These holidays form some of my favourite childhood memories, I loved my childhood holidaying in England, and I'm happy to keep it that way :). I'm such a home bird and I love being close to my family. and after all if it's not broke, why fix it?
Shane on the other hand, most of his childhood holidays were abroad, and from that, he caught the travel bug! He was really hoping we could go abroad last year. I thought if I controlled the situation and did all the research and booked the trip myself it would be fine, I looked at a few places, mostly Portugal but I could never quite bring myself to press the "book" button. I was too scared off all the many but unlikely outcomes of the trip! So eventually Shane spent half an hour on google and booked us a long weekend trip to Barcelona.
The trip was amazing, and everything went really well. We flew from Birmingham airport and it was really easy to navigate around, we had booked private transfers also from the airport to the hotel to try and minimise any waiting around and reason for me to worry. Which I am so glad we did, I get a little travel sick too, well a lot travel sick so I use travel bands and travel tablets, but still needed to get to the hotel to lie my head down and keep it still for half an hour! The hotel had a queen sized bed which made that post travel nap so comfy!
Once my head was re balanced on the ground and the nausea had gone we took our first little adventure into Barcelona. We were staying on Rambla del Raval at the Barcelo Raval hotel. A modern cosmopolitan hotel, which is in the heart of the Gothic quarters old working district. We decided to head to La Rambla the main strip within Barcelona. We started from Columbus column and up towards the Hard Rock Cafe where we had our evening meal and a few cocktails. The food was yummy but I was really excited for our first Spanish meal!
Through out our trip we tried a few different restaurants but I think my favouite meal was on our second from last day when we took a wonder round one of the markers where we found a sandwich stall, selling freshly made baguettes with Spanish meats and cheeses. We decided to walk down to Port Vell with them and ate them over looking the port. It was relaxed and just us, which made it so perfect. Well the two of us and a few Seagulls waiting for us to drop some food. I think this is my favourite memory of the trip :). We did lots of other exciting things too, too many to mention so I shall include the pictures below.
Fancy a trip to Barcelona yourself? Here are a few things I learnt from my adventures that may help;
- Language While people in the city do speak Spanish, the city is bilingual and they also speak Catalan. However you will find a lot of the residents also speak English. We learnt a few words in Spanish as its only polite. These were Hello = Hola. Thank you = gracias. Two = dos. Please = Por favour. Water = agua.
- Drinking Water Although it's fine to drink the tap water the hotels and restaurants do not offer it and the bottled water is quite expensive. For day trips we kept filling spare water bottles from the tap in our bathroom.
- Alcohol A lot of the bars and restaurants we ordered cocktails at they did not measure the alcohol, one of my gin and tonics for example was 3 parts gin 1 part tonic. I definitely got my monies worth but also a little tipsy!
- Currency The Euro is used throughout Spain, but they also except Travel cards, MasterCard and Visa's at most retailers and they have plenty of ATM's and money exchange shops. We took 700 euro's for 5 days which included spending at duty free. We booked a couple of tourist attractions online before we went also to save on taking cash just for attractions and helped us jump queues which was a bonus and we added drinks at the hotel bar to our room, so although we had paid for the hotel upfront we paid for a few things at the end on our visa card. Having previously let the bank know we were traveling.
- Weather The Mediterranean climate mean that Barcelona is mild even in winter, while the majority of visitors enjoy the temperatures in between May and October. We went in May and it was cloudy and the temperature in the Celsius was in the early 20's which for us was perfect, but despite the cloud we still needed sun cream and came away with a nice colour.
- Pick pockets As with any major cities Barcelona is notorious for many things, culture, architecture, beaches, But one other thing which you find everywhere is pick pockets. We did not encounter any but I still suggest, as with any city that you are vigilant of your belongings.
- Getting around For the first couple of days we walked everywhere, about 5 miles a day! We walked until we couldn't walk anymore! We saw so much of the city this way, got lost a couple of times but always headed back the the tall Columbus Column or the Port, two big land marks which are well signed posted and easy to spot. Having these "points of interest" so to speak gave us the opportunity to get lost but always get back to where we needed.
- Metro After we couldn't walk anymore we started using the Metro, it was supper easy to use and the ticket machines have an English option, we brought the ten trip ticket as it works out cheaper than individual tickets. The Metro was super easy to use, just as easy as the airport and it aloud us to go further and farther around the city, the furthest we went was to Camp Nou.
Our hotel had a 360 view of the city so at the end of the day it was quite inspiring to see how far we'd gone and planning where to go next!
One thing I would defiantly recommend doing, if you want to help others, is to head down the Port Vell at sun set. Here you will find hundreds! of migrants trying to make an honest living and better their lives. They are very happy with their new life in Spain and will be the first people to help you if you need it. They have clearly come from tougher lives and are extremely grateful for the opportunities they now have. They sell good quality souvenirs, and little over priced but you're not just paying for the product, but also for them to create a new safe lives for themselves. During the day you'll find them across the city and if you ever find yourselves lost, they will help you. They treat those as they would like to be treated themselves. Also if you're looking for a particular souvenir they will point you in the right direction to one of their pals apposed to forcing a sale on their products.
These are genuine honest people and I wish them all the luck in the world.
♥
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