sleep and lost lugggage), I am back home in Toronto, relaxing and trying to re-adjust myself to this time zone. Now that it's Sunday and I'm rested I thought I would take some time to share some of my many amazing experiences in an awesome city that I cannot wait to go back to. Barcelona Spain turned out to surprise me in so many ways. Although I had never been to Europe before this, I had some pre-conceived notions about the area based on tales from many friends who travel just as much as I do. In the end, all of them went down the shitter. Barcelona is an EXCELLENT city which I recommend to anyone who is looking for a nice place to travel to.To start, let me describe to you a bit about my itinerary and then I will get into the details of interesting findings while I was there:
I landed early on a Sunday morning (their time) and spent all day Sunday roaming around, doing the touristy thing and a whole lot of walking. The plan was to stay up the entire day as late as possible so that I could adjust to their time difference and not spend a week with jet-lag. Amazingly, the plan actually worked. That first day was a beautiful one weather-wise and I walked so much that my legs actually ached when I returned to the hotel that evening. The hotel was really nice with the exception of missing doors on the showers....which I thought was weird because I just couldn't figure out how to shower without making a huge mess with water everywhere. LOL Monday was much the same however we had more specific plans which included a visit to the Temple de
la Segrada Familia as well as a bus tour of the city. The difference is that as we began the bus tour and were taken to our first stop, the rain began to fall...and I mean POUR. It actually got to the point where I was so wet that I just started laughing. My tiny one-person umbrella amounted to a big fat nada. So we spent a WHOLE lot more time at the Temple de la Segrada Familia than we had planned (where I walked down the highest flight of tiny spiral stairs that I have ever seen in my life and quite literally almost shit my pants), threw away the rest of the bus tour (since it was an open top bus and it was just raining too damn hard LOL) and then took off in search of a restaurant to call it an early night so we could prepare for the start of work the next day. Yes, Tuesday - Thursday consisted of all day conferences (work-related) at the Convention center. Of course those days turned out to be the most beautiful of all when it came to weather and we were stuck indoors haha but so be it. The conference was a big hit in terms of meeting people and learning what all the current buzzwords in my industry are about these days. In the
evenings, we explored a lot of the city via the subway and transit system to find some really cool restaurants, malls, beaches and cool buildings. Somewhere in the mix of all that we also managed to fit in an evening at the Circus which was in town as well as a Football (Soccer) game - both amazing experiences for me. If any of you know anything about soccer, you know how big of a deal the Barcelona team is...and how fanatical the fans are.. hahahaSo as I mentioned in my last post, there were a few things that startled me upon my arrival, including the need for plug adapters, 4-digit pins for debit cards and that Sundays are pretty dead days overall. Here are a few more "observations" that I made throughout my week there (and please, if I am presumptuous or incorrect about anything, feel fee to chime in and correct me if you are more experienced than I - these are based on my personal experience over the course of a week only):
- Such Friendly people - As far as the locals were concerned, anyone I talked to or purchased from wanted to talk and talk and talk.... I felt like I was back on the east coast in Canada in terms of friendliness.
- Super Clean City - No litter, no bums, nothing indicating
poverty or dirt anywhere in fact. I heard that this was an effort made by the government to move the poverty outside of the main city and do a huge cleanup for the Olympic games which were there a few years back. Whatever they did, it worked. In fact, I saw signs in English on the beach like this one, about trash, indicating that it was the English speaking tourist who are the dirty ones. LOL On a side note, I got to see the Olympic stadium which was quite impressive.
- Super Early and Strong Drinkers - We were out and about at 9:30AM their time, on Sunday when we arrived, looking for a cafe to sit and have a coffee and kill some time before we could check into the hotel. As I ordered and chatted with the waiter, I looked over and saw the table next to us with an open bottle of red wine, drinking and chatting with their morning papers. I looked to other tables, and if there wasn't wine or beer out on their tables, there was brandy that they were pouring into their coffees! The coffee consumption and times of consumption that I observed was also interesting. They drink small tiny cups of super strong coffee and set times throughout the day (I'm guessing as a snack to hold them over till their late meals). Then later that evening, we decided to order a drink with our dinner...Margarita... straight up Tequila on the rocks! When I made a joke with the waitress about how strong it was, she didn't even blink.... which lead me to believe that to her, that was nothing. LOL
- Super Late Suppers - As we were looking to eat around 7 or 8pm, I was quite shocked to find that places were empty. When I inquired about it, the response was that it was too early. In fact, most families eat their supper meals around 10-midnight! Yikes!
