i ended up in Barcelona by way of a five-day rain forecast in London. Not kidding. My entire 10-day trip to London, England was going to be rained out. It’s London so the weather was to be expected – I did bring my rain boots.

However, after a few days, I needed some sunshine and badly. Here’s how it went down in Barcelona!

Rookie Mistakes

I don’t do a ton of travelling and as I said, I hadn’t expected to fly to Barcelona for a weekend getaway but I was excited. Barcelona was on a my list of places to visit. As a result of my being such a novice and in a strange land (I’m gonna blame it on that), I made a few rookie mistakes that I’m sharing in hopes you can learn from them. You’re welcome!

Mistake :1 I let my young cousin make travel arrangements and didn’t even bother to ask any questions or enquire about luggage requirements. The end result was that the airlines counted my knapsack as my carryon (my camera and laptop were in that bag) and then required me to check my actual carryon and pay the extra cost of that -both ways. I was not impressed.

Mistake 2: Then I forgot that I had my Body Shop Body Butter in my carryon and that was scanned and chucked in the garbage by customs as against their rules for liquids…. it was brand new and cost about $30. I nearly cried.

Mistake 3: Not checking out the hotel. I mentioned I left this up to my 20-something year old cousin, right? I ended up on Las Ramblas where all the partying takes place. It was not so great a hotel say with loud guests and at one point someone banging on a door in the middle of night – I think their roommate was a sound sleeper and they couldn’t get in. The hotel also didn’t have an iron (don’t get me started on that).

Let me back track a bit. I am the last passenger in the airport shuttle, the guy doesn’t speak English and my Spanish is not up to par but he pulls over on the main street, opens the van, and whips out his phone to show me where I need to walk. Turns out the street does not allow cars so I had to walk to my hotel from whereever he let me out.

This was only problematic when I was catching an early morning flight back to London and had to leave the hotel at 4:30 am to walk along a dark, half deserted street rolling my suitcase behind me, the wheels making that awful noise that wheels make. I was incredibly uncomfortable but there was a police station near by and the taxi was not that far of a walk. This will never happen again.

So many Things to See, So Little Time

Rookie mistakes aside, the weather was fantastic and my hop-on-hop off ticket was well worth it as it got me around the city in the two days to most of the attractions and I didn’t have to worry about navigating a subway system, taxis or even having an plan of action. I just got up, had breakfast, got on the bus and hopped off wherever looked interesting.

favourite thing: The architecture and just so many sites – i saw so much in a such a limited timeframe. The weather was also tie for first place!

notable: the women are super stylish

regrets: that i never continued with my spanish lesson.

me