Christmas In Barcelona
I know I’m several days late, but it’s been a pain in the ass to find internet that is cheap and that I can use long enough to write something. So anyways… the headache that was my trip to Barcelona…
Since I was able to get internet access in Florence, I checked my train schedule at www.bahn.de, just to make sure that the train would be running. It told me that I was able to catch a 7pm train from Milan to Barcelona, non-stop and arrive in Barcelona at 11am. So the next day I said goodbye to Theresa who was heading to Cinque Terre, and I headed to Milan. Got there around 1pm, with plenty of time to get my reservation and maybe go check out “The Last Supper.” I didn’t find out until later that I wouldn’t have been able to anyways because you have to get a reservation in advance. Anyways, I went to get my reservation, just to find out that bahn.de lied to me. There was no train to Barcelona that day and the information desk wasn’t any help. They apparently have no access to anything outside Italy. Thanks to some logistical support from home though, I was able to get to Geneva, Tolousse, Narbonne, then onto Barcelona and arrived about 1pm. Not as fun as a non-stop train that I could sleep through.
Expecting everything to be closed because it was Christmas Eve, I thought I would just do laundry and post some pics, but found out that everything was open. Didn’t see anything closed, except for the laundry place across the street from the hostel. So I decided to spend my time seeing some of the sights. We’ll part of them at least. Much to my disappointment, the Sangrada Familia was about 70% covered because of construction and the towers were closed. On top of that, they wanted 10 Euros to get in. Decided against it because I figured my disappointment was bound to follow me inside. I walked back to my hostel, taking in some sights along the way. My hostel was right around the corner from Las Ramblas, the pedestrian boulevard and one of the major places to wander around in Barcelona. Got to see artists, living statues, scammers (the find the ball under the cup kind), and other stuff. Even saw a place selling live chickens, pigeons, and other weird “pets”. Later that night I had dinner down by the waterfront under the Columbus statue, before heading back to my hostel and crashing. The train ride didn’t provide for much sleep.
The next day, Christmas Day, everything except Las Ramblas seemed to be closed, so I wandered around there again, tried to check out the Gothic Cathedral, but it was 100% closed due to reconstruction. It didn’t even have the picture of it on the outside of the scaffolding like many other places do. With nothing else to do, I headed back to my hostel and watched the movie Hostel before going to bed early to get going to Lisbon the next day. I wasn’t too impressed with Barcelona. Wished I would have chosen a different, more Spanish, city. From what I saw on Madrid on my layover to Lisbon, I think I would have liked that much better.
Tags: Barcelona, Christmas, General, Las Ramblas, Sangrada Familia, Spain, Travel
mrnational
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