Te quiero BARCELONA - my TRUE love

A lot of things happened during last weeks. For the first time since over a year I did few short trips in my homeland – Poland, but I also came back for a few days to another country that I can call home – Catalonia.

me at Park Guell

When me and Arthur decided to go for a trip together during his stay in Europe, I already knew I’d really like to show him one of my favourite cities in the world. In the end of year 2016 there was a Wizzair offer to many European destinations with 20% discount, so we bought tickets to Barcelona.

Round trip ticket per person was 50 €, which is a good price I can say. My goal was to show to Arthur all the places there that made me fall in love with this city + standard tourist atractions as well.

It was my first time in Barcelona during early spring – but the weather didn’t disappoint me. Average 20 degrees + cloudless sky made me feel coming back to life and warm myself up a bit after heavy, polish winter.

Sagrada Familia

Unfortunately we didn’t find anybody who could host us there. We’ve been trying hard and sent a lot of requests (almost 30) , but seems like if you aren’t solo travelling girl, or 2 girls, couchsurfing isn’t so easy anymore. So we stayed in a hostel called Paraiso Hostel. It was really close to the centre, but the staff wasn’t the nicest. We booked 2 beds in a 4-beds dorm, but the room was supposed to be en-suite, however it wasn’t. It was a late night and we didn’t really care about the bathroom so nobody of us said anything. But the room also was dirty, when the receptionist showed us the room, there was a plastic bottle on the floor and instead of picking it up, she just kicked it under the bed. There were also few other situation. For example on Monday nights we met some people from couchsurfing hangouts. One of the people was British guy who just arrived in Barcelona. The meeting was really close to our hostel so we offered him to try asking in our hostel if they had any free bed for that night. They didn’t, which is fine – but when we asked receptionist if he could suggest him any other hostel , he just answered that there is no way he would find something at that time and just ended the conversation. Come on, it’s Barcelona! I know it was 2 am, but at least he could try to help him somehow, give some numbers/addresses to other places – we were in the centre of huge city, well-known among backpackers as well. Few another small things happened – like one person of the staff was telling bad things about one of the guests to another receptionist when we were standing just next to them, waiting for our check in.

Anyway, I think at this price (8€ per night per person) you can find nicer, cleaner places – next time probably I’d book something else.

On Tuesday we decided to go to Solsona and spend the evening with my former host family. How lovely was to see them all again! We stayed with them only 12 hours, but their hospitality was amazing as always, and we spent adorable time having dinner together (with my favourite Catalan food) and our post-dinner time, when Arthur and kids were playing instruments and singing together.

Park Guell

By the way, I have to admit, I think – and I can feel – how Barcelona is getting more and more expensive. Our first expense that we didn’t plan was accommodation, but in general we spent much more money than we were supposed to. Usually I was in Barcelona during my stay as an au-pair in Catalonia – so I was spending there some weekends, but even if I had to pay for a hostel, and ate out most of the time, I didn’t stay there more than around 36 hours, so I could have only some cheap food. This time we spent way too much money on the food, mostly because we didn’t want to come back to the hostel during the day just for cooking. I remember when I hitchhiked to Barcelona with my friend, we only ate at home of our host, and if we were outside during lunch time, we were buying just some bread with chorizo in the supermarket. So I guess that’s why we didn’t spend there a lot of money. But I need to come back to cooking by myself and eating basic products during my trips, because if I keep on spending so much money as I did in Barcelona, I won’t be able to afford so many trips anymore.

Barri Gotic

Barcelona is the first city abroad that I fell in love with and had my first, real experience of solo travelling. Maybe that’s why I’m so sentimental about it. But it’s not a flawless place. I’ve seen when someone was robbed, I met there many rude people, it’s expensive and last year I had really bad couchsurfing experiences there – but it didn’t change my mind and I’m still coming back there. Despite of all of these bad things, I can still see something there that makes me feel alive and just makes me adore this place – I guess that’s the true love :)

Mirador del Alcalde