Barcelona - an "accidental" holiday.

Ever have one of those holidays that just sort of pops up out of nowhere? About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting at work thinking that two holidays in the space of 7 weeks was pretty packing them in, when I got an email from my old "email penpal" Sharon in Israel. We've known each other about 10 years nearly, but we've never actually met. Every year or so, we make all these promises about meeting up, but it never actually happened and we haven't really talked all that much the last two years. Suddenly I'm reading an email saying that she's after (finally) booking a holiday outside of Israel, in Barcelona, she has a 4-bed apartment and only 2 ppl to stay in it, so did I want to come over? Well, we were supposed to meet up in Barca about 2 years ago, but her college tuition fees came in just before she went so she had to choose between college and the holiday. I ended up going to Barca anyway that time, as I'd already booked my flights when she cancelled. Anyway, I took a quick look at ryanair.com, saw flights for about €120, so decided "why not?"

Sharon was going to be there from the 1st to the 10th, so I decided to go over on the 2nd, the saturday, and stay a few days. Then things started getting complicated. I texted my ex-flatmate Leti, who I knew sometimes lived in Barcelona, to see did she want to meet up. She replied saying that she was actually going on hols on the 2nd, but that Raquel, our other flatmate was going to be visiting her in Barcelona from the 29th to the 31st, and did I want to go meet them? So far so good, but then I remembered that Dani, my Italian ex-flatmate was coming over to visit some time that week, so I got in contact to find out when she'd be in dublin. The reply? the 1st to the 3rd! So instead of going to spain the 31st to the 5th or 6th to visit my Spanish and Israeli friends, I was staying in dublin until the 3rd to meet my Italian friend, missing my Spanish friends, then going over to meet my Israeli friend. Confusing eh?

Anyway, Dani and her austrian friends came on over, we met up for the first time in 4(?) years, and hung out for the few days, then she headed to the airport sunday morning and I followed along about 4hrs later. I'd forgotten that Ryanair now had effectively their own pier in Dublin airport, and true to them being the "no frills" airline, it was an ugly prefab parked way out on the tarmac where you had to walk out so far to get to the gates that you felt like you were half-way to your destination already! They had improved it a bit, when when I was going to Brussels last it was an ugly soulless prefab with no redeeming features whatsoever, it was now an ugly soulless prefab with a coffee shop and a bookstore.

True to form anyway for dublin airport, we took off about an hour late, which meant me getting into Girona about 11 and Barcelona itself around 12:15ish. Now the last time I'd gone this way, that was enough of a delay to cause me to miss the last metro and have to get a taxi to Marta's place (who proceeded to get lost along the way), but that had been during the week, and luckily the metros ran later on the weekends. So, I abandoned myself to that (for non-irish people) most incomprehensible of pleasures on hitting a foreign city, relaxing on a public transport system that worked and was fairly on time! I finally got to Barceloneta where I was meeting Sharon, and strangely enough we pretty much recognised each other straight away. I say "strangely enough" as I'd only ever seen 3 pictures of her ever, the most recent being 2 years old!

So anyway, we decided to have a drink before we went back to their apartment,a nd she introduced me to her friend Alon. It was a little bit awkward for the first while, as while we probably knew more about each other that most ppl I actually know in "real life" nowadays, it was all over email and IM, and even then not much of it over the last 2 years. So, it was sort of a case of "where do we start"? It was also slightly complicated by the presence of Alon - not through any fault of his, but it's sort of hard to meet someone you know really well but never actually met in the flesh for the frst time and get a feeling for what they're really like, in front of someone you don't know at all. Also, Oran didn't really drink so I couldn't use the traditional irish icebreaker of getting drunk with him!

When we got back to their rented apartment another issue arose, that of sleeping arrangements. When the ad had said "sleeps 4 ppl" it forgot to metion that it was 2 double bed arrangements, and rather csy doubles at that. So, I'd been warned in advance and brought a sleeping bag, but was still sleeping on the floor! Not the most comfortable of arrangements, especially without a ground sheet or pillow. So, after an hour or so of my head bouncing off the concrete floor, we decided to try something different so I ended up in the same bed as Sharon (just sleeping!). It took a bit of getting used to on both our parts, but we managed and eventually got some shut-eye.

