When writing about Barcelona, a famous comment comes to mind ¨Hold onto your purses ladies, hold onto your wallets fellas!¨. That famous person was none other than myself! This is only a personal opinion but Barcelon was pretty darn tootin dodgy!
In the first hour of checking into our hostel, a couple who were using their laptop put it down and within a few minutes-a pick pocket team of a man and a woman strategically positioned themselves around the couple and litterally picked up the lap-top bag containing their passports, computer and cameras and walked out of the hostel lobby with no one even noticing! They were only able to piece together what had happened after watching the security footage!
The very next morning a girl went outside of the hostel for a smoke. A Spanish man approached her asking her if she spoke English and started babbling onto her about something. Thinking she was in trouble she tried to converse with the gentleman. All the time this was happening, another man came up behind her, grabbed her bag on her shoulder (containing her and her friends passports and cameras and ran off).
Now obviously these things have influenced my opinion about Barcelona but the fact is they were not icolated incidents! We saw the aftermarths of muggings all through out town the 5 days we were in Barcelona.
Other than the dodgy-ness of the place, Bartcelona was pretty cool! The streets were lined with buskers of all walks of life and shops where you could buy any type of creature from a turtle to a ferret! There was a pretty good vibe about the streets but you never got that ´safe´feeling.
The beaches were pretty alright (and by pretty alright I mean I have never seen as many boobs in one place everywhere I looked). There were guys walking up and down the beach offering drinks, hot food and even a guy who carried a huge tray of fresh donuts on his head and he would dance to anyone who wanted one-a show within itself!
We did a cooking class (which was more like a cooking observation). We learnt how to make our own tapas, traditional Sangrea and cook enough Paola to feed a family! It was a great night, we weer able to make as much Sangrea as we liked (and fair to say that some people went over board …. mainly me). This began our love for Paola-a traditional Spanish meal which when translated means ´for her´. It´s a great love storey which I´m sure if I´m or drunk one day I will tell you all about it!
We made our way up to the 1992 Olympic arena. It was pretty spectacular! Not really doing much now-it is really just an empty tourist attraction (I´m sure they do use but I have no idea when and why). We spent the afternoon at one of the olympic pools – I was trying to break my PB in struggling to swim … I think I did it!
We did a ´Fat Tire Bike Tour´of Barcelona. It was ok (not as good as the Paris one). The history was medioka interesting – a lot of inbreeding but if I recall correctly that was more when the Austrians were in control (the whole thing of being ´pure blood´didn´t quite work out as they had hoped!). We were able to see one of the famous Spanish architech´s buildijng (I forget his name!). He ended up dying in the street after being hit by a tram and because he harly ever showered or shaved and dressign like a hobo, walkers by passed him up as a homless person and basically moved him to the curb. He was eventually recognised at a crappy hospital but died shortly after. Good old caring Spanish people ´kick em to the curb!´. It was a good way of seeing Barcelona.
Other than that, we spent most of our time at the beach! Trying to relax while still maintaining a watchful eye on our belongings… pretty hard to do. An experience none the less.
