SPAIN - PART 1 - BARCELONA

When Lee Haywood announced that he was going to have his stag week in Benidorm I Knew that I was going to be doing something slightly different from everyone else. For a start they were only going from Monday until Friday. I seen this as a chance to see a couple of other places in Spain as well. If I was going to be off work for 9 days I was going to have 9 days away instead of 5. So I was going to fly to Barcelona on the Saturday, make my way down to Benidorm on the Monday go mad with the whitwick lads until Thursday when have 3 nights in Madrid, then head home...........it was as good a plan as any.



For once I didn’t have to trek down to London as I was flying from East Midlands, this was the first time I was visiting mainland Spain (I don’t count changing flights at an airport). I got to the hostel in Barcelona fairly easy and had a bit of an explore. It was one of them cities that you instantly took a liking to. It obviously reminded me a lot of Costa rica with the people.



English was not very well understood so ordering food was reduced to pointing which is always fun!!!. I walked miles that first evening, I went back to the hostel and it seemed empty including the bar downstairs. So I went for another explore went back to the hostel and again there was nobody about. So I gave up and went to my room with early night / early start next morning on my mind.



When I open the door my dorm room was full of people, so that was it instant new friends and best of all they were drinking and heading out round town. When we got out the girls who were already drunk kept changing their minds where they wanted to go. Went to one bar a couple of us ordered a drink then found the rest had left. So we soon got split up, it didn’t matter as they sold cans of beer on the streets for 1 euro so we walked around drinking them.

Overall the night turned out a lot better than I had thought a couple of hours earlier..........



I only had one full day in the city so it was walk around as see as much as I could. I headed into an old looking part of the city despite the heat I felt like I could walk around all day (which I did). I went past the Cathedral which Grandad (Harold) visited at least 50 years earlier.



I went across the sea front then towards an area with a cable car ride. It was over an hour to wait but the view from the top was great.







Two nights was obviously nowhere near enough time to see the city so I had to put in on my list of places to revisit in the future. By the time I got back to hostel all the people who I went out with the previous night had been replaced by new arrivals. As with the previous trips in Europe lots from USA and Canada. I was invited to go out to an all night party but had to decline due to an early morning/ 8 hour long bus ride. Nightlife in Spain starts a lot later than back home, it was nothing unusual to see families with young kids eating out at 11:30pm. Back home 1-2pm is nearly home time where in Spain it’s only halfway through the night.

The bus ride the following day was a good chance to see the Spanish countryside but got a bit of a drag towards the end...........Benidorm was a different world to Barcelona!!!!!!!!!