The next morning dawned as it always does in spain - damn hot! Before I'd headed over, weather.com was telling me that the temp would be about 25-6, which I thought was quite tolerable, so I wore jeans and only brought one pair of shorts. That turned out to be a teeny bit of a mistake, as I idscovered once the temp hit 30! :-( Seeing as it was my 4th time in Barcelona and their first, I was the tour guide for the duration, but since they'd already picked off the "low hanging fruit" of La Rambla, Passeig de Gracia and the Sagrada Familia, I took them around the Barri Gotic (where we hit the chocolate museum), Carrer Ferran and down to Placa Real, where we got tapas, Placa de Catalunya the big marketplace down by Licieu. We ended up in that wierd little fairytale-like bar I'd found before down by the wax museum, El Bosc Des Fades. Then we went back to the flat in Barceloneta via Port Veil. A pretty busy day!

Next day (tues), we were up real early as the plan was to head out to Montserrat. So, up at 8am (on a holiday!) to hop on the metro and get to Placa d'Espanya in time to get the 9:49 train to Montserrat. Unfortunately, we left the flat a tad late and were racing the clock to get to the train on time! We literally made it at the last sec - the train doors were practically closing on me as I hopped on board. We made it anyway, and got as far as the base of the mountain where we were to get the cable car up to the monastery. I'd decided on the cable car at the last sec when we were booking the tickets, as I'd taken the funicular he last time I was there, but the flaw in this plan became apparent when I discovered that Sharon was not overly enamoured with heights! We made it up without incident anyway, and went poking around the church and monastery, killing time until this choir recital thingy which we thought was on at 11am but actually wan't until 1pm. While we were waiting, we discovered the particular joys of trying to find kosher food in a restaurant where everything was pretty much meat-based! The recital, when we got it, would have been nice enough in slightly more reverent circumstances, but while it was in the rather impressive-looking church, the church itself was packed with busloads of eastern european tourists who were busy jostling for better positions while all the time ignoring the "no cameras" signs around. Sharon in particular was less than enamoured by this experience. After that tho, we went out hillwalking on the mountain which was more to everyone's taste - even mine, as it was a lot more pleasant than the first time I'd done it, mainly due to not being hungover from drinking 1/3 of a bottle of absinthe the night before!

After we were done, we headed back into town, where we decided we had enough time to go to Parc Guele to see all the Gaudi architecture. Now for those who haven't been there, while the guidebook says that "Lesseps is the nearest metro stop to Parc Guele", what it doesn't say is that by "nearest" it means over 1km away (1250m according to the signposts actually), with the last 400m being uphill. Just what we needed after a long day out on the mountain! After some more lovely healthy exercise, we were in the mood for food, so we headed back down to Port Veil where we went to that all-you-can-eat vegetarian restaurant I'd found on my previous trip (vegetarian being the closest thing to kosher you can get in the land of chorizo and jamon). After that, being a tad weary, it was back to the apartment and pretty much bed (altho we did watch a bit of TV - some crap british cloak-and-dagger spoof which was probably helped in its entertainment value by being dubbed in catalan so we had to guess as to what was going on).

The next day, my last, was spent doing pretty much feck-all. We were a bit tired after all the previous day's walking, climbing etc and were in no real mood to over-exert ourselves in the still 30-degree heat, so it was pretty much spent killing time in shops and stuff while I was waiting to head to the bus station to get my bus back to Girona to go home. When I finally got to the airport, I was most pleasantly surprised to find that we nearly took off on time - as in, we were boarding when we should have been taking off and were wheels up 20mins later. This was a vast improvement on my previous ryanair flight, where the 2 1/2 hour delay on the way out to brussels could have been blamed on the bomb scare in the airport that morning but the 4hr delay on the way back couldn't.

So, a rather pleasant and unexpected holiday! It was good to be back in Barca, and even better to finally meet someone who up til then had only been text on a screen for the previous 10 years!