Last week Courtney and I traveled to Barcelona! We left from Stansted, as per usual on Friday
morning. We landed in Barcelona around
lunchtime and immediately took the bus from the airport towards the center of
the city to find our hostel. We first
went to McDonalds for lunch.
Shocker. Then, we found our
hostel.
St. Christopher’s Inn was the nicest hostel we stayed in and
it was in the best location. The beds
had curtains so I didn’t feel creeped out when I slept and even better, there
were lockers for our bags under our beds!
It was great. It was right off
the famous shopping street in Barcelona, La Rambla, as well!
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| A great hostel! |
The first day, didn’t amount to very much, once we were at
the hostel we decided on a 20 minute rest.
That turned into 2.5 hours.
Whoops! Well I did feel better
rested at least! In the later afternoon
we decided to do our usual first day shopping!
We bought a few things and then headed across town on the metro to The
Magic Fountain at MontjuÏc. The Magic
Fountain is really just a fountain set in time to music that lights up, but I
loved it. It reminded me of Disney World
except for the fact that it felt like it was 40 below. Overall, it was a success! That night we had a late dinner at the Hard
Rock. A staple on each of our trips!
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| The Magic Fountain! |
The next day we had so much to do with the lost day on
Friday! We began the morning off pretty
early and headed to Camp Nou. Camp Nou
is where FC Barcelona plays and Courtney and I were determined to do a tour of
the stadium. We couldn’t figure out
where to buy tickets, so we went shopping!
The FC Botiga was amazing. It was
an FCB explosion! We limited ourselves
to a few small things and then finally found the ticket counters. While we were standing in line, we discovered
that there weren’t any stadium tours that day.
But it was because THERE WAS A GAME!
How lucky! The tickets were
pretty affordable, so we decided to skip the museum and just go to the game
instead! We were beyond excited. We knew we had to be back at the stadium by
7:30, so we needed to get everything touristy done in 6 hours. Next on the list, the Sagrada Familia.
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| Camp Nou! |
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| FC Botiga! |
The Sagrada Familia was designed by Barcelona’s most famous
architect Gaudi. It has been under
construction for 130 years and still isn’t completely finished! The line to get inside was really long, so
that wasn’t happening. We instead walked
through a Christmas Market and then headed to Barceloneta Beach!
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| The Sagrada Familia! Under construction! |
Yeah, that’s right.
The beach in December. It was
like 40 degrees. It was so weird seeing
everyone on a beach in winter coats, but it was still nice to be in a coastal
environment. We took lots of pictures as
per usual! Dinner was outdoors. Ellie no gusta.
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| Pretty palms! |
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| Let's go to the beach, beach! |
We quickly stopped by the hostel to drop off our stuff
before heading to the game! FC Barcelona
was playing some random team that I had never heard of, but they weren’t that
great, so we got to see lots of goals scored by the home team! They won 5-1.
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| Barça! Barça! |
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| GOALLLL! |
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| only a little chilly! |
Sunday, we headed to the airport around 8. Normally, this would be where I start and
quickly finish a breezy paragraph about how we flew home with no problems and
were back in London in no time! Not from
Barcelona. Let’s just say the experience
was very dramatic...
Problem #1: Courtney
lost the tickets on the way to the airport.
Problem #2: We had to
get them reprinted because there were no public computers in the airport.
Problem #3: The
airport workers are sooooooooooooooo inefficient. We waited forever just to be told to switch
lines.
Problem #4: We had to
switch lines like 4 times.
Problem #5: Courtney
had to pay A LOT of money to replace the tickets. She was not a happy camper and I felt so bad
for her.
This is where the problems temporarily come to an end. We quickly went through security, got
something to eat, and walked the 15 minutes to our gate.
Success #1: The gate
was reported right as we were walking up, so we were nearly first in line.
Problem #6: As we were getting our passports checked, the
workers began to look at us strangely. I
knew, in that moment we weren’t going to get on this plane.
Problem # 7: It tuned
out that we needed our boarding passes checked and stamped. At the desk 1231943 miles away and where we
started.
The problems from here on out are infinite, so let me just
quickly say them. We had to go back
through the passport checks and get our stamps voided. I was now the unhappy camper and was in
devastation mode. It wasn’t a pretty
sight. Courtney told me to get it
together and ended up inadvertently slapping me across the face. Not a good choice. I freaked out and basically karate chopped
her in the arm. We will just move on
from that. Then we ran 1932934 miles
back through the airport to security.
There they were all confused and it took 5 men to finally let us out of
security. As we were heading though the
doors we asked if we would have to go back through security and the guy said no,
just come back to the doors and they would let us through. That was promising! Then we made it down stairs, went to the
wrong desk again, finally got our boarding passes stamped and ran back up the
escalator to security. We jumped the
line and ran towards the doors we had passed through less than 3 minutes
before. Our guy was nowhere in
sight. Of course. A lady motioned that we had to go through
security again. We huffed and puffed,
but agreed it was best to just do it. I
went through and I had a bottle of water in my backpack from lunch. I was not in a good mood and I did not want
to be messed with, so when the lady was told me I couldn’t have it, I pretty
much had a listen here moment. I raised
hell and after she looked at me like I was crazy for caring about a bottle of
water, I yelled “fine, keep it” and threw the bottle down on the table. I was a crazy person, but that was a $5
bottle of water and I thought I deserved to keep it. I ran away and waited around the corner for
Courtney. Once she made it there, we ran
the 5749 miles back to border control, got our passports stamped again and then
ran to the gate.
We made it there with minutes to spare. Then, the worker had the audacity to lecture
us about always needing to have our boarding passes stamped when flying Ryanair. As if it were our fault and not the 17 people
that had checked them before we got to the gate. And as if we will ever be flying their
airline again. No thank you. We then boarded a plane with no empty seats
sans the reserved ones. Not actually
reserved. They picked up the signs and
we took the aisle with the huge ass amount of leg room. The bright spot in one terrible day at the
airport. We will just chalk that one up
to experience. Or hell. Either works.
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