The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Spain

We arrived in Barcelona after a 3 hour flight and caught the metro train to the nearest stop to our hostel which was a fair way from the centre of town as we had booked pretty late. It was called the Mellow Hostel and was pretty big and had been recently renovated and had a nice balcony out in the afternoon sun with good city views. The walk from the metro station at midday ended up being about 1km up steep hills, so with our packs was quite an effort! (In Bec’s words; the hill of death)

In the afternoon on our first day we headed into town on the bus and went and sat on the main beach for a while before getting some groceries to take back to the hostel. The beach had very grainy sand and next to no waves. The area we went to was covered in thousands of people and European beaches lived up to their reputation of being full of nudists!

The first night we were there we cooked up a big bit of pasta, to save some money after spending a bit over our daily budget on the flight the day before. We headed to bed about midnight and Bec noticed her lock was missing off the locker next to her bed, but nothing was missing, so we put on the spare lock and headed to sleep after getting another sheet for her bed (as this was randomly missing as well). At about 3am a New Zealand guy who I had met earlier that day came back to the room and noticed that his lock had been broken and all his stuff messed up. We had a quick search and found nothing was missing but the locks on 2 of the other lockers were also broken, so after letting the staff know, we headed back to get a few more hours sleep in. Luckily no one lost anything, we think they must have been looking for quick cash. We think we interrupted them when we went to bed. Barcelona had lived up to its reputation on the first night!

On our first full day we headed in to the town centre to do a 3 hour bike tour of the city. There were about 15 of us in our group, and for 18 euro we cycled around the city with our guide and saw some of the amazing Gaudi architecture, the Olympic Village, the Oceanside and some of the Old Town area and had a free beer at the beach on the way. We had a great group and spent the whole time chatting while cycling, and after the tour six of us, Bec, Myself, two from Victoria and a mother and daughter from the UK headed to a tapas bar for a late lunch. We sampled a head of dishes and had drinks for about $10 each. The two from the UK even gave us contact details for their sister/daughter who lives in the UK in an area we may visit in the coming weeks.

After lunch the four of us from Australia headed up to the top of town to visit the park which is full of Gaudi architecture, where we spend a good hour or so wandering before heading back to the hostel exhausted once more! This night we got slightly better sleep but had to get up at 6am the next morning to catch the train to San Sebastian on the north coast of Spain.