- Everyone Smokes - This was the only downfall for me cause anyone who knows me knows just how much I dislike cigarette smoke. Well in Barcelona, everyone smokes and they smoke EVERYWHERE. Inside restaurants, bars, malls, soccer stadiums, you name it...hell, I saw a big greyhound type bus pulled over with the driver sitting in the driver seat, reading a paper and smoking a cigarette right there. Amazing.
- AWESOME BATHROOMS! - Yes, it has to be said. The designs of bathroom toilets, sinks and just overall decor that I saw while I was in Barcelona in the most random places just shocked me over and over... I'd never seen anything so cool! hahaha
- Public Transit and Infrastructure - This deserves a HUGE pat on the back to the Spanish government because until this trip, I thought Toronto had their stuff figured out.
Wow was I wrong. Where to start, ok well the first thing I noticed while walking around that first day is The Power of the Pedestrians. For example, the main street that my hotel was on (as well as many other streets I later observed) had two tiny lanes for cars and motorcycles to drive on, separated by a HUGE lane in the center (at least twice the size of the streets) for pedestrians and bicycles only, and of course the street car trails. As far as infrastructure was concerned, I thought that was GENIUS. In fact, what this did was promote people to use alternate methods of travel besides cars (since the streets for cars were so wimpy) and from what I could see it worked! The number of cars on the road there compared to bicycles, scooters, motorcycles and pedestrians was incredible. There was never a time where I could recall seeing heavy traffic. Sticking to the theme of bicycles
for a moment, Barcelona managed to find a way to incorporate them with the transit system. Every few blocks you could find giant racks of similar looking bicycles, locked securely, releasable only by the swipe of a transit card. That's right folks, you could purchase a pass to swipe and release one of these bicycles for you to ride all over town and drop off wherever you need to as long as there was room at one of these racks. Theft and damage to the bicycles was minimal simply because these passes that are swiped have some way to identify who you are and what bike you get. :) Are you impressed yet? Lastly, I wanted to make a note of the streetcars and subways. Not only were these the cleanest,
newest and most high-tech forms of public transit that I had ever experienced, but they were also the most trusting. In Toronto, to get on a streetcar, you have to get on in the front doors and off using the back doors. The purpose of this is to ensure that nobody gets past the driver without paying to g
et on. In Barcelona, you can get on or off using any door you want and only have to swipe your transit card though a machine that will punch in the back how many rides you have left on it and what time you swiped. Machines are used to trust that everyone will swipe their cards! Only once did I see a police officer at a stop doing a spot check. Otherwise, its all the trust factor.
- Cell Phones - I just wanted to point out that I still don't know how this is possible, but in Barcelona, no matter how underground you were (i.e. in the subway!) you got cellphone reception...crystal clear cellphone reception. I'm still scratching my head at that one. Everyone was on their phones chatting away while in the deep tunnels of the subways. Weird.
- Ambulances and Emergency Vehicles - The noise was quite different from most ambulances I've heard in most countries in the western hemisphere. I'm not sure if this was a good thing though as I found that the nose emitted from these was anything but urgent sounding... I thought that was interesting.
- Bull Fights - No, I did not go and attend a bullfight in person while I was there (although I believe I could have easily done so if I really wanted to). I did however spend a few minutes watching a recap of one on the news in my hotel room one evening. I have to say, it was really interesting to see what all the hype was about. Will I try to attend one in my future? Probably not... but none the less, my interested was peaked.
So in conclusion, did I have a blast? YES. Did I take advantage of all that I could in the short period of time I had to do so? YES. Would I go back? ALREADY PLANNING TO, in addition with many other Eurpoean countries. :)
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