunched up in his hand, shoved it into mine, came super close to me, and creepily whispered that I could have it for €8. I literally said, "Nah, man, it's too much, I don't want it." He got visibly angry and threw the crumpled shirt back onto the shelf. As Meg and I stormed out, the same guy who offered me €5 the first day called out that, "okay, you can have it for 5." Of course. So we go back in just to buy the stupid shirt when this guy starts whispering to come back tomorrow because their boss was there and they couldn't sell it for €5 right then. Super sketchy. And not worth even half the trouble they caused us. So we left again, very annoyed and very rattled. It PAINS me that we gave them any sort of business by buying the patches, but it was our last chance. Sigh.
I'm ready to come home, I think. Hopefully Paris will be more enjoyable and relaxing.
Another thing I wanted to mention but have little to write about are Gaudi's other creations in Barcelona, Casa Milà and Casa Battlò, two apartment buildings on Passeig de Gracia that are as beautiful as they are strange. I hoped to go into one (both house museums in addition to actual apartments) but it didn't end up happening. Maybe next time?